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I ran across this on the net. I think they used to refer to it as the trophy ram (because of its likeness to a trophy). I would love to see the dyno numbers running this baby
I'm having a hard time understanding how four individual tubes on top of a stock iron dual plane intake really help flow. The reversion pulses in that mess must have really raised hell with carb signal and atomization.
Under full throttle, those Offenhausers still make more sense than that spitoon (or better yet, used beer toon), as long as they're mounted onto a matching manifold or if a non-matching manifold gets machined to the point where flow isn't obstructed
Last edited by Killian_Mörder; Sep 17, 2020 at 10:31 PM.
Look again. I believe that's a first gen Olds V8. SBCs don't use clamps under the intake bolts.
Hi Joe.
I was trying to be sarcastic. I was referring to all the intake manifold variations that have been produced for the small block Chevy. I did not look closely at the engine I just assumed it was a early Oldsmobile given the post title.
The dyno would show an enormous amount of low-end torque. The following is essentially the same, except that the runners are wound up. However, the crossram pictured looks to have longer runners than the modern types designed for fuel injection:
Not too crazy when you look at some of the Chrysler stuff.
Yeah, but there's a big difference between that Chrysler long ram where the individual runners go all the way to the ports on the head and the photo in the first post where that "spacer" is simply bolted to a factory cast iron dual plane intake where all the runners communicate. The latter is nonsensical.
This after hours exercise by some guys from Chrysler including Tom Hoover showed what could result optimizing 'ram effect' or optimization of the 5-cycle or Miller/Atkinson concept of using long overlap and the inertia of incoming/outgoing gasses to induce ram and scavenging effect. Interesting to read the new Ford Escape hybrid uses what is described as a 'modified Atkinson cycle' design. GM and EMD used the idea in the semi-two stroke diesel engines back to the early 1930's. I recall our first design Saturn engines had long ram intake and tuned tubular header exhaust. Plenty to read about it in racing:
The use of tuned intake and exhaust systems to improve cylinder filling and engine volumetric efficiency predates those Chrysler experiments. It's called a Helmholtz resonator. Just don't anyone kid yourself that the photo in the first post represents such a device.
This after hours exercise by some guys from Chrysler including Tom Hoover showed what could result optimizing 'ram effect' or optimization of the 5-cycle or Miller/Atkinson concept of using long overlap and the inertia of incoming/outgoing gasses to induce ram and scavenging effect. Interesting to read the new Ford Escape hybrid uses what is described as a 'modified Atkinson cycle' design. GM and EMD used the idea in the semi-two stroke diesel engines back to the early 1930's. I recall our first design Saturn engines had long ram intake and tuned tubular header exhaust. Plenty to read about it in racing:
Anyone remember the QuadQuad? A custom manifold built to run four Q-jets. At idle and up to about 2500 it sounded like no other running engine ever heard. After that it just wouldn't get going.
Anyone remember the QuadQuad? A custom manifold built to run four Q-jets. At idle and up to about 2500 it sounded like no other running engine ever heard. After that it just wouldn't get going.
I remember a video that I would have found by following a link from RealOldsPower.com. Pretty sure it showed the Quad Quad in operation--but maybe I'm mis-remembering.
The video showed the car--no hood--driving down the road, camera aimed at the carbs (no air cleaners). There was a fuel fog above the carbs, and the choke blades were wiggling from all the reversion. Didn't run worth a crap, hugely over-rich.
I don't know where to find that video any more. Gonna have to do a quick search for it.
I remember a video that I would have found by following a link from RealOldsPower.com. Pretty sure it showed the Quad Quad in operation--but maybe I'm mis-remembering.
The video showed the car--no hood--driving down the road, camera aimed at the carbs (no air cleaners). There was a fuel fog above the carbs, and the choke blades were wiggling from all the reversion. Didn't run worth a crap, hugely over-rich.
I don't know where to find that video any more. Gonna have to do a quick search for it.
Not the choke blades, it's the air valves wiggling with reversion. Fuel fog readily apparent due to IR manifold and improper above-carb baffling. The engine sounds/runs better than I remembered.
Yes it sounded good until it hit higher RPM. The damn thing would rev like a Banshee when you first hit the throttle but would stall out rapidly. Haven't seen Neill (QuadQuad) on here in quite a while.
Too much of a good thing. Need to redesign, smaller cfm carbs at least and 1000 cu in engine to suck up all that fuel. But I am not an engineer.
IR manifolds thrive on relatively huge carbs--big throttle bores, high CFM; because (overly simplified) the carbs are only working when the intake valve is open.
The more-complex answer is that the carbs are flowing BACKWARDS after the intake valve shuts, due to intake resonation. And a venturi/fuel metering system will add fuel to that air whether it's flowing "in" or "out". So you have this situation that you have to have a carb big enough to supply the cylinder with a full charge with no help from a plenum full of air-fuel mix; but at the same time you've got tremendous reversion when the intake valve closes. Now the air/fuel mix is flying OUT of the carb; but the velocity through the venturi is pulling more fuel from the carb as it exits. And when the air/fuel goes back into the carb, it's on it's third trip, picking up more fuel on it's third trip through.
The result is that you have a wildly rich mixture unless you can account for some air going through the carb three times and pulling fuel each time. During periods of heavy reversion, the carb has to be really lean.
AND you have to contain the fuel fog in a high-volume air cleaner or velocity stack, or the fuel just blows away--you pay for fuel that sprays up out of the carb and becomes hydrocarbon emissions. You've created a two-mile-per-gallon gasoline dispersal device. I suspect the engine runs as good as it does BECAUSE some of the fuel fog is getting blown away instead of going back down the carb again.
The fuel fog visible in the video is showing air/fuel mix that's super-rich because it's been through the carb twice--once in, once back out. What you don't see is that on it's trip through the carb the third time as it's pulled into the cylinders, it's picking up still-more fuel.
And, of course, an air-valve secondary carb isn't going to react well to heavy reversion--you can see the air valves dancing open-closed-open-closed as the air blows in and out.
Yes, you're right--a thousand CID engine would be even more fun.
Last edited by Schurkey; Sep 20, 2020 at 11:27 PM.
Those Offy adapters were VERY popular for (and probably made for) using a blower on your car,. and keeping it all under the hood. Yes, there is enough room on most 50's cars. We measured up a SBC with a 4-71, and those adapters would eliminate having to cut a hole in the hood.
...In 1947 the company introduced their own aluminum, overhead valve, hemispherical combustion chamber cylinder heads for the flathead FordV8 engine. Conceived by Duntov, the heads were designed by George Kudasch.[5] The purpose of the overhead valve design was to cure the persistent overheating of the valve-in-block flathead V8. The flathead 'siamesed' the two center exhaust ports into a single tube, creating a large heat transfer from the hot gases to the coolant that was eliminated in the overhead valve design. The Ardun heads allowed significant increases in power output from the Ford V8. Ardun grew into a 300 employee engineering company with a name as revered as Offenhauser...
This engine was installed in Rambleresque under license-built Brazilian Simcas:
Funny thing about the "Ford" flathead--the V8-60 (60 horsepower, 136 cid) was made by the Ford company in France. Eventually, the whole Ford manufacturing works in France was sold to Simca. Simca continued to use the "Flathead Ford" V8-60 in their vehicles. Simca was purchased by Chrysler. Chrysler ended up importing cars made by Simca in France to America as a "captive import" in the late '50s.
Therefore Chrysler sold hundreds of Flathead Ford-powered cars to Americans long after Ford had abandoned the engine in North America..
Similar story for the aluminum Buick Small-Block. When Buick was done with it, considered it a failure, they eventually sold the tooling to Rover of England. Rover developed the formerly-Buick aluminum Small-Block; using it for decades and selling the unit to other manufacturers such as TVR. As time goes by, Ford buys Jaguar-Land Rover, and imports vehicles powered by the evolved Buick Aluminum Small-Block to America long after Buick gave up on it.
...Therefore Chrysler sold hundreds of Flathead Ford-powered cars to Americans long after Ford had abandoned the engine in North America...
Are you sure that Simca exported their V-8 models to North America? The only ones I know of are the smaller 4-cylindered Simcas that actually got a good review in the 1959 Popular Mechanics magazine.
Simca only got hold of the first generation long obsolete Flathead tooling of which Ford got rid of, in order to make way for the next generation larger-displacement Flathead. The larger Simca Vedette was fitted with the smallest version of the Ford Flathead. It seems like a pretty nice car:
Meanwhile, something was happening in Detroit in 1958: a recession. The Big Three suddenly craved captive imports to fight off the compacts (Rambler, Volkswagen, Renault and the like). GM had Opel and Vauxhall; Ford had Dagenham and Cologne. Chrysler had nothing, so it acquired Ford’s 15% stake in Simca, plus an additional 10%. By late 1958, Simcas were sold in the US by Chrysler – mostly Arondes, but the Vedette also made for a decent compact. So the V8-60 went back on a farewell tour of the US for a season or two, courtesy of Mopar. It is unclear how many were sold (guesstimate: low hundreds).
.... Tedd
