Brian Moss has found a "TIGER" lettered manifold and has supplied us with pictures alongside his Edlebrock F4B. Barry asks, "Is this a re-pop, or the original hi-rise "TIGER" lettered manifold?"
To help judge, here are the pictures in question.
This is the original Benevides design LAT 1 high rise that was the first LAT offering, and few were made. The same mold was also lettered with COBRA, SHELBY, GRIFFITH, and was even a FORD Muscle Parts offering as C90Z-9424-D, according to Norman Miller. Ian Garrad was reported as telling Dick Barker of the Riverside International Raceway swap Vic Edlebrock made to convince Ian Garrad of the superiority of his F4B, and it was adopted as the official option.
You will notice that there are four holes, one for each venturi, the TIGER lettering is curved along just one runner, and the cast bracing between the outer bolt holes is centered with the hole You may want to compare this with the official Rootes illustration in their LAT brochure on the LAT-1 page (I did enhance the graphics a little, from the original illustration).
Theo Smit offers this picture of a "SHELBY" lettered manifold he is using in his Throttle Body Injector project. A close examination of the stiffener running down the outer mounting holes reveals that it goes through the hole centers as the Benevides design. Edelbrock does not appear to have this additional stiffening, using the outside edges of the casting alone. (see next paragraph), yet the "SHELBY" lettering is similar to the Moss lettering, and there appears to be Ford ID numbers on the runner that appears burnished on Moss's. There is a steel heat shield on the underside, which is not an Edelbrock feature. That blur of white in the corner looks suspiciously like someone's belly. We know it can't be Theo's, as he is trim and muscular.
Here are the tops of Brian Moss's two manifolds. The top one is clearly recognizable as an F4B but the water temperature sender hole appears to be the standard US offering with pipe threads, rather than the straight threads that were supplied by Edelbrock for the LAT option, in order to accommodate the English Tiger sender. The ports are dual ovals, rather than 4 holes, although I am not sure that the earlier ones didn't have them. You will also observe there are no stiffeners thru the center of the outer holes, as in either of the two previous A quick look at the previous LAT Rootes picture would reveal that it isn't an Edlebrock manifold at all, but the Benevides manifold picture with some airbrush work done to add the Edelbrock signature and remove the TIGER. Rootes does this all the time. The art work of the cars in the ads is the same picture, edited for Alpines and Tigers.
The "TIGER" lettering us cast as a block, rather than curved around the runner. A burnished appearance may be age, but it appears right were the "Edlebrock F4B" lettering was, and may have been a hand mod of the splash copy from an original Edelbrock manifold used as a form.
Here us a close-up of the thermostat end, more clearly showing the "TIGER" block and the altered appearance of the runner where "Edelbrock" used to be.
A view of the ports of both, showing the "underbelly" of the beast. As it has been said, from the bottom they all look alike-
Everybody is, of course, entitled to their own opinion, and some may have actually been around when this item was newly offered for sale, and can shed some personal experience about the source (CAT?) and history.
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