G_Body_Enthusiast said:
the head on the bolt barely covers the hole, just under
I looked at this and said, nah dont worry about it, but your comment above doesnt sound right.
Ill measure the hole on my intake when I get home, and let you know what I find.
Keep in mind that the early production of the Edelbrock intakes were very “off” for what they needed to be. Virtually all of them needed to be machined to fit on the block, because the angle of the intake surface was out. That has since been corrected, and the newer ones are much closer to a nice fit.
The other thing is, that the Cadillac machining tolerances were very tight, and that followed through on all engine parts. So anytime you mess with these, by say, machining an engine, you’re compromising those tolerances, and it’s very easy to go outside of the tolerances. The intake on these engines are known to not fit the greatest. The aftermarket has tried to compensate by offering composite gaskets that are much thicker, and still a lot of people say screw it, and seal theirs with just silicone around the intake ports. There’s no water in the intake so one less thing to worry about.
All that to say, because these intakes didn’t fit nice, maybe someone had the intake flanges machined to fit their block, and then opened up the bolt holes to make the bolts work? Or Maybe Edelbrock just cast a gigantic tolerance into them to ensure that one size DOES fit all.
In either case, I wouldn’t waste your time trying to repair them, it won’t affect/benefit anything, just make you lose time and money. If it really bothers you, and you want to shrink the hole size, I would use some sort of press in insert (brass or plastic). DO NOT WELD IT! I work with some pretty outstanding welders, and someone may take on your project because they need work, but you have a low chance of success. You don’t know what you will encounter when you begin to weld cast parts, and there’s a chance you will scrap it before you fix it.
I’ll let you know what mine measures at. Stay tuned.
