Intake for 4.0 Head swap

[SenorCole86]

As a few of you may already know (due to my MANY questions already) I'm doing a 4.0 head swap. I got 4.0 headers off of eBay and a 4.0 HO head casting no. 7120. Is the intake for the 1980 258 different thatn the others? I'm haveing a lot of trouble getting the thing to fit and it doesn't look like any of the other intakes I've seen on the online writeups. For one, when one lines the intake up with the dowels on the head, intake ports are left wide open. I pulled the dowels out with a puller but the seats for the mounting bolts are about 2 inches away from the head, whereas the seats for the headers are 0.5". Do I need one of the later aluminum intake manifolds to make this work?

Here's the dowlels. See how they don't line up?

This is the best fit I can get.

Here's the seats for the bolts I was talking about.

 

[jay79cj7]

That surprised me as well when I did my 4.0 head swap on my 79. That cast iron thing just isn't going to work. Looks like you spent some time cleaning it up and painting it... Oh well. I picked up an aluminum intake off ebay for 30 or 40 bucks. The area under the carb will interfere with the #3 and #4 exhaust tubes. I used some heat and a hammer to flatten out the tubes a little bit, and a grinder to trim up the intake in that area. If you are careful, you can shape the intake without grinding into the coolant passage. You are also going to find that the throttle linkage doesn't bolt up to the new intake the same as it did with the old. You are going to have to do a little fabrication here... I was able to tie it into the bottom of the intake using the intake heater bolts. Funny how none of the write-ups out there have any of that info. Good luck!