Treadstone T3 Manifold

Bought this part last week and it came quick and for a really good price. Air mailed in over the weekend. It's not installed as my motor is not even assembled as of yet but this will be my initial opinion and I'll follow it up in the summer with a follow-up.

Initial Inspection
You can see for the attached pictures that the head to manifold bolt holes are a bit off center but the runners still all match up fine minus a small edge on runners 1 & 2. The wastegate hole is also very small compared to what I've seen elsewhere personally. The T3 exhaust flange side is also a bit off center and smaller then the turbos inlet.

FYI: SBR and Turbonetics cast manifolds are not perfect either. If you actually take the time to check, the ports don't match perfectly on either units and to be honest, treadstones is the closest match I've seen to date.

The good news is that there's too MUCH material and not otherwise. This can be fixed with a nice port job (which I was going to do anyway).

After I'm done port matching the runners, I'm going to have to port match the wastegate hole along with the manifold to turbo collector dump. There is plenty of material to port so I'm not overly worried. It has it's imperfections but I've heard nothing dissimilar when being compared to it's twin, the Turbonetics manifold (where all the runners and the collectors need to be port matched anyway).

It's not like I wasn't going to port the damn thing anyway.

I'll update this when I get the piece ported and then update for a second time when I get it running.

 

[TimG]

Well I finally got to porting. I ported, and I ported and I ported. I ported the runners, the collector and the wastegate hole. 4 hours later, everything was port matched.

Issue #1: Not a huge deal but the bolt holes didn't match up for my wastegate PERFECTLY. I drilled out my wastegate bolt holes to the next size up and it went on fine.

Issue #2: The T-3 footprint bolt-holes also don't line up perfectly. I drilled out my turbine housing bolt holes (all 4 to the next size up or two) and got it to fit with the proper port match.

Pictures to come in the next few days.

 

[TimG]

Here is the manifold bolted up on the stand. I cracked my oil filter housing so I'm waiting for a new one (forward facing with a sandwich adapter). I apologize for the terrible pictures as this was done with a camera phone. I'll make an update later in life after it gets some miles and passes on it.

 

[TimG]

I'll make an update later in life after it gets some miles and passes on it.

Well the manifold is still kicking. No cracks. No leaks. I'm happy for now. The car went 11.60@121MPH through the manifold so it can't be that bad.

FYI - I saw a turbonetics manifold and this one was identical, even to the imperfections with the runners not lining up perfectly. For a few bucks less, I say it's worth the deal.