New R2 water manifold

[Hawkeye]

PS, nobody else has them.
I bought mine Friday haven't seen it yet.
All of these experts are crowding out my initial announcement which I thought would bring some positivity

[nels]

I’m glad Phil’s doing these. I’m sure they will be machined correctly as opposed to the L Stone versions. I do wonder the weight savings. Should weigh about 1/3 of the cast iron versions. And yes, it would be nice if we could get the standard housings in aluminum. Could shave a lot of weight off the front end. Phil might be able to sell a lot more of the sandard
housing so might be able to sell for,less. Probably to big a risk.

[64Avanti]

You could use the R2 manifold on a non R2 engine without any problem unless you want it to look 100% original.

[IMJ]

I have three excellent pictures Phil sent me but this WEB won't recognize them and refuses me.
Send me your Email or cell phone I will text them.
I stated in my initial post the forum WEB won't accept them.

I know the website only accepts pictures in a certain format (typically jpeg as an example) Would you be able to reveal the price Phil is asking for his R2 water manifolds?

[M-Webb]

I have three excellent pictures Phil sent me but this WEB won't recognize them and refuses me.
Send me your Email or cell phone I will text them.
I stated in my initial post the forum WEB won't accept them.

Check messages, send me your photos and I should be able to post them.

[M-Webb]

Here are the photos from Hawkeye.

[Hawkeye]

Dear IMJ,
I believe price is $795. I just ordered mine Friday and it hasn't hit my credit card yet.
I'll admit I was excited when Phil said they were available and the price kind of slipped by my memory cells .......

[nels]

I know Phil didn’t order up a hundred of these. Probably more like twenty or so. He’s not trying to flood the market he just took his best guess on the number he might be able to sell.

[M-Webb]

The manifold I have for my setup is different than that. I’m guessing it must be an earlier type from a Golden Hawk?



So the mount for my blower mounting part is different than what works for this. So that means that unless I can find the correct blower mounting part, this wouldn’t really be workable without it. I am assuming those parts are not exactly easy or cheap to find either unfortunately. Correct?

[IMJ]

I’m sure they will be machined correctly as opposed to the L Stone versions. I do wonder the weight savings. Should weigh about 1/3 of the cast iron versions.

I’m curious as to what machining is/was incorrect with the L. Stone R2 Lark/Hawk water manifolds. When I was sourcing the parts to convert my R1 Lark to an R2 15+ years ago the only manifold available at the time was Stone’s repro. I purchased one from Jon Myers who assured me he checked each one for fitment before selling. He said some didn’t meet the preferred quality. Before I had time to make the conversion a used OEM cast iron manifold was listed on sleazeBay, sorry I mean eBay. The package arrived in a timely manner and in good shape despite being shipped UPS! (HaHa LarkTruck). After I removed the standard manifold from my engine I held both the repro and the OEM R2 manifold against my engine and I couldn’t see any fitment issues with either. I decided to use the OEM so I could be as authentic as possible with my clone. As to the weight difference my L. Stone manifold weighs about 6.5 lbs. and a standard water manifold with the one heater fitting still on weighs 14 lbs. I doubt there is a significant difference between an OEM standard manifold and an OEM R2 Lark/Hawk manifold. The pictures of Phil's manifold do look impressive!

[Hawkeye]

Yes, you have a '57-'58 Golden Hawk McCullough-type supercharger mount set. It was also used on the '57 Packards and the '58 Packard Hawk.
Well, you know the water pump housing is available for the R2 (top mount Paxton, non-Avanti).
So you need the "L" shaped bracket that bolts to the water manifold that we've been discussing. The blower body bolts to that, and the tension arm pivots off of it. You need a Paxton tension arm, spring and pulley.
Some say you can use your McCullough tension arm, pulley and spring. But I do NOT from personal experience know it will or do I recommend it.
I defer to the more experienced guys on that issue.
I am hoping Phil from Fairborn Studebaker will make them as well. I would call him, maybe he has some originals.
You will also need the crankshaft pulley, he makes them also I believe.
As for pricing hard to say.

[M-Webb]

It doesn't seem like mixing and matching that blower mount part is going to work easily, if at all. And I kind of doubt it will be too easy to just buy that 1 part off somebody, as I'm guessing most who have them have it as a complete set. Yes, would be nice if Phil made those too to go with it, would solve that problem. Otherwise, anybody have a spare one they would sell by itself?

I already have the rest of the setup, pulleys, etc. I do need to replace the waterpump with the Avanti reinforced one, but I have one of those as well on my old 259 motor, can swap it over easy enough.

I have an old LS alum. intake but at this point it is not really usable. It was not sitting quite right, rocked very slightly sitting on the heads, had a slight vacuum leak on the rear right port area once it got hot even with the thicker composite gaskets, and a repair attempt on it made it worse, completely unusable, gave up on it. So going with an alum Offy intake I had as well instead. An alum. waterpump manifold would be nice to go with that, but guess won't work for me without the matching blower mounting part.

[Captain Billy]

deleted....placed in buy and sell