I'm putting a new intake gasket on my car, and as the pic shows (sort of), the center ports don't line up very well at all. The width lines up perfectly, but the bottom of the ports are about 1/4 inch lower than the bottom of the holes in the gaskets. It seems to me that it would cause a pretty big disruption in the flow going through there. Should I trim the gasket to match the ports, or is this supposed to be this way?
If I trim it, it will leave the part between the ports and the egr hole pretty thin, but I don't have that anyway.

 

Ok. well I just trimmed it up. I guess nobody has that knowledge here, so I'll post up the results.

 

I would believe that is for an FB car and not an SA. The gasket should line up with the engine ports. if you lined them up with the manifold ports I would say that would be alright. If you port match, then there will be issues (with a stock 7).

 

It's on an fb car, but it's an s4 6 port 13b with a custom intake sporting a sterling nikki. it's really miles away from being a stock 7. The gasket was purchased for the motor, not the car, so it should be correct, but fitment wasn't close, so I corrected it.

 

Ok, here's the lowdown on my car. It's an '83 gsl with a full gsl-se suspension swap, '86 6 port 13b with a custom one off intake and a sterling carb, a full racing beat street port exhaust system, racing beat sway bars front and back, etc, etc, etc.
this intake...


with this carb...


on this car...


So yeah, it's been a long time since it was a stock 7.

 

I bet that gasket will work well. I quickly jambed an S4 6port in my baja with a modded manifold and a Nikki. The manifold has the flange of an FC LIM welded to a typical '79-'80 SA intake manifold. The carb is an FB Nikki with a few inspired mods. The result is quite wonderful. You're gonna like yours.

 

Oh yeah, I REALLY like it. I've been running the set up for better than a year. I've just had a hand cut gasket on it, and been too lazy to put the one I've had on my shelf on it. It's amazing how much the snow can suck the motivation out of a guy.

 

You'll be fine having trimmed it; at a guess I'd say your center plate may not be the original one from that motor, is all. Center-plate port sizes changed over the years.