Smoothing a TBSS intake, vs structural integ??
 

Ok hears the deal.. Have a new TBSS intake.. I have been bouncing the idea around of smoothing it out on the top, painting it black.. My ??? Is how much will this affect the strength of it, by removing the raised ridges?? The intake is pretty beefy, I feel it should be fine, even on boost. What do you guys think?? I know, if i wanted pretty I should have went with a diff intake, but I couldn''t justify spending 1xxx on that, along with the supporting things it needed, to only get few more hp over what this could get me..Hell I am in this one for almost 500, I got really good deals on all the shit i bought for it.. Thoughts. opinions welcome.. Time is not a concern really...

I'd say smooth it out, paint it, and run it. If it cracks, you could always seal it. I've seen where there take them apart to port the inside of them. They had to use some sort of glue or epoxy to put it back together. Or plastic weld it some how. I'd try it, it would look a lot better.

You could get away with it. I would be more concerned since your boosting it. If you were NA it would be no problem.
I don"t know what the inside looks like. If there is any structure in it. That is a pretty large area with 10psi on it that is quite a bit of force.

Anybody else???

I have one thats been ported its strait tru in the inside..I can fit my arm into it..its opens up to 92mm..the guy that sold it to me did it..so im not sure what he used to seal it..it looks like an epoxy of some sort...but yea it makes the top of it look nasty..I've been thinking of smoothing it out layer a bit of fiberglass and bondo/resin mix to smooth it out...

Did you ever have the truck dyno'd with that intake??

Is there a lot of crap in the way in the TBSS intake to make porting worthwhile?

What kind of boost are you running?

Currently 12 ish

I had mine off and did a mild port job to just the opening, I also ground off all the studs and garbage EXCEPT for the ribs. It should be plenty thick though, from what i saw when I partially cleaned mine up, it was beefy.