Hey i am looking to buy a intake for my 305 tpi that in the fute will become a 350 tpi. Now i have been looking at the accel intake and it is really expensive, but i hear people buy the runners and plenum and get the edelbrock base? Is there any real differance between the two bases? Also i noticed slp has some nice runners as well. What is the best option or combo? Budget and non budget. Any imput would really healp out, thanks.
p.s. why wont 1986 intake stuff work on 1989???

 

I can't answer your other questions because I have a stock base and will soon abandon that for an LT1 build I'm doing. I can, however, answer this question.

'85 through '88 TPI units have a 9th injector for start up, located on the driver's side between the second and third runners on that side. '89+ cars run only the 8 main injectors and get extra start up fuel through them by programming differences. You can plug the 9th injector hole and feed line and run '87+ programming if you want to.

'85 and '86 are also different on the bases IIRC. The '87+ heads have different angles for the intake manifold to head bolts than the older heads. HTH

That said, I have the '86 SLP TPI runners on a stock port matched base. Some have had problems with their SLP runners RE: quality issues with casting holes or irregularities. I haven't had any troubles with mine, so as always, YMMV.