I bought an aftermarket intake manifold for my TC, which lacked this piece
when I purchased it. The new manifold has four 8-mm-diameter holes in the
bottom at the center, directly below the port for the air cleaner. Seems
odd....I can only guess they are drains for oil dripping out of the filter,
but they provide a direct path for air to bypass the filter.
Can someone with an original manifold tell me if it has these holes? If
so, does anyone know what are they for? Are they to be just left open? If
there's no additional part I'm missing, I thought I'd secure a piece of
foam to the inside over the holes - it would at least keep the gravel out.
BTW, this manifold, while ascetically very nice, is poorly machined and did
not fit as purchased. I questioned Moss Motors about it and was told that
all the manifolds are like that - it is the best replacement they can find.
The service rep read from something (it wasn't in the catalog!) that
stated several hours of hand fitting may be required. In my case, several
days of fitting and an hour of maching would be closer. (The most minor of
three problems was that neither of the carburetor-mounting ports was flat.
It was, in fact, while refinishing these to get a reasonable seal to the
carburetors that I realized the four holes were huge air leaks - why worry
about flatness!)
Russ Wilson
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