A little different Mamo Heads/Cam/Intake build (MMS265 with single-plane intake)
12-28-2017, 04:46 PM
#1
Racer
Thread Starter
A little different Mamo Heads/Cam/Intake build (MMS265 with single-plane intake)
Hello all,
I just finished a rebuild of my engine with Tony's MMS heads / cam / intake. This is not your typical Z06-style build, but it is LS7-architecture related, and I personally use this forum to learn about this platform. So I thought others here might be interested in the future as well.
Some background. I have a Pro-Touring Firebird that I use for autocross and track days. I've had the engine running for several years based on TFS LS3 heads and a Victor Jr. intake ported by Frankenstein Racing Heads (now Frankenstein Engine Dynamics). I've gone through a couple of iterations of the engine due to some issues related to oil flow/control, but it's been a capable engine for me, making 570-ish rwhp and 500 ft-lb of torque.
I have followed Tony's work for many years and have always wanted to try one of his packages for myself. This past spring I took my car apart to address some suspension issues, and I wanted to also address yet another oil control issue inside of the motor. Since it was going to be apart, I again considered moving from the LS3 platform to an LS7 platform. My hesitation in the past had been that there wasn't a good intake option for me, as I want to keep my functional shaker hood of the Trans Am. The GMPP intake isn't known for being a very good performer, and the Mast intakes are too tall (or so I thought, more on that later).
Last year Edelbrock released a Super Victor intake for the LS7. After some research (more than I care to admit), I determined that it should fit my car just barely. I decided to buy one and take a chance, and that's when I got in touch with Tony. Since I wasn't completely certain of the measurements, nor how good it would be compared to the GMPP, I ordered both and sent them to Tony to take a look. He immediately told me the GMPP wasn't a good option and I would be better served to stick with what I had. But the Super Victor seems like a good platform for him to work with.
At that point, I ordered a set of his MMS 265 LS7 heads, his Yella Terra rockers, a cam which he speced, and scheduled him to port my Super Victor. I'll post the full specs of the engine below...
- LS9 block sleeved by RED and bored to 4.155"
- Wiseco 8cc pistons (target around 12:1 compression)
- Callies Compstar 6.125" rods
- Callies DragonSlayer 4.000" stroke crank (with 2.000" rod journals)
- Comp Cams solid roller cam with Tony's lobes (252/266, ~0.710" lift, 114 LS)
- Crower Solid Roller lifters
- Trend pushrods, custom length
- MMS 265 heads, 2.205" hollow intake, 1.615" hollow exhaust, PAC 1208 springs & retainers, 64cc chambers
- Yella Terra LS7 adjustable rockers
- Ported Edelbrock Super Victor intake and -8AN fuel rails
- Accel 1550 cfm 4150 throttle body
- Dailey 3-stage LS7 dry sump pump and pan
- Holley Tall valve covers
- Factory LS coils, MSD wires
- Holley HP-EFI ECU
The machine work and assembly was done by H-Squared Racing down in Houston. Halston did the previous build last year, so I took it back to him when I wanted to do this freshen / upgrade. When he took the engine apart, everything inside looked great which was a relief. The concern I had was that my fuel pressure was not continuing to rise with RPM when the engine was heat soaked (track day at COTA). About halfway through a session, it would stall at 40psi. As soon as it cooled down, it would have full pressure again. So I never lost pressure, but something inside of the engine was growing and allowing pressure loss.
We decided to look at a few areas during the rebuild. One was the lifters. The factory block has a rather large oil channel to feed the lifters. If the block was growing in this area, it certainly could be bleeding off a lot of oil. Another thing I found in researching was that the cam bearings could be allowing oil bleed when hot. So we looked to address these areas amongst others. I had Halston bush the lifter bores with Jesel bushings. This would limit the size of the oil channel as well as give us a more consistent bore size for the lifters, allowing him to hone them to a specific size.
We learned the hard way that pressing in these bushings can be problematic though. The shop has done this many times on other blocks, but the casting in the 5.3L blocks (what I previously was using) wasn't nearly as strong in the lifter bores. Unfortunately 2 of the 16 bores cracked when the bushings were installed to Jesel's specs. After a few attempts at fixing them failed, we decided to replace the block. Halston was able to source a damaged LS9 block which needed sleeves, and that worked perfectly since I was running a sleeved block anyway. A trip to RED and we had our new block. I'm happy about this change, as I think the LS9 block is a better overall block for my application anyway (better breathing between bays).
We decided when we started this build that we would dyno the engine before I took it back to make sure everything was where it should be. It was wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, so we scheduled the dyno session at the School of Automotive Machinists (SAM) in Houston for last week. On Wednesday, we had our day.
We ran into a few snafus during our dyno session that prevented us from getting as many iterations as we had planned / hoped, but we were able to do what we needed to. We ran the engine for a while on the breakin oil to ensure all was good there. No leaks, solid oil pressure, etc. We got it good and hot, and then we checked the rocker lash. Right at 0.010 to 0.011" as planned.
Then we changed the oil and put in the 5W30 that I will run in it, and started our tuning sessions. The second pull netted me 699 HP, and I could just see this being 1 short of the magic 700 number. I would not have been happy...
Fortunately the engine had a lot left in her. We were tuning on the Holley HP, which is great since that is what I will be running in the car. I will have a decent baseline to start from. After a few pulls, we were at 721 HP / 580 ft-lb of torque. By LS7 standards, this engine won't make the same levels of torque due to the shorter runners of the single plane intake. But it sure will carry HP on the top end.
Halston happened to have a 4500-base version of the Mast single-plane intake with him, so we decided to swap that onto the engine and see what it would do. This was far from an ideal situation, as we didn't have the correct intake gaskets to do so. We used an adapter set of generic gaskets which were about 1/4" thick, so we had horrible alignment from the ports from the intake to the head. I'm talking at least 1/4" off or more (with this intake you can see easily down to the valve, so it was obvious). Still, we decided to give it a try, so we bolted down a 4500 throttle body that SAM had on-hand and gave it a pull.
It was quickly obvious that the engine liked the Mast intake and larger tb. The Mast has as HUGE plenum by comparison to the Super Victor. And the runners are more even in length and tapered well. Recall that my Super Victor has about 10 hours of porting time in it as well. The plenum has been nicely blended, and the ports have been matched to the heads and tapered also as much as they will allow. So my Super Victor baseline is a more optimized baseline.
The Mast / 4500 combination was worth about 14 HP and 12 ft-lb of torque over the Edelbrock. But the really interesting thing is how well the combination carried the power at the top. We stopped all of the pulls at 7500 as that is as much as I will spin the motor in the car. But if you look at the plot below, you can see that the Mast was flat up top at that point.
One nice thing about being on an engine dyno is that we had a full 8 O2 sensors from which to take readings. There were 2 cylinders which read lean during our initial runs, so some of the tuning involved richening those up a bit with the Holley. Somewhat surprisingly, when swapping the intakes, that stayed the same. I don't think that was a fluke of the dyno, as we gained power when we corrected for this.
On the dyno and the HP EFI, we could see that we were starting to pull a vacuum in the intake at the higher RPM. We saw about 5 kPa (101 down to 96) as the RPM rose. With the Mast intake and 4500 TB, we didn't see any significant drop in the kPa.
I would have really liked to have tried a Mast 4150 intake on the engine with my TB to see what it looked like. The reason I didn't use the Mast in the first place was that I thought it was taller than it actually is. It turns out to be about 1/8" shorter than the Super Victor (for anyone who may care in the future). Given that, I would have chosen it if I had known as it is a much nicer starting point. By the time I paid to port the Super Victor, I would be around the same cost. Here is a picture of the Mast, the LS3 Victor Jr I was running, and the Super Victor I will run:
One more comment on the Super Victor while I'm thinking about it. As it came from Edelbrock, the bolt holes where you attach the fuel rails were drilled at the wrong angle. This caused the rails to sit too high preventing the injector o-rings from sealing. I called Edelbrock about this but got nowhere with their customer service desk. We had to slot the holes on the fuel rails to push them further down to get a good seal on the injectors. I wish I had caught that before having the work done on the intake...
Ok, enough of my story. Here's what you all came to see: dyno results. I have overlaid 3 runs. Unfortunately the dyno operator didn't do but 1 full rpm range pull, and even that started higher than I wanted. We ran out of time to do more pulls, so I don't have something to show the low-rpm range very well. What I show below are 3 runs:
As I said above, the Mast just carries power really well. The Super Victor does also, but you can see the effect of pulling a vacuum starting to hit around 6900 - 7000. While my car is not a drag racer, and while Tony doesn't promote his package to that world, I would think that anyone wanting to build a drag racer with a similar combination would really like the power up top this thing makes!
If anyone is curious about the car this is going into, here it is doing its thing...
I run a T56 Magnum behind the engine with a Monster LT1-S clutch. The rear is a Ford 9". I will do a chassis dyno tuning session once I get the car back together. I will be choking the engine a bit with a set of 1 7/8" headers, but that's about as much as I can fit unfortunately. I do run true 3" dual exhaust to the rear of the car. The shaker also somewhat limits the amount of air I can pull in, although with the previous setup, I didn't see any real difference with or without the shaker installed.
I find it fun and interesting to compare my combination to others running the same heads and similar cams. My choice to run the single-plane intake definitely changes the characteristics of the powerband. When I run autocross or track days at COTA, I spend a lot of time above 5000 rpm. But I also street drive this car to/from events as far away as Dallas so far (~3.5 hours). It will take some tuning to get this combination road ready, but that is part of the fun of building these cars.
I just finished a rebuild of my engine with Tony's MMS heads / cam / intake. This is not your typical Z06-style build, but it is LS7-architecture related, and I personally use this forum to learn about this platform. So I thought others here might be interested in the future as well.
Some background. I have a Pro-Touring Firebird that I use for autocross and track days. I've had the engine running for several years based on TFS LS3 heads and a Victor Jr. intake ported by Frankenstein Racing Heads (now Frankenstein Engine Dynamics). I've gone through a couple of iterations of the engine due to some issues related to oil flow/control, but it's been a capable engine for me, making 570-ish rwhp and 500 ft-lb of torque.
I have followed Tony's work for many years and have always wanted to try one of his packages for myself. This past spring I took my car apart to address some suspension issues, and I wanted to also address yet another oil control issue inside of the motor. Since it was going to be apart, I again considered moving from the LS3 platform to an LS7 platform. My hesitation in the past had been that there wasn't a good intake option for me, as I want to keep my functional shaker hood of the Trans Am. The GMPP intake isn't known for being a very good performer, and the Mast intakes are too tall (or so I thought, more on that later).
Last year Edelbrock released a Super Victor intake for the LS7. After some research (more than I care to admit), I determined that it should fit my car just barely. I decided to buy one and take a chance, and that's when I got in touch with Tony. Since I wasn't completely certain of the measurements, nor how good it would be compared to the GMPP, I ordered both and sent them to Tony to take a look. He immediately told me the GMPP wasn't a good option and I would be better served to stick with what I had. But the Super Victor seems like a good platform for him to work with.
At that point, I ordered a set of his MMS 265 LS7 heads, his Yella Terra rockers, a cam which he speced, and scheduled him to port my Super Victor. I'll post the full specs of the engine below...
- LS9 block sleeved by RED and bored to 4.155"
- Wiseco 8cc pistons (target around 12:1 compression)
- Callies Compstar 6.125" rods
- Callies DragonSlayer 4.000" stroke crank (with 2.000" rod journals)
- Comp Cams solid roller cam with Tony's lobes (252/266, ~0.710" lift, 114 LS)
- Crower Solid Roller lifters
- Trend pushrods, custom length
- MMS 265 heads, 2.205" hollow intake, 1.615" hollow exhaust, PAC 1208 springs & retainers, 64cc chambers
- Yella Terra LS7 adjustable rockers
- Ported Edelbrock Super Victor intake and -8AN fuel rails
- Accel 1550 cfm 4150 throttle body
- Dailey 3-stage LS7 dry sump pump and pan
- Holley Tall valve covers
- Factory LS coils, MSD wires
- Holley HP-EFI ECU
The machine work and assembly was done by H-Squared Racing down in Houston. Halston did the previous build last year, so I took it back to him when I wanted to do this freshen / upgrade. When he took the engine apart, everything inside looked great which was a relief. The concern I had was that my fuel pressure was not continuing to rise with RPM when the engine was heat soaked (track day at COTA). About halfway through a session, it would stall at 40psi. As soon as it cooled down, it would have full pressure again. So I never lost pressure, but something inside of the engine was growing and allowing pressure loss.
We decided to look at a few areas during the rebuild. One was the lifters. The factory block has a rather large oil channel to feed the lifters. If the block was growing in this area, it certainly could be bleeding off a lot of oil. Another thing I found in researching was that the cam bearings could be allowing oil bleed when hot. So we looked to address these areas amongst others. I had Halston bush the lifter bores with Jesel bushings. This would limit the size of the oil channel as well as give us a more consistent bore size for the lifters, allowing him to hone them to a specific size.
We learned the hard way that pressing in these bushings can be problematic though. The shop has done this many times on other blocks, but the casting in the 5.3L blocks (what I previously was using) wasn't nearly as strong in the lifter bores. Unfortunately 2 of the 16 bores cracked when the bushings were installed to Jesel's specs. After a few attempts at fixing them failed, we decided to replace the block. Halston was able to source a damaged LS9 block which needed sleeves, and that worked perfectly since I was running a sleeved block anyway. A trip to RED and we had our new block. I'm happy about this change, as I think the LS9 block is a better overall block for my application anyway (better breathing between bays).
We decided when we started this build that we would dyno the engine before I took it back to make sure everything was where it should be. It was wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, so we scheduled the dyno session at the School of Automotive Machinists (SAM) in Houston for last week. On Wednesday, we had our day.
We ran into a few snafus during our dyno session that prevented us from getting as many iterations as we had planned / hoped, but we were able to do what we needed to. We ran the engine for a while on the breakin oil to ensure all was good there. No leaks, solid oil pressure, etc. We got it good and hot, and then we checked the rocker lash. Right at 0.010 to 0.011" as planned.
Then we changed the oil and put in the 5W30 that I will run in it, and started our tuning sessions. The second pull netted me 699 HP, and I could just see this being 1 short of the magic 700 number. I would not have been happy...
Fortunately the engine had a lot left in her. We were tuning on the Holley HP, which is great since that is what I will be running in the car. I will have a decent baseline to start from. After a few pulls, we were at 721 HP / 580 ft-lb of torque. By LS7 standards, this engine won't make the same levels of torque due to the shorter runners of the single plane intake. But it sure will carry HP on the top end.
Halston happened to have a 4500-base version of the Mast single-plane intake with him, so we decided to swap that onto the engine and see what it would do. This was far from an ideal situation, as we didn't have the correct intake gaskets to do so. We used an adapter set of generic gaskets which were about 1/4" thick, so we had horrible alignment from the ports from the intake to the head. I'm talking at least 1/4" off or more (with this intake you can see easily down to the valve, so it was obvious). Still, we decided to give it a try, so we bolted down a 4500 throttle body that SAM had on-hand and gave it a pull.
It was quickly obvious that the engine liked the Mast intake and larger tb. The Mast has as HUGE plenum by comparison to the Super Victor. And the runners are more even in length and tapered well. Recall that my Super Victor has about 10 hours of porting time in it as well. The plenum has been nicely blended, and the ports have been matched to the heads and tapered also as much as they will allow. So my Super Victor baseline is a more optimized baseline.
The Mast / 4500 combination was worth about 14 HP and 12 ft-lb of torque over the Edelbrock. But the really interesting thing is how well the combination carried the power at the top. We stopped all of the pulls at 7500 as that is as much as I will spin the motor in the car. But if you look at the plot below, you can see that the Mast was flat up top at that point.
One nice thing about being on an engine dyno is that we had a full 8 O2 sensors from which to take readings. There were 2 cylinders which read lean during our initial runs, so some of the tuning involved richening those up a bit with the Holley. Somewhat surprisingly, when swapping the intakes, that stayed the same. I don't think that was a fluke of the dyno, as we gained power when we corrected for this.
On the dyno and the HP EFI, we could see that we were starting to pull a vacuum in the intake at the higher RPM. We saw about 5 kPa (101 down to 96) as the RPM rose. With the Mast intake and 4500 TB, we didn't see any significant drop in the kPa.
I would have really liked to have tried a Mast 4150 intake on the engine with my TB to see what it looked like. The reason I didn't use the Mast in the first place was that I thought it was taller than it actually is. It turns out to be about 1/8" shorter than the Super Victor (for anyone who may care in the future). Given that, I would have chosen it if I had known as it is a much nicer starting point. By the time I paid to port the Super Victor, I would be around the same cost. Here is a picture of the Mast, the LS3 Victor Jr I was running, and the Super Victor I will run:
One more comment on the Super Victor while I'm thinking about it. As it came from Edelbrock, the bolt holes where you attach the fuel rails were drilled at the wrong angle. This caused the rails to sit too high preventing the injector o-rings from sealing. I called Edelbrock about this but got nowhere with their customer service desk. We had to slot the holes on the fuel rails to push them further down to get a good seal on the injectors. I wish I had caught that before having the work done on the intake...
Ok, enough of my story. Here's what you all came to see: dyno results. I have overlaid 3 runs. Unfortunately the dyno operator didn't do but 1 full rpm range pull, and even that started higher than I wanted. We ran out of time to do more pulls, so I don't have something to show the low-rpm range very well. What I show below are 3 runs:
- Super Victor with 4150 TB
- Mast with 4500 TB
- Mast with 4500 TB full pull
As I said above, the Mast just carries power really well. The Super Victor does also, but you can see the effect of pulling a vacuum starting to hit around 6900 - 7000. While my car is not a drag racer, and while Tony doesn't promote his package to that world, I would think that anyone wanting to build a drag racer with a similar combination would really like the power up top this thing makes!
If anyone is curious about the car this is going into, here it is doing its thing...
I run a T56 Magnum behind the engine with a Monster LT1-S clutch. The rear is a Ford 9". I will do a chassis dyno tuning session once I get the car back together. I will be choking the engine a bit with a set of 1 7/8" headers, but that's about as much as I can fit unfortunately. I do run true 3" dual exhaust to the rear of the car. The shaker also somewhat limits the amount of air I can pull in, although with the previous setup, I didn't see any real difference with or without the shaker installed.
I find it fun and interesting to compare my combination to others running the same heads and similar cams. My choice to run the single-plane intake definitely changes the characteristics of the powerband. When I run autocross or track days at COTA, I spend a lot of time above 5000 rpm. But I also street drive this car to/from events as far away as Dallas so far (~3.5 hours). It will take some tuning to get this combination road ready, but that is part of the fun of building these cars.
Last edited by carbuff; 12-29-2017 at 11:33 AM.
12-28-2017, 07:25 PM
#2
Team Owner
Great read, excellent results, and thanks for the post. 
Your car looks familiar...I think I've seen some of your posts over on the Lateral-G forum.
Your car looks familiar...I think I've seen some of your posts over on the Lateral-G forum.
Last edited by MTPZ06; 12-28-2017 at 07:40 PM.
12-28-2017, 07:39 PM
#3
Racer
Thread Starter
12-28-2017, 10:15 PM
#5
Racer
Thread Starter
I'll hopefully know in the next few weeks. I have a bit of work to do before she it all back together. Unfortunately some fabrication work beyond my abilities, so I have to get in line at my fab shop (exhaust work and a bit of chassis work). I look forward to driving the new setup for sure!!!
01-08-2018, 10:58 AM
#10
Racer
Thread Starter
06-18-2018, 07:24 PM
#13
Racer
Thread Starter
Yes, kind of... I've had the car running for a couple of months now. Driving is another story. I've been stalled for a couple of reasons (work and some fab work that I need done), so I've only taken short drives so far. Probably 50 miles worth. And that has mostly been for tuning and bedding brake purposes. So no good comparative data yet.
That said, it's driving great so far. I was able to get the tune at idle almost immediately based on my past tunes (I use a Holley HP EFI setup). I'll posted a video below that I took on the first day of getting the engine running.
(have to click the link, not sure how to embed the video)
TOW running
I hope to get my fab work taken care of soon, then I can finish the car assembly and start putting real miles on it. Next step will be a dyno tune (have to go out of town to find a tuner for the Holley).
That said, it's driving great so far. I was able to get the tune at idle almost immediately based on my past tunes (I use a Holley HP EFI setup). I'll posted a video below that I took on the first day of getting the engine running.
(have to click the link, not sure how to embed the video)
TOW running
I hope to get my fab work taken care of soon, then I can finish the car assembly and start putting real miles on it. Next step will be a dyno tune (have to go out of town to find a tuner for the Holley).
06-18-2018, 07:29 PM
#14
Le Mans Master
Let me know if you'd like a hand with any of the assembly or anything. I have a very open schedule on the back half of the week.
Last edited by jayyyw; 06-18-2018 at 07:29 PM.
06-18-2018, 09:22 PM
#15
Racer
Thread Starter
Appreciate the offer. At this point it's really about having the time to find a good fab shop that I trust. Know anyone in the area that does quality cage or fab work? I literally need 2 tubes cut and welded on, then some receivers welded to my front subframe. But I'm a bit picky about the work done on my car. 
06-19-2018, 08:03 AM
#16
Le Mans Master
Appreciate the offer. At this point it's really about having the time to find a good fab shop that I trust. Know anyone in the area that does quality cage or fab work? I literally need 2 tubes cut and welded on, then some receivers welded to my front subframe. But I'm a bit picky about the work done on my car.
I have a buddy down in the Kyle area that also does some great work. His name is Alban. I can get you his number if you're interested.
10-26-2018, 03:10 PM
#17
Thought I'd share my MSD intake experience. I just put my new LS7 in my car that AHP built for me. I bought a new MSD intake and had it ported. I'm having some issues with it and I'm very frustrated. My car has been down for roughly 6 months and now it's issues with the intake.
1. Hitting the firewall. Wish I would have known about this issue before I put it on. Anyway I re moved the manifold and replaced the #12 bolt with a button head bolt. That fixed the problem, but only at idle or low RPM driving. Any spirited driving it still hits firewall.
2. Bolts loose. I have tightened them very tight. I really don't want to go tighter as I am afraid of stripping or breaking something.
3. I have the same issue as stated above. Top bolts are tight, but you can spin the washers.
So I am contemplating going back to the stock intake manifold, but having a "radical" port done on it by Peak Speed Shop first. How much HP do you guys think I will loose by going back?
My car has the following mods.
Halltech 103
ported stock TB
ported MSD
AHP stage 4 heads with street port
AHP 116 cam
Also my tuner suggests that I put headers on the car. Right now I'm running full stock exhaust. I decided to run stock exhaust because I wanted my car to be quiet. I'm thinking of doing a full BB exhaust with the fusion 3 cat back.
Would love to hear some opinions guys thanks.
1. Hitting the firewall. Wish I would have known about this issue before I put it on. Anyway I re moved the manifold and replaced the #12 bolt with a button head bolt. That fixed the problem, but only at idle or low RPM driving. Any spirited driving it still hits firewall.
2. Bolts loose. I have tightened them very tight. I really don't want to go tighter as I am afraid of stripping or breaking something.
3. I have the same issue as stated above. Top bolts are tight, but you can spin the washers.
So I am contemplating going back to the stock intake manifold, but having a "radical" port done on it by Peak Speed Shop first. How much HP do you guys think I will loose by going back?
My car has the following mods.
Halltech 103
ported stock TB
ported MSD
AHP stage 4 heads with street port
AHP 116 cam
Also my tuner suggests that I put headers on the car. Right now I'm running full stock exhaust. I decided to run stock exhaust because I wanted my car to be quiet. I'm thinking of doing a full BB exhaust with the fusion 3 cat back.
Would love to hear some opinions guys thanks.