Technical Made my own phenolic spacer

So earlier I had to load up four wheels and tires to get mounted and balanced and a radiator to drop off to get fixed. It's a hundred degrees out and stop and go traffic. Like usual the car started surging On the way back to the shop. So once I got back to the shop I installed the spacer and it seems to respond better to the idle circuit mixture Now that it's got 2 throats as the previous steel spacer was just open. I've got
To go pick up the wheels and tires in a little while so I will report back and see how it went. then for the big trial, the drive home up the hill at about 103*

 

So can they be made of Plywood as previously mentioned? Would it not warp with heat? Cheers

 

A certain type of plywood, I believe.

 

It’ll be sandwiched and secured by studs and nut’s making it just like clamping lumber together so no. The stuff that’s the best is called Baltic Birch due to its thin and uniform layers. Very stable and flat from the get go. Comes in many thickness’s.

 

106° on the way home and the car definitely felt peppier for whatever reason. I'm thinking the change from the open spacer to the dual throat spacer may have helped out as it's now got a straight shot to the intake manifold. On the same hill on the way home I picked up ten miles an hour for some reason with my foot in the same spot As before. As far as the heat problem i'm not sure that it really did anything for it. I still had to turn on the electric fuel pump on the way home. Maybe My parts store fuel pump is garbage. I do have one that is professionally rebuilt from a guy On the East Coast. I'm Thinking I may swap it out to see if it makes a difference . People think I'm nuts that I drive My old cars every day in the heat, When my 64 El Camino (newest car i own) has AC. But I don't mind it.

 

Is your fuel supply line totally clean? I resurrected a 57 Chevy this summer and thought I had the fuel line totally clean out. It would run good until it didn’t. I thought it was vapor locking because it was over 90 outside. I put on a carb insulator and it didn’t solve it. I replaced the supply tubing and that solved the problem.

 

I replaced the fuel tank and made all new fuel lines, so that's all good.

 

I had a similar problem with a parts Store fuel pump on my 64 El Camino. And fixed it by replacing it with a Carter street pump.

 

The dust isn't good, for sure.
The stuff we used in the late 80s, would stink like Ammonia when you used water to keep the dust down.

 

Brian, I run a 1" 4 hole phenolic risen spacer on all my small blocks. The fact that they are isolating the carburetor from the engine heat transfer from the intake is a huge benefit. Good news that it has benefited your car.

 

That is laminated cabinet grade material, it should work.

 

3/8” will do it! I have them under my dual quads and today I saw a 270 57 Corvette with them. Like said…… heat and today’s gasoline blend.

 

My landlord at my last shop was a cabinet maker, I had him build me some out of teak wood for customer build.

 

The photo you posted is what you'd use for a single plane intake, though. His intake isn't a single plane. Using a spacer such as that on a dual plane intake will cause the airstream to hit a "wall" that is the top of the port divider in the manifold, killing airflow.

 

How does one determine the thickness to go with? Do you study the thermal conductivity of each material or see what works for others and what the spacer suppliers sell?

 

Wood is better for thermal insulation than a phenolic spacer. Sometimes the old way actually turns out to be the best way. As for thickness, quarter inch is probably fine for blocking heat transfer. Anything taller will be more for tuning purposes.

If you want it to be the duck's nuts, make a wood spacer with the throats sleeved with thin wall polished aluminium tubing. We've all got all the time in the world, right? And we are hot rodders after all.......