jano i personally think that you are being unfair to people on here , first of all iam sure lads like me and crazycage and others have built and tested them on there cars first before they just slap them onto other peoples cars , and if they have done there r&d and are willing to sell them whats the problem . just because your on a internet forum does not mean you are trading , i built 10 plus manifolds from word of mouth before i even joined passionford , what should i do just stop because i have a chat sometimes at night? . ive had this discussion with crazycage and rick lots of time as to which inlet is the best as i think its ian howells(in terms of fabricated) and people tell me it aint but i dont see anything or anybody telling me theyve done better than his engines, plus ian also bought a bench dyno to test his on then sold it after he built his inlet. now for the subject on is it better than standard items , then yes , there is always room for improvement , if you can buy a exhaust or inlet manifold for £300+ each and you get gains of 15/20bhp then i personally think thats value for money.
my manifolds have mandrel bends , equal lenght headers , 13mm thick laser cut flanges , 4-1 race merge collector , external wastegate option , fully backpurged and tig welded , then fully cleaned . now i designed and built my own as i really enjoy building shit and was willing to use my engine a the test base as it was going on the dyno , that was fine with the collector pot design like the area six one , then things moved on with the race collectors now used on some tasty engines like luca's , and as it turns out it not only looks good it works very well because he ran the same boost with just my manifold and external wastegate and made very good gains . they are around £750 as the race merge collectors are made by the best in the business and they cost me £250 to buy so i think they are resonably priced.
ive now gone to the jenvey inlet simply because i want that little bit extra from my engine , if i can get anything like the 70 bhp gain on the evo engine then its been well worth it , do i think it will then no not that much , 30/50 bhp will do me and yes it is expensine for nearly £2000 but thats life.
nobody forces people to buy any of these items its there choice and if the items have made some difference then its done its job like crazycages did on the lads engine above.

cheers paul