Nissan’s first V8 produced in North America uses a lightweight, innovative thermoplastic air intake manifold designed to help deliver outstanding low-end torque for the all-new Armada full-size SUV, Infiniti QX56 full-size luxury SUV and the full-size Titan pickup truck. 

Engineered jointly by Nissan and Montaplast of North America, Inc., the manifold for the new 5.6 liter DOHC V8 is made of DuPont™ Zytel® glass reinforced nylon that provides greater design flexibility and 40 percent weight savings compared to similar sand cast aluminum manifolds. 

“Montaplast worked closely with Nissan and DuPont to ensure this manifold delivered a perfect balance of outstanding performance and value,” said Archie Hoebecke II of Montaplast.  “Aside from providing a wide range of engineering and manufacturing knowledge, we also produce our own tooling, which helps us quickly add innovations to components.”

Drawing on a wealth of experience in designing and producing thermoplastic manifolds, Montaplast identified an opportunity to optimize the manifold’s performance by adding a multipoint rail system to efficiently capture and recirculate the blow-by vapors for combustion.  Using specially formulated DuPont™ Zytel® made it possible to integrate the multipoint rail system through vibration welding. 

Zytel® nylon provides a smoother interior runner surface for superior air-flow compared to most metal manifolds.  Zytel® also made it possible to mold in support ribs that help ensure good Noise Vibration Harshness (NVH) performance. 

The manifold body, which has one of the largest interior volumes in production, is produced using a sophisticated lost-core system that forms the runners in eight stacked cores.  The manifold is sealed with a spin-welded end-cap that also serves as a mounting bracket for the vacuum brake booster, helping to save valuable underhood space.

A truly global program, the manifold development was supported by Montaplast and Nissan engineering expertise in North America, Europe and Japan.  DuPont supported the development with advanced mold-flow, warpage, structural, NVH and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) studies, along with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and thermal tests.

“Future innovations will not come from only one region or from one part of the automotive industry,” said Gianluigi Molteni, strategic global account manager of DuPont.  “This manifold program is an example of the positive results we can achieve when automakers and their partners share global resources to advance vehicle performance.”

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