Yeah I know what your saying, but I like the look of the fuel injection, looks to carbish to me lol(lord knows I should get a carb and be done with it,no tuning issue lol)nah I decided to go with the Tpis miniram setup instead. I know it's a lot more pricey, but always liked the look of it. Plus it was on my dream build, so I'm going that route. I'm thinking it's going to save me some time, hopefully less headache and more hood clearence. When I put in the new motor mounts it raised my engine up a tad.(really if I were smart, I'd just go carb and be done with it,but I'm hard headed lol) so yeah I sent back the other intake, and saving up for the miniram. I'm going to mess with some other stuff, til then like new brakes and cross drilled rotors, and stainless brake lines. Might as well till I get the other intake set up.

 

If only I were so lucky yeah first one looked new, better than the standard version that I had back in 03, I was happy, the nightmare began lol after bolting it up. Oh well everything happens for a reason I'm going to look back at this once it's done and have a good laugh I guess what can you do lol

 

Don't kid yourself, sticking with efi is the way to go! Carb is a step back. I gate if when I see tpi card with mild builds and carb. If your switching to carb, you better be making some serious power.

Good choice with the miniram!

 

I know this is late but my HSR, circa 2004, has the same "ding".

Good luck with the build!

 

I didnt even know there was a vortec version of the miniram.

Either way, i heard the minirams had weird fuel distribution issues that were inherited from the LT1 intake. The oem pcm for the LT1 cars allegedly had some sort of algorithm to tune out the inconsistent fuel distribution, but the miniram does not. I cant remember any more details than that, but thats what I recall.

And then theres the super ram which has serious fuel distribution issues. One of hte guys on here spent forever and a ton of experimentation trying to get the mixtures equal on both banks and never could get it quite right.

The stealth ram was really the only one that I figured was a good solution, and I know it has issues above 500ish hp and doesnt like forced induction.

It almost seems like you have to go Gen III to get a decent EFI solution. And running vortec heads just makes it that much harder. The exception to that rule would probably be the single-plane EFI setups. From what I understand they're VERY effective. But they do tend to look slightly cumbersome with the elbows, and very carbish with 4 barrel throttle body setups. I love the look of a nice miniram or TPI, but it seems like every otherwise decent EFI system has a serious achilles heel to it. Am I wrong?

In some cases people are starting out with factory TBI systems which have a lot of potential but no legitimate aftermarket support to realize it.

For me I had to choose whether I really awnted to invest all the time and money into parts just to tune the factory TBI just to make it work, or i could go with a time tested and proven Holley double pumper setup. I love the drivability and throttle response I get, but I hate the cold weather manners and vapor lock issues I have. Then the occasional stuck float really makes your day awesome. Sometimes it's nice to have a car your grandmother could hop in and take to the grocery store.

 

http://www.tpis.com/parts/view/35

Here's the mini ram for vortec heads. I know what your saying on the achilles heel, of the aftermarket systems. It seems either way you go you got some trade offs. Well looks like the build will be alittle clone of the lt4 engine. So this should Be fun, let's see how this turns out.

 

How did you get your issue resolved?

@ OP= It sucks that you had to switch up your plans due to a defect. The miniram will cost you well over 1k from the looks of it. It looks like it will be awesome when all done. But its to expensive for me! My plan is to buy the l31 with the vortec heads+stealthram/accessories. That will put me @ about 2800-3k. With the miniram I would end up spending more in the 3500-4500 range. When I start thinking about spending that much money I think two things.

1. Carb
2.Go all out on LS1 swap, it would only cost me a couple k more...

I'm personally gonna try my luck with the stealth-ram.....

I will be starting my own build thread soon.

 

Well after doing more research on the miniram, I would have to pull the heads back off to drill them. Cause my heads aren't drilled for both just vortec style. Im ticked off about it but dont want to buy another set of head gaskets. If I would have seen this coming I would have done that at the beginning. So after going back and fourth, and talking to my buddy I decided to go back with the stealth ram. I'm going to have to bite the bullet, get the intake milled, down the way it's suppose to come. It's a shame that Holley doesn't doesn't care about their quality, to have this done already.
I'm going to polish up the runners, also there are casted/finished like crap. Shocker!!!!(yeah I'm bitter what about it lol) I'll keep you guys up dated and machine cost.

 

That nick sucks, I didn't have it with my vortec HSR, but honestly if you use black permatex instead of gaskets it will seal fine. I do not use the gaskets on mine and everything is ok

-Jim

 

I'm sure it will but just bothers the heck out of me, after putting all this money into and having a part like that. But that's why I'm going to have it machined to where I'm happy with it. (plus I'm going to port it/ clean it up) But what's holding me up is the fact, it seems like they are on back order. I was supose to get it in dec., but still is on back order. (it will be 2 months on the 28th) So hopefully that means they are redoing the CNC process,or at least correcting it. But when I get it I'll let you guys know

 

I have been down the road with set backs. it seems as though when I want to update something to be better the car doesn't want it to happen unless it is perfect.

 

My HSR ports were slightly smaller than the stock vortec ports, put I don't think it would have really caused a problem. I just upgraded to the AFR 912s, so I had to have the manifold opened up a lot. Also my porter opened and "bell-mouthed" the plenum side ports. I have plenty of pics in the vortec info post. Good luck with your build and post up your results. My old combo was running 12.5's and it has some more in it, you should be moving pretty good.

-Jim

 

Wow, good for you for trying to keep motivated with all the setbacks.

 

What ever happened to the build man? I've been planning a 350 lt4 vortec build with a hsr

 

I been considering HSR for my vortec build. L31 zz-4 cam. Was really looking forward to seeing the results of this build.

 

Mine has gone 10.3 with a 150 shot of nitrous now 🤷*♂️