I am about to do a HSR install and was wondering what problems individuals encountered with such a swap. I heard that there could be a bad oil leak from the rear of the intake. Is there any truth to that? Any quick tips would be helpful.

 

Yes, there is plenty of truth to that about the oil leak. Depends on which casting you got. Supposedly Holley added material to the new casting to fix the oil leak problem. I actually sent mine back to Holley and they sent me the new casting which appears to still leak but just not as bad. Just make sure you use a good size bead of RTV on the china walls and if I were you, I'd throw a medium sized bead on the inner edge of the rear china wall seal of the intake also to try and make up for the differece in the poor alignment of the sealing areas.

Tom

 

I bought my HSR from Summit Racing in November 2004. I have had no oil problems with it yet, despite all the postings. I used a nice bead of The Right Stuff for my end seals -- no gaskets.

According to Doug Flynn at Holley (he posts often in the EFI forum on chevytalk.com), they did have a problem initially with these oil leaks and changed the casting to correct it. If you're buying a new one, you should be ok. If you're buying a used one, be careful. I'm not sure how to identify a newer casting versus an older one, but Doug could probably answer that.

-Dave

 

Yep, what they said. I had a pretty nasty leak from the back of mine just after I installed it, so I pulled it and threw on a bigger bead of RTV. I still had a leak out back there and was getting aggrivated until I looked at the back of the intake one day and saw a pretty big puddle of oil in front of the distributor. I yanked the dizzy and reinstalled it with 2 gaskets under it instead of one and I think that took care of my leak. I still seem to have a little bit of a leak as I get about a dime-sized (or slightly smaller) drop from the back of the engine when it sits for a while after being driven, but it's nothing I'm too worried about. Other than that I really had no trouble with my HSR install, and I was going from carb to EFI! Good luck, I think you'll be pretty happy with how it turns out if you take your time and do everything right!

-Paul

 

Wish I'd known this before I got mine welded to clear a 1206 gasket.
Noticed the other day that it had a very poor alignment with the rear seal surface to the tabs on the intake gasket.
I was planning on a mock up on a spare block anyway.
Hopefully I can make it work.

 

i highly reccomend using the "right Stuff" silicone. I have had exceptional luck with this stuff. Your usually required to seal a rather large space when swapping SB manifolds, if you use a thinner (lower viscosity) silicone to seal the ends it may not seal as well. The "right stuff" silicone is very thick and sticky. I usually build up a tall bead( you can easily stand it up with your finger) to insure that it compresses once the intake is on. Wait about 10 min, before you place the intake base on the silicone. When you do place it get a friend and be sure to drop the base strait down on the engine, if you have to slide it back and forth to line it up, you will have a better chance of leakage occouring.

 

Thanks for all the info. I have another quick question. Where does the return line off of the AFPR lead to? The pic on stealthram.com makes it look like it is being fed back into the plenum.

 

It hooks up to the fuel-return line, back to the fuel tank.