legacycentral bbs

Anyone on here tried installing these yet?
They go between the intake manifold and
the heads.

save your money. if you really want phenolic spacers most plastic shops sell the material and you can cut em out to your gaskets with a dremel.

so you don't think it is worth it? care to explain

i know when i had one of these kinds of gasket on my old civic the intake manifold went from hot when a operating temp. to room temp... just afte the gasket.

Exactly why I got 'em...lower intake mani. temp.
This is my daily driver and my goal is always to
max. the over-all efficiency. I'm just not sure of
the effects of raising the intake mani. up 8mm.

now, I didn't really say it wasn't worth it. those guys want $80 for those spacers!!! the material is about $10 or less at a plastics shop. you could buy the material, a sharpie pen, a set of gaskets, a dremel tool, knock those out in 5 minutes, and you'd still be ahead of their price by a good bit and you're ahead a dremel tool. but wear a mask, it's supposed to be cancerous. while you're at it, gasket match them to the rest of your top end.
that said,
have you deleted your TB coolant lines? I have, didn't give me any noticable gain and I have a port matched top end, heavily ported and matched TB, and around 11:1 compression.

I actually looked into doing these spacers a bit and decided it just wasnt worth the time, money, and extra risk of vacuum leaks just to tell myself I had 10* lower temps or whatever on my mani. the intake mani is above the crankcase and has a tube of coolant flowing right below it, with relatively little airflow through there, crankcase gases being pumped into it, etc. I bet ambient heat is going to negate what little drop in heat transfer you get through the roughly 3 square inches of gasket.

also note that you don't see grimmspeed or any other phenolic spacer vendor showing before and after dyno charts or other data unless you count the word "more."

do phenolic spacers have a place? sure. worth my time? no. it would be cool if you prove me wrong, at that point I'll go bang out a set for myself for $10. I guess I'm just not one of those who thinks its cool to spend money on some chi chi just to say they have it.

I got some for my car but I haven't put them on yet.

i see where your coming from on how it sounds as if it just isn'y worth it. well maybe it isn't on these cars i don't know for sure.

but i can vouch for them working wonders on multiple 10 sec honda's that i work on/ around on a a daily basis at work. we went from not being able to correct enough (add fuel) for the heat made from a s256 running 24+ lbs of boost on a stock d16 (minus pistons and rods). stock intake manifold which sucks badly.

so this has worked on hondas, so it "should" work with a subaru