Port-Injected Cross-Ram Manifold - Have Your Cross-Ram And Inject It Too!

When most of us talk about Mopars, our discussions often revolve around the "good old days" when cars were simple and we could work on them ourselves. Carb tuning involved a screwdriver, and ignition timing was simply changed by turning the distributor a little bit. While these memories can be fond, what most of us forget is the hassle of filing and setting ignition points, and being stranded when the carburetor's needle and seat valve sticks, flooding the engine with fuel. And if you've ever tried to change the metering circuitry of a carburetor, you know that carbs are not simple at all, containing complex internals that can be quite difficult to modify for optimum fuel metering. For these reasons, auto manufacturers gave up using carburetors on their vehicles many years ago, instead deciding that fuel injection was a more accurate and efficient way to meter fuel.

Although electronic fuel injection has long been used by OEMs, and offers huge improvements in drivability, reliability, and economy when compared to carburetors, there is still hesitation among enthusiasts to use fuel injection. While this can be somewhat blamed on the misguided perception that fuel injection is complex, hard to understand, and hard to install, there are other reasons Mopar enthusiasts don't use fuel injection on their cars. One reason is that there simply aren't a lot of fuel-injection compatible intake manifolds available for Mopars. Sure, simple throttle-body injection systems can bolt onto a four-barrel intake, but that's not what we're talking about. To really see the benefits of fuel injection, the injector needs to be placed directly over the intake port, requiring special provisions in the intake. And while the aftermarket is slowly providing intake manifolds with provisions for port injection, there just isn't much available for Mopar enthusiasts yet. Luckily, Richard Nedbal at FAST Man EFI is solving that problem by modifying existing intakes for port injection, and his latest creation is a Hemi cross-ram intake, with port fuel injection hidden inside.

The Hemi cross-ram is likely one of the most recognized intake manifolds that was ever bolted on a Mopar engine. Available from any Mopar Performance dealer, the cross-ram intake offers good flow, and is relatively low, providing decent hood clearance in most body styles. Once the hood is lifted, the cross-ram also offers the intimidating look of dual-quad carburetion, making it a favorite among gearheads. So when Richard got a call from a customer asking if the Hemi cross-ram could be converted to EFI, and further, could the EFI be hidden so the manifold would look basically stock, his answer was "why not?" Richard stated that the throttle bodies would bolt on top and be hidden by the air cleaners, and the rest of the components should fit inside the intake plenum. As a former computer engineer, and founder of Mopar Engines West, Richard loves a challenge, so he quickly got busy designing a fuel injection system for the cross-ram intake.

Although he'd fabricated and designed EFI systems for various intake manifolds in the past, Richard stated that the cross-ram intake presented a couple of unique issues. First, would the fuel rails, hoses, and fittings fit inside the plenum of the intake without major modification, and second, would the injector wires and connectors stand up to the heat and manifold vacuum of this application? To help resolve these issues, Richard consulted Mike Bolla from Enterprise Motorsports to decide if this was a feasible installation. Mike agreed that with some work it could be done, so together they tackled the job of designing, engineering, and building a port-injected cross-ram intake manifold.