I bought the lightning manifolds for the discharge. The intake just might work as well, but would just be a minor convenience. Building a discharge requires a ton of precision and strength, as it controlls pulley alignment and angle, and also serves as the mounting for the kit. The inlet just needs minimal restriction and put the TB in the right location. These early KB inlets have terrible restriction issues, but Im not sure if firewall clearance will allow for much improvement.
The f150/lightning kits appear to use the fox mustang 315mm drive. If OP could confirm, that would be awesome. If so, the 94-95 mustang 270mm drive will be a very close fit on an explorer, since they are basically sn-95 mustang FEAD length, using same timing cover and water pump.
An air/water setup would be cool, but not clearing stock hood unless you build a custom lower. In the mustang config, like your pic, you run into brake booster and power steering hose clearance issues, but can be made to work by going slightly taller. I know there was an explorer running a 94-95 KB kit. The mustang kit is designed for much less hood clearance, hence the blower almost touching valve cover. Thats actually why I went with afr-165’s instead of 11r190’s on my car. The old KB kits had the distributer to avoid both on mustang and F150, nice advantage the explorer has.
I actually think water/meth is a better solution for a pushrod KB than air/water, especially on 91 pump gas. Both simpler and able to add more timing. My ranger will still get water/meth if I like it on the thunderbird, or I cant keep IATs reasonable.
Building yer own kit discharge, I’d push the blower way forward, using the 185mm dodge drive, or the 141mm termi cobra drive. It will offset your discharge port forward of lower intake, but will make the inlet much easier and less restrictive. This was my plan with modding my explorer express discharge, but the KB lightning manifold was too nice to pass up.
To the OP, really watch IATs at cruise with no bypass. I’ve seen 200* plus logs even with low boost. Remember, intake restriction causes much of the KB heat issue, and a closed TB is one hell of a restriction.
Chris