[etimothy]

Now I know why I spend part of every day tutoring mathematics. In geometry we learn that the are of a circle (or the cross sectional are of a cylinder) ir equal to pi r squared. In this case one must consider area not diameter. A 50mm throttle body has a cross-sectional area of about 1963 mm squared. Multiplying that by 8 we get 15708 mm squared. The dividing by pi and taking the square root we get a radius of about 71 mm or a diameter of 142 mm. Therefore 8 50 mm throttle bodies are equivalent to one 142 mm throttle body not 400 mm. Also, consider in your comparison that the single throttle body on a modern V8 is only feeding about 2 cylinders at a time ( I say about because it depends on the duration of the intake valve open period.) Using the above mathematics, feeding 2 cylinders with two 50 mm throttle bodies is equivalent to feeding them with one 71 mm throttle body. Hope that helps in the comparison