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By Jeff Smith February 21, 2019Keith Wilson and his crew are magicians of sorts. They routinely create some of the most amazing sheet-aluminum intake creations on earth. We’ve seen examples of the shop’s work that could be just as much at home in a fine-arts museum instead of sitting on top of a 2,000-horsepower race engine. These manifolds come very close to the perfect confluence between form and function. However, that’s not what this story is about.This story is a bit more demure, but no less impressive. A still-popular push is reclaiming muscle machines from the past and resurrecting them to as-new. Wilson Manifolds is doing its part in that process by resurrecting old factory aluminum intakes to like-new condition.

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Our original intake (left) was a decent shape with a few noticeable cosmetic flaws. Wilson says that even manifolds with broken and/or missing corners can be repaired. The close-up on the right reveals our Z28 intake’s 3917610 casting number as well as visual evidence that the coil mount had been heavily mangled. Despite this damage, Wilson commented that our intake was one of the better ones he’s seen.We decided to put that idea to the test by sending them a tantalizingly grungy example of a small-block Chevy intake manifold that was destined to sit atop an original 1967 302ci Z28 engine. Our manifold had been subjected to 50 years of abuses and was in need of restoration and we couldn’t think of a better place to send it for that intensive care than Wilson Manifolds.