I had one like that , I thought it was a design feature

For a decent shop to entirely port your intake, you'd be up for $800-1500. It's not uncommon to spend 30-40 hours fully porting an intake, hence why a lot of head porters just don't do it anymore.

I bought all the tools to do it myself. Buying all the burrs, sand rolls etc all adds up. I do an OK job, but I have seen some real home ported disasters as well.

How much are you looking to spend? As has already been mentioned, a different intake might be a better investment in some cases.

This is exactly correct. I had over $2000 in each of the Wilson intakes that I had. They cost a ton of money for the full competition port job. We have a local guy who does a decent job for $500. His stuff picks up about 1/2 of what a Wilson port job will, but it costs 1/4 the amount. That is good enough for most guys.

I have been doing my own heads and intakes for years. Never done any before and after dyno comparisons but my junk makes good power for what it is.

Motor will be .030 or .040 over 440 block with a 4.25 crank. Heads will be cnc ported edelbrock rpm. Have everything but pistons and rods. Hope to put it all together in the spring. Pump gas so maybe 10.5-1 or so. Building for max torque and hp will be what it is. Just thinking out loud as far as the intake porting goes.
Likely run it as is and then test intakes after it is in the car.Maybe on the dyno. Buddy has a trick flow intake I could borrow I'm sure.

Not a race car but should be a fun street car in a 72 Duster.

Has anyone back to backed a 2000$ intake port job ? I don't think it would be cost effective.

I'd expect that Andy has before & after dyno data for the Wilson intakes he's used

I've back-to-back tested my own intake porting on both engine dyno and at the track, but I don't do $2K port jobs

Re $2K port jobs being cost effective, I think that falls into the ever-expanding category of "it depends..."

Anyone racing in a Heads up class, Super Stock, or Comp Eliminator, will say yes. They have to to stay competitive. Anyone else, probably not.

There have been more limited run, high end cast single 4 barrel intakes pop up from guys like Chris Uratchko. They are a $1500 cast intake, but their selling point is they don't need all the port work to perform. Brett Miller's W8 cast intake would fall under that also.

Somewhere in the 25 to 30 hp range. And lots of racers will pay $2000 if it means they win the round rather than loading on the trailer. Bracket guys don't care so much, but heads up guys spend more than that to pick up less.

Another point is that a Wilson intake is always worth money. You can race with a Wilson intake for years and then turn around and sell it for close to what you paid since the Wilson brand is so strong. If you pay a local guy $500 for port work you might get 1/3 of that back when you go to sell, If the porter doesn't have a reputation then people won't pay much for it.

John O’Neill custom porting. He did head work and manifolds at BES. Has gone out on his own now. He also builds motors with his partner Carl. They are in Benton ks.

I guess there is a time and place for porting, but thinking in terms of the op, 2000 on intake porting a M1 for maybe a tenth is not worth it. I can't see more than that in a gasket matched M1. Just my opinion. The m1 is a pretty good intake in my opinion.

bretts intakes are piece of jewlery

If I have to spend over $2k in a cast manifold, I'm going to be looking into a custom sheet metal piece. Unless I'm rules limited to a cast manifold only.
For the OP, I'd just buy a better manifold at this point. Later on maybe have someone do a 400-500 port job on it.
At the end of the day, a $2k ported M1 is still just an M1. Seems to me that anyone willing to spend 2k on a cast manifold is gonna be wanting something a lot more serious than an M1.

Wow, no kiddin'!

This is in my back door! Good to know.

Ray Meyers (sixpackgut) does porting. He ported my Barton hemi manifold and did an awesome job on it. It definitely made more power after he got done w/ it...no back to back tests b/c at the time I was having issues w/ a lot of other things.
He's near Charleston, SC.

The thing is custom sheet metal manifolds sometimes come in second to properly ported cast manifolds. I have a friend with an NHRA Super Stocker that took off a name brand fabricated intake manifold and replaced it with an heavily modified cast manifold and lowered ETs.

Of course there are many stories of the opposite being true. The very best cars spend a lot of money on good stuff that does not work with their combination.

Bill

Here's the history of my RB M1 intake, along w/ experience with a couple of other intakes

Hughes did welding & porting in plenum to convert mounting pad from TQ-style to square-bore 4150 style
I did additional porting in plenum and runners
I added epoxy in runners to correct port alignment issues due to core shift
Car ran 126 MPH w/ a 1" Super Sucker spacer using that intake
Epoxy lifted due to 10% ethanol in pump fuel

Swapped the M1 for Victor intake w/ my own plenum work and some light runner cleanup; no room for spacer due to limited hood scoop clearance; that particular intake made about 10 HP more than an unmodified Victor on Dwayne's dyno, and 5+ HP more than the M1 w/ spacer did, IIRC, on a 610+ HP combination
Car picked up by .05 ET and .5 MPH with no other changes, which is right in line w/ the difference seen on the dyno

Tried to open runners of M1 up to match the Hughes CNC-ported "semi-MW" Victors I purchased, but the casting didn't have enough meat
Had local welder build up top of intake runners to allow for raising the ports enough for those Victors... ugly, ugly, ugly
My subsequent porting wasn't my best work (I rushed through it too quickly, instead of taking my time) and I hated the way it turned out

Sold those Hughes CNC heads and started over with new standard-port Victors that Dwayne finished for me, leaving the size a true "standard" port
Tried to use Belzona to shrink the M1 runners back to standard... ended up with a horrible & unusable mess in the runners that I won't be able to fix easily, if at all
That intake is basically a really expensive (my time and other people's labor) aluminum doorstop now

Took an out-of-the-box Trick Flow intake and spent less than 30 minutes doing basic plenum and runner casting cleanup (not even port-matched); made 680-ish HP with a 1" Super Sucker spacer... guess-timating it's 10+ HP more than that M1 would make if it was still usable
I've got an untouched Trick Flow I can swap out to check if any work I do to the first one shows improvements on the track

Unfortunately for me... This is The Way... I go about things

These days you could go back an open up the Victors to MW ports and then drop on the new MW version of the Trick Flow intake!

Yeah, sheet metal intakes are often R&D projects, especially for something like a BB Mopar engine. There might be some "proven" sheet metal designs for popular SBC and BBC heads but I really doubt a person could order up a sheet metal intake for a BB Mopar and have it be better than a Wilson ported cast intake right out of the box. Maybe by the time you buy three sheet metal intakes the third version will be singing on the dyno, but I bet the first one is a door stop. About the only way to win the sheet metal intake derby is to partner up with a NHRA super stock guy and buy his year old stuff. Typically their year old stuff is better than anything else on the market.

Back in the 90s I ran a 68 Cuda FB @3550 lbs. Had big valve ported 906s that maybe flowed 280 CFM??? 13.1 compression 446 inch motor, Racer Brown 590 mechanical cam. Had a M1 with the newest (at the time) Holley HP 950. Car had a Dana 60 with 4.10 gears on super stock springs.
I ran this car for about 7 years and love to test . Car went faster with more plenum volume. Ended up with a 1 inch 4 hole spacer on top of a 2 inch open spacer. Combo went 11.teens @ just under 120 MPH.
Keep your porting money. Play with spacers or buy a Victor or TrickFlow.