Mercedes V8 Inlet Manifolds

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I feel glad that the first engine to run this system will be the M117; an engine that’s suffered from a lack of decent support for so long.

 

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I finally nutted out the M120 & the Ferrari V12s and the biggest hurdle seems to be a sheer lack of space; far worse than the space around a M100 6.9!

 

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Here’s a seriously modded M120, but the manifolds are only marginally better than the std ones. The last group of pix give you an idea how tight things are in the centre and the fuel rail just makes it worse!

 

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The trouble with multi plenums & throttles is that you can potentially halve the volume & velocity of air through each & it makes any pressure variations more significant. I looked at the 450SLC & initially thought it’s just a std 6.3 manifold with a slightly different shape, but I then realized it’s a cross ram design, which is more like the Rote Sau 6.8 and the opposite to the factory 6.3

 

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Here’s a comparison to the standard M100 6.3 and the Rote Sau

 

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This custom manifold is rather high & I wonder if it fits under a std hood.



The Sauber M117 from the C8 still retains a distributor despite the other significant modifications!

 

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Here’s a few other M100 variations. Another view of the Rote Sau with cross ram & twin throttles The CW311 & the Espace were later variations (and designed as street cars) which featured a single throttle.

 

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Well some things happen all at once & looks like I’m sending the ‘template car’ to the new fabricator 16th Sept. Intake & exhaust will be done at the same time. I’ve resigned myself to the fact the current guy has put it all on the back burner indefinitely. I needed more of a go getter with a can do attitude to see the project finished.

The reasoning for swapping bw cars is I need parts off the template car to get the development car RWC & registered. Then I can progressively mod & dyno to test each change & see its effect.

Here’s a couple of pix which were added to other threads on similar subjects.

 

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Funny that an analysis of the ports puts the 6.9 at an advantage for several reasons. When I eventually get to modifying my 6.9 it’ll get some serious porting…

 

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Note these interesting heads from an Aston Martin. Clearly a hemi design to improve flow but only 2v. Considering their size you’d think they’d opt for 4v to improve flow even more. However that does increase complexity, manufacturing costs & weight for how much gain?

It’d be nice to have something similar for the 6.9 & M117, however I doubt many would be willing to pay for the privilege & very few would be prepared to modify a valuable 6.9. Therefore not financially viable as a future project. Plus there’s likely no room left in the engine bay to house such bulky components and exhaust headers.

 

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Well I guess there’s 4v versions of the M117 and of course we can’t forget the M119. They’re just very rare compared to the standard M117. It seems MKB are recasting the 4v cylinder heads, but it’s unknown if they’ll produce all the other components to convert a 2v to 4v, or if they’re just doing it because there was an issue with the original units being porous.