The Tragic Tale of ElSuperPinto

Sometimes Ford is a little... special.

You see, on the 4.6 DOHC in the Mark VIII, one of the exhaust manifolds incorporates about a foot of pipe and the catalytic converter all as one piece like so:




This means every salvage yard out there cuts the converter off, leaving you with a manifold that looks like the one laying on the valve cover here:




Well, not wanting to beat a piece of pipe into the right shape to match that odd end, and wanting a flange to bolt new pipe to for routing to the turbo, I did a bit of research and discovered that the 4.6 DOHC in the Continental (which is front-wheel-drive) used a cast iron manifold that hugs tight to the block and has a turnout that, while not perfect, will work for my purposes. I found one for the cheap-enough sum of $40 on Ebay, and ordered it.



When it got here, there was a problem. It has a 2" exit.


This is opposed to the exit on the other manifold, which is 2.5" at the flange:



I think I'm going to take both off and measure them internally as best I can and see if the tubular manifold on the passenger side is really going to be that much less restrictive, and if I could possibly port the iron manifold to bring it closer. I plan on mounting the turbo on the passenger side, so maybe this will work out somehow. I don't know at this point... maybe I'll say screw the turbo, put the big Sullivan high-rise manifold on it with a carb, and make it look like an old-school big block in spite of its tiny internal displacement. It'll make all of the power of the current 302, but look and sound a lot better doing it.





Nah. I want that 500 or so horsepower... I've been playing with the idea of rear-mounting the turbo STS-style, it's not like there's not a lot of room right by the gas tank (there would be a heat shield) or where one of the mufflers currently resides, and it'd actually simplify everything but the oil plumbing (it'd need an electric pump to send the oil back to the oil pan).