420a manifold gets candy red powdercoat, bigger injectors and a 7.25 psi tial wastegate spring

420a Intake and Injectors finally get installed! April 3, 08'

The installation of the manifold, intake gaskets, and injectors cost $148

Total for buying + installation of intake, injectors and raising boost to 7 psi - $445

Today I took the car to Maxi Muffler. The intake manifold has 18 bolts holding it on and half of those are only accessible from the bottom of the manifold. This means you must be standing under the car reaching up through the engine bay and unbolting the topside of the manifold. Then the bottom side must be unbolted from the head on the intake side. Thats another 8 bolts. Then you clean the area, install the new injectors in the manifold and do everything agian backwards. I can always port this manifold out. The stock manifold designed by Lotus Engineering can support over 350 HP of flow.


Before Cleaning , after removal

This is the intake manifold pulled off a 420a Eclipse. You can see how dirty this one is. I cant believe how much gunk it has on the outside, but there must be ten times as much on the inside. It is not even worth posting a picture for. It was just black. I soaked the manifold and rinsed it with acitone and then degreaser. After that I took it to the local car wash and pressure washed each runner from the inside until I started to see the aluminum color show through. I did the same to the outside as well.

Its Soo Clean!

It is amazing what a good soak and $10 in quaters at the local self service car wash will do for your parts. You can see from the inside of the throttle body mouth that it is just as clean inside. I actually spend about 30 minutes with the pressure washer cleaning the inside before I realized the outside needed just as much attention.

Here the end product that was cleaned is powder coated metallic silver. Then the part gets a finishing coat of candy red. The lowe manifold was not grinded and polished as it is mostly out of direct view. This is where the texture comes from.

The cermic coating is very tough. The candry red topcoat is like paint. Don't worry though. I have tested this coating to 500-600 degrees. I still have not have any abnormalities in the finish. Some say you cannot powdercoat these engine parts. I am fine with that because the uglier their engine is the better mine looks. Deny Deny Deny all they want, for I am Candy Apple Red :D

I had cleaned deposits as good as humanly possible from the inside of the intake manifold.

The coating is ecenomical enough to unbolt parts and have them recoated every 2-3 years. Of course you can wax these parts and buff them every few months and the shine last for a few years. Just like any other paint really. However this paint is heated to 200+ degrees daily then cooled and repeat. I can only imagine the finish will start to haze after a few years. It sure beats that Rust color that everything seems to come in these days. Who knew Rust would be the new black...

Of course if you install larger injectors pay attention to their size. Putting in injectors that are 30 percent larger in flow rate may mean that you need 30 percent less pressure to make the correct Air Fuel ratio. This is approximate however. Maxi said they set my pressure down to about 20 or so PSI. Before the FMU ran at 40-45 psi when I was running 5 psi boost.

I am still going to repost with updated pictures after the install is complete. After the injectors were installed there was gasoline pouring out the tail pipe with every exhaust pulse. This was at 40 psi fuel pressure. Even after lowering the pressure as low as the FMU would go ( 20 psi) the Air fuel ratio still was twice what it should have been. It seemed that I had purchased fuel injectors made for the space shuttle. A quick call to Hahn Racecraft and letting them view my blog led them to the conclusion, based off my picture of the injectors, that they sent 750cc injectors. The tech explained that the part numbers are almost identical except for the first digit. I will arrange a RMA.

Quick pictures of the results-

Here is a side view at a hard angle of the newly installed red intake manifold. This one is so much cleaner than the OEM one that I need to have other misc parts around the intake coated either chrome or black chrome. Re- routing some of the vacuum lines and rubber fuel line under or behind the intake would further clean up the look of the firewall are. I will relocate the Hahn fuel mapper to the back firewall I believe instead of the lower portion of the engine bay. I will probaby cover the fuel mapper in a protective box or shell away from heat. The intake has a little orange peel look at this angle. I could wet sand it and buff however light never hits it at this angle to see the waves without a flash.

As the major parts are coated to color cordinate with the other red parts I start to take in mind that I could easily overdue the candy red. I have found another color called black chrome to coat parts like brackets ( that are normally flat black or rusted) Fittings, Hose clamps, Resevoir brackets, Ecu Brackets, and Intercooler piping. Sorry the engine is not clean in this picture.