The Tunnel Ram thread

[RockJustRock]

So much going on with this mutant creation of the Hot Rod industry. Who invented it? Was it the Ramchargers with that thing made out of hoses on the "High and Mighty" car or Ralph Ridgeway's "Ridgerunner" made out of a Chevy FI? Is gravity THAT much of an influence to make them superior to a cross ram? What about the whole "Ram" thing anyway? Is it ram or is it plenum volume that makes the power?

Intakes just fascinate me. Like single plane and dual plane. Everyone at one point decided the dual plane was the be all and end all solution, then Edelbrock came along with the Tarantula. They claimed all kinds of voodoo engineering like intentionally mismatched ports, but others made simpler more straight forward knock-offs that still made power.

Funny how all Detroit's horses and all Detroit's engineers are still figuring out the best way to pipe air into a motor and all the aftermarket's horses and men still claim to do it better.

[Shep48COE]

Engine masters had a good episode with a bunch of different intakes on the dyno.!

[Loren]

Some of those wacky intakes were for evening-out the Rat motor intake port differences. As far as tunnel rams go, to keep plenums where they can get somewhat even distribution of intake pulses, if the ports are to be longer and have minimal direction change the best direction to go is up. The visuals got ya lots of street-cred on Van Nuys Blvd., or at the lake too.

RJR if intakes fascinate you, you'd like to see the one on the Magnuson-charged LS2 GTO. Basically...there ain't one!...in the normal sense. I'ts just a box with an intercooler in it that gives only about a three-eighths-inch radius off the head ports then all open space into what then is a huge plenum, no normal intake manifold ports at all. I -guess- it works...thank sequential-port injection and a few pounds of boost.

Other oddballs here have been an old SBC turbo intake that puts the draw-through carb in the stock position and has some really weird port routing to do it, then there was once an Offenhauser "180" for my 215 Olds which had a huge single-plane plenum and dog-leg ports and incidentally was a horrible piece to work with and a good lesson in why the stock dual-planes were made the way they were.

As much more of a tinkerer than a racer (other than my Mulholland/Angeles Crest days) I've had no experience with tunnel rams.

[RockJustRock]

The thinking is that under boost the intake tract does not need optimization. A regular Rootes blower manifold is just plain aero ugly. But as time goes on a bottleneck is a bottleneck and things are getting more sophisticated. But then again the more hardware you bring into play the more space is at a premium.

Of course aside from all the technical aspects is how they LOOK, which is usually pretty cool.

[Gateclyve Photographic]

What about the whole "Ram" thing anyway? Is it ram or is it plenum volume that makes the power?

Resonant conditions.

[malc]

I've got an Edelbrock Airgap with a 2" open spacer so it could be a "mono tunnel ram" but the air from the plenum going into the runners has to turn a sharp 90°.
I have a 2" four hole spacer too but have not tried it yet.....was thinking the four holes might "speed up" the air/fuel mixture.

[Monster]

I've been wanting to put an Edelbrock 7110 Street Tunnel Ram and dual 500 cfm carburetors with a bug catcher on a SBC for years now !

[DanStokes]

I always though that a tunnel ram (like stack injection) was as much about intimidation as performance.

Dan