A New Look for LS3 Intake Manifolds – the XS Intake from Performance Design
With a sea of LS crate engines and swaps under the hoods of classic cars, it can be challenging to make yours really stand out from the rest, especially when it comes to the intake manifold. Performance Design took a long, hard look at how to not only improve the aesthetics of the OEM LS3 Intake manifold, but they wanted to ensure that it would perform as good as it looks.
The result is their XS LS3 Intake Manifold which breaks the mold of existing intake architecture. The Performance Design team started the project by designing the optimum intake runner length and form, but they were limited by the constraints of the fuel rails. The obvious answer was to move the fuel rails inside the intake manifold!
This move presented several engineering challenges starting with fuel delivery. Performance Design developed their own fuel rail for the manifold with a fuel crossover feeding the opposite bank. A fuel port was placed in a precise location to interface with a custom fitting that passes through the intake manifold housing through a provision engineered into the upper shell gasket. The injector wiring was addressed with a short injector jumper harness passing through sealed grommets.
The XS LS3 intake manifold runners were developed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) the tested thoroughly on an engine dyno to confirm what the engineers strived for; the XS Intake delivered horsepower and torque gains on a stock engine with these gains increasing as the engine got more aggressive with cam and exhaust upgrades.
The XS LS3 Intake is ready for use on stock engines or is perfect for boosted applications. The intake fits all LS3 style cylinder head ports and accepts a 90-103mm or 112mm throttle bodies. If you want another surprise, check out the price of the intake – you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
For more information, or to check out their other cutting edge intakes and products, follow over to Performance Design.
1969 Camaro photo courtesy Lingenfelter
