Custom engraved UIM

[woody90gtz]

With a little patience and a jig it is possible to engrave an aluminum intake manifold with a machine made for engraving plastic and burnishing brass tags. Work equipment FTW!!

I had originally planned on painting the bowtie red after I was done, but the machined aluminum looks pretty cool too, and everyone at work is telling me not to paint it. I'm still leaning toward the red since it ties the engine bay scheme together. Here are a couple pics and a photoshop.

If you look close you might be able to tell I deleted the EGR passage and the vacuum port at the upper left too.

What do you think?

[issues]

That is looking sweet man, Love it.

[CNCguy]

Looks great and so does the red bowtie IMO. You will find that, although the bare aluminum looks nice now, it doesn't take long for the finish to look crappy if you don't maintain it. Removing unused vacuum and EGR ports does wonders for an intake. Nice work.

[Axe_1]

That looks GREAT! I've been dying to do something like that to mine but need to get it running right first, dang priorities!

I love it with the Red Bowtie and Alum 3400. You can put a clear over that Alum part to help it last longer, but not sure how the heat and oil will affect it.

There is a Roland Machine like that at work but they would have a cow if I used it to cut aluminum. Had to be hard on the tip.

Axe

[robertisaar]

damn.... stuff like this makes me miss my time in the machine shop..... CNC is WIN.

[woody90gtz]

It wasn't too hard on the machine. I went .005" per pass with a carbide cutter. Aluminum machines very easily.

I set it on the engine last night and it definitely needed the red bowtie, so I painted it. As for the bare aluminum, is there a high-temp wax that I could use? I'd consider any low-maintenance solution though. I'd like to keep gloss at a minimum (I'm not a big fan of bling), but maybe I could clear it and then hit it quick with Scotch-Brite to dull it.

[robertisaar]

there's matte clears out there that work pretty well.

[woody90gtz]

Finished pics:

[bszopi]

That looks pretty frickin' awesome. That's how GM should have sent them out from the factory!

[Tbay99Venture]

That looks pretty frickin' awesome. That's how GM should have sent them out from the factory!

With the EGR delete?

[ForcedFirebird]

That looks great!

[woody90gtz]

Thinking about a different UIM option...anyone interested in buying my custom one? Remember, no EGR port and the neck has been opened up to 65mm.

[bob442]

That looks great, i've always wanted to do that, or something simmilar, i was thinking on ever raised letter of ''S F I 3 4 0 0'' to have machined inside every character to be ''207 C I H O''
did you ever fix the tunnel on the z28?

[tkoforpresident]

legit badass

[Dallas3400]

How much you wanting to sell it for? PM or txt me 972-816-3440

Also which vacuum tube did you delete?