My good friend was using Mickey's shop back in the days and heard Mickey on the phone with a customer saying "I Built That Manifold For Boats"
Maybe he thought it was an anchor.
Maybe he thought it was an anchor.
How to destroy a piece of 348-409 Mickey Thompson Power Ram history one part at a time because you can.
- Thread starter 1964SuperStocker
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I sure would like to fine someone that knows how to make a M/T work well, have two of them and would love to use them but was told that can't make good horse power above 4500rpm had Jack Gibbs set up a motor for me and sent him my manifold but they couldn't make it work.. I know back in the sixties a guy run some good horse power with a crossram but I was just to young to know if it really product HP above 4500 RPM. anyway good info, didn't read everything so hope I didn't annoy anyone
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Some of you saw these magazines at Thompson, a couple of you have asked when I was going to post them. I could tell you how busy I’ve been but you all know better then that! Truth is I’m lazy and just got around to scanning them. Congratulations Carl Taylor on TWO great articles with lots of...
Didn't annoy me.
I remember reading a test in Hot Rod magazine? years ago. They had pictures of one running on the dyno and fuel would stand about 5 inches out of the top of the carburetors on a pull. They found that it needed to be jetted up because most of the fuel was in suspension. A large balance tube would help with this. I thing the general design need more refinement.
I remember reading a test in Hot Rod magazine? years ago. They had pictures of one running on the dyno and fuel would stand about 5 inches out of the top of the carburetors on a pull. They found that it needed to be jetted up because most of the fuel was in suspension. A large balance tube would help with this. I thing the general design need more refinement.
Most guys cut into the cross ram to make it more modern performance friendly. I wish people wouldn't because the number of these that aren't cut or polished is shrinking almost daily. Are your Power rams large or small port and are they polished or modified?
See what Carl from Australia(Chevytaylor) who raced and street drove is M/T 62 bubble top 5000 K miles -this is copied from page 2 of this posting in a 2021 post he made
Well, I ran one for about 10 years N/A on the street/strip with absolutely no issues at all. Drove the car to and from track, 2012/13 drove the car over 5000km's and won the National Super Street title. Ran great with 2 x properly tuned 600 Edy's. The engine was a pump gas 10.25-1 , 476 inch 09 and ran 11.00's @ 120+mph in a 3900lb brick. My ANDRA tech cut off was 11.00 seconds at the time so worked perfectly. Can understand that if you want to go deep into the tens or nines or make 1000hp then it's probably limited. I think it's easy to blame lack of performance of something due to lack of knowledge. If some key board warrior says it don't work, It's not always the case.
He also wrote this
Same engine went 10.39 @ 127mph with 100 shot of gas Don, that was heavier @ 4000lb race weight with addition of cage. Actually closer to 4200lb with nitrous stuff. No one is going to tell me the M/T manifold don't work. Yeah, it could be better, but this thing was made 50years ago, give it a break FFS. Who else apart from Russ (who I have great respect for) has actually seriously street driven and raced this manifold?
Paul
I agree with Carl on the "yeah, it could be better, but this thing was made 50 years ago." I get that we all want something different under the hood for wow factor but why destroy the few original pieces remaining so you can go for hamburgers on a quite Sunday afternoon?See what Carl from Australia(Chevytaylor) who raced and street drove is M/T 62 bubble top 5000 K miles -this is copied from page 2 of this posting in a 2021 post he made
Well, I ran one for about 10 years N/A on the street/strip with absolutely no issues at all. Drove the car to and from track, 2012/13 drove the car over 5000km's and won the National Super Street title. Ran great with 2 x properly tuned 600 Edy's. The engine was a pump gas 10.25-1 , 476 inch 09 and ran 11.00's @ 120+mph in a 3900lb brick. My ANDRA tech cut off was 11.00 seconds at the time so worked perfectly. Can understand that if you want to go deep into the tens or nines or make 1000hp then it's probably limited. I think it's easy to blame lack of performance of something due to lack of knowledge. If some key board warrior says it don't work, It's not always the case.
He also wrote this
Same engine went 10.39 @ 127mph with 100 shot of gas Don, that was heavier @ 4000lb race weight with addition of cage. Actually closer to 4200lb with nitrous stuff. No one is going to tell me the M/T manifold don't work. Yeah, it could be better, but this thing was made 50years ago, give it a break FFS. Who else apart from Russ (who I have great respect for) has actually seriously street driven and raced this manifold?
Paul
M/T never sat around and asked himself how could he design a product to go for hamburgers. He never had the time to spend on R&D with these intakes otherwise, they would look/perform much different. Where you would likely need to modify the intakes even further to get them to drive around town. I am not the fore most expert on these intakes but I do love love love them and my knowledge on building intakes is growing with these 3D printed intakes we are making. One caveat about every person who buy's them and wants some other performance other than factory casting provides, not one person can tell me what the volume efficiency of their engine is with the M/T vs any other intake they have run (and most importantly) why and how their specific configuration helps or hinders those numbers in relation to everyone else running a Power Ram. Its because no one actually cares to find out. ( hp numbers on a dyno are not volumetric efficiency for anyone who wants to argue that point) No one really knows how good or bad any intake is unless they have spent months doing R&D to get the most from it. Everyone has an idea how good or bad their own intakes are but not many of us have really spent any time squeezing the most out of our set up. You want efficient and power, get an LS and strap a turbo to it. You want cool? Then don't stuff a Toyota Prius drive train in a Don Garlits Swamp Rat dragster because you want the look of something but not the performance that look brings. I'm trying to imagine going to get burgers with a road worthy EV swapped "Swamp Rat".
Garlits might be old but I bet he'd kill me before I could get the blower out of his car. At some point I will run a M/T power ram but it will be cast and I will accept whatever flaws it has because I look in the mirror and see flaws every day. 
Besides, does anyone really need to chop up a vintage piece of performance race parts for that extra 10-15hp up top and a tiny bit more consitent low end torque to go for Burgers?
Skip FIx
Well Known Member
I can tell you my Pontiac M/T sucks on air flow compared to a single 4 intake on the flowbench and the port is the same size as the head. The long runner should boost the TQ curve but probably drop the RPM range. You can see the balance tube welded in. It was also converted from the early head water crossover and port location to the '65 and later heads.
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Tom has one on one of his projects. Plan on trying it out some day.
I think one would need to treat it like 2 4 cylinders engines that need to be tuned the same.
I think one would need to treat it like 2 4 cylinders engines that need to be tuned the same.
As I read this set of posts, I wonder if slipping this particular engine/intake combination is the right choice for this particular build. I anticipate this build to be an "ice cream or hamburger getter" for around town cruising. My concern was "can I save the nicely painted hood" or should we cut another one up to provide room for the top end (thanks to Russ I have a solid candidate)?
James and I already have a race car with a stroked 409 and a performance intake (McQuillen) so the Biscayne was intended to be an "around town" driver. Maybe I need to rethink that? Have plenty of 881 intake candidates with carbs. Food for thought...
James and I already have a race car with a stroked 409 and a performance intake (McQuillen) so the Biscayne was intended to be an "around town" driver. Maybe I need to rethink that? Have plenty of 881 intake candidates with carbs. Food for thought...
Its the only way they can be tuned. I'm thinking they would really do well with a fuel injection setup.
Skip FIx
Well Known Member
Yep then with the right sequential you could tune each cylinder. The Pontiac one having a separate valley cover you might could put the injectors underneath.
A big Pontiac guy form New York Nunzi I think had one on a 60s drag car back in the day.
But there is something about a cross ram that looks cool!
Actually VE for the most part is directly related to power numbers. There are formulas to convert hp numbers to VE. They are not perfect as there are a lot of variables but, they get you in the ball park. If you dyno an engine with one manifold and then put a different one on and dyno again and the hp goes up, it’s almost a certainty that VE went up. As for saving the manifolds, I’m with MRHP (God help me). I’m all for modifying one if you want the look and want to improve it. Same with Z-11 stuff. I would have no problem with modifying and racing that stuff. As long as there are enough heads and intakes to put on the still existing real Z-11 cars, the rest is fair game. As crossrams in general, they all pretty much have issues. That’s why the idea was abandoned over 40 years ago. The only ones that work aren’t really true crossrams. They have inline carbs with a common plenum but the runners still cross each other. It’s a way to get runner length and still maintain a lower profile.I agree with Carl on the "yeah, it could be better, but this thing was made 50 years ago." I get that we all want something different under the hood for wow factor but why destroy the few original pieces remaining so you can go for hamburgers on a quite Sunday afternoon?
M/T never sat around and asked himself how could he design a product to go for hamburgers. He never had the time to spend on R&D with these intakes otherwise, they would look/perform much different. Where you would likely need to modify the intakes even further to get them to drive around town. I am not the fore most expert on these intakes but I do love love love them and my knowledge on building intakes is growing with these 3D printed intakes we are making. One caveat about every person who buy's them and wants some other performance other than factory casting provides, not one person can tell me what the volume efficiency of their engine is with the M/T vs any other intake they have run (and most importantly) why and how their specific configuration helps or hinders those numbers in relation to everyone else running a Power Ram. Its because no one actually cares to find out. ( hp numbers on a dyno are not volumetric efficiency for anyone who wants to argue that point) No one really knows how good or bad any intake is unless they have spent months doing R&D to get the most from it. Everyone has an idea how good or bad their own intakes are but not many of us have really spent any time squeezing the most out of our set up. You want efficient and power, get an LS and strap a turbo to it. You want cool? Then don't stuff a Toyota Prius drive train in a Don Garlits Swamp Rat dragster because you want the look of something but not the performance that look brings. I'm trying to imagine going to get burgers with a road worthy EV swapped "Swamp Rat".
Dave: It's undergoing a surgical procedure in the good hands of Dr. James Schrader.
You're keeping that race car well hidden Tom.......
VE and Hp are related cousins but they are most certainly not husband and wife. Again, when anyone buys a race part and tries to use it to get ice-cream, there are bound to be a number of problems. Most specifically, if anyone is picking parts for looks then the parts aren't the problem. I don't think there has ever been anything wrong with the M/T Power Ram other than expectations.
Both my M/T are large port with no other modifications. very interesting information, so are the balance tube internal or external? I have heard that the balance problem is between intake runner one and eight, not sure if that's the problem or not....
VE and hp are directly correlated. Like father and son. A given engine has a set in stone volume the cylinder can hold. Air is power. You can’t make more power without increasing the amount of fresh air an engine can consume. VE is loosely how much of a given engine’s volume is filled with that air. If VE is 80 percent then only 80 percent of the volume of that engine is filled with air to make hp. If VE is 110 percent, then the volume of the engine is filled 100 percent plus another 10 percent by compressing the air above whatever atmospheric happens to be. So if you make more hp, then you must of increased the amount of air in the cylinders and thus increased VE a proportional amount. That’s why no one can tell you what switching manifolds does to VE. Nobody cares! The VE number isn’t that important but HP is! Hell, there isn’t even a consensus on exactly how to determine what the VE is of a specific engine. It doesn’t matter. As for what shortcomings the power ram has, and it has a few, you’ll figure them out out as you learn more through your development of different intakes. There are good reasons why the design was abandoned.
I agree that nobody cares enough to learn about the numbers created other than HP. The part about VE and HP that everyone pays no attention to (with these intakes) is the difference in proportion changes a Power Ram creates are nothing like any other intake (dual or single plane). The VE and HP are never liner and very small changes in any engine (and specifically here the design of the intake) will pull them closer or further apart at a given RPM much like how we all recognize the interaction of HP and TRQ on a dyno chart. All cross-ram designs had in mind a very specific higher RPM range they were gunning for. That is why VE and HP are more like cousins because they are not liner following next to each other up a chart but move independently of each other. Unlike HP and TRQ on a dyno chart the VE can act erratically when the design (of the Power Ram) was never designed with street driving in mind. That is why we often ask someone what their engine will be used for so we can point them in the right direction of cam and complimentary parts for that use. We can all find an excuse for letting some idiot kid (myself at 19) put a high RPM cam in a new built SBC in my '64 Convertible but the car sucks to drive around town because I picked the wrong parts for all of the wrong reasons back then. It will get out on the highway and break the tires loose at 65mph is easy but the parts combo I came up with at 19 years old were absolutely a poor choice when 90% of the time is spent in town. Would be one hell of a ride with the 4.88 gear I have but no plans to take the 3.08 posi out. Anyway, If everyone looked at a M/T Power Ram and accepted they are designed for high RPMs and not streetability, then there would be less people complaining about their design flaws and no need to modify them to do what they were never designed for. We do plan on making a 3D printed cross-ram for the 348-409 engines but thankfully we can change to print a street version or a track version with the click of a mouse. Internally they will be absolutely different. But again, because most people don't care about anything other than HP then all I have to do with my design is beat the HP numbers the old castings. Thanks again Dan for your insight, your first hand experience on extracting power/performance out of these engines is priceless.