Whats the best thing to replace the intake on the crossfire engine? Can u carb it and make everything else work or is it worth porting the stock intake?

 

The general consensus is that porting the stocker yields excellent gains....especially since it's basically free. You COULD swap over to a carb, but you will gain little if anything on a stock engine, and lose MPG and emissions compliance. You will lose DTE and avg MPG functions on the dash, but everything else will work.

You will get opinions varying to each end of the spectrum on this.

 

Check out the renegade Plenum at crossfiresolutions.net. no I am not affiliated with them but it looked like a good product. It appears to be further refined version of the xram.

 

I have a renegade and I am running 14.3 on a stock engine.

 

Aint nothing wrong with the crossfire setup. I had an 84 and loved it. You can either port the stock intake or buy the DCS Renegade intake. Keep the carb in the 57 Chevy.

 

I just installed my Renegade this past weekend. I can't put up a direct link to my info on the stocker, but here is the text of what I wrote:

I finally got my stock intake off yesterday and was able to do some side-by-side comparisions with the Renegade.

The much wider base to top mounting surface is the first obvious difference and the much larger plenum area without the huge EGR hump is next.

When you turn the intake over it just makes you want to cry. The stock runner outlet is 1" by 1.375" - but the stock port in the head is slightly more than 1" wide and a full 2" tall. The port in the intake is a full 5/8" shorter than the port in the head! The Renegade is port matched to the FelPro 1205 gasket which is 1.25" by 2.09".

Worse than that is the fact that the entry for the stock runners is the SAME SIZE as the outlets! The walls of the runners are about 1/8" thick, so no matter how much you port it, there is simply no way to port the intake enough to even get close to the stock size of the port in the head. The inlets of the Renegade runners were a little more than 1.25" in width and a full 2" tall.

Bottom line is, the only way to get the stock intake to come anywhere near close to what the renegade can do would be to add a LOT of material outside the plenum area so that you can port the intake without punching through to daylight, then machining away all the stock runners and fabricating new runners to weld in place of what you cut off. The other problem with trying that is that the base of the pleunum is too high so if you built runners that are tall enough, they'd hit the top plate so you'd have to go wider instead - and you'd probably still need to machine up a short spacer (maybe a 1/4") to get more plenum volume.

Bottom line is, yes porting the stock intake is feasible if you can do it yourself and know what you're doing, HOWEVER, keep in mind that it's like a band-aid on a shark bite - sure it's better than it was, but it will never be the same as the Renegade. For all the work and expense it would take to try to get close to what the Renegade is as-produced, I can't imagine anyone wasting the time with the stock intake anymore. Plunk down your $465 and be done with it!



Basically, don't bother wasting your time porting the stock intake. It's a lot of work and does give some gains, but nothing like what the Rengade can do!

 

Or run EFI on the '57 as well. Great power, mileage, driveability, and reliability. I've always wanted to do a classic muscle car with a modern drivetrain. Would be cool to have the classic looks, and still be able to crank down the highway at 27 mpg with the A/C blasting.

 

Yep, Have a 57 Chevy 2dr wagon build in progress with 113 heads & a TPI coupled to a 5 speed.

May get it running this winter if the Vette behaves & quits opening my wallet.

 

Are you going to dyno it? What is your fuel pressure set at are you running stock TB's?

 

 

Yes, I dyno'd it pre-install and ran 159 rwhp and 239 ft/lbs of torque. I haven't checked the fuel pressure yet.

I'll do a post install dyno check as well after I sort out the funky problems I had after the install. The problems were unrelated to the intake.

 

The CFI has a couple of problems. Easy to fix. I did it.
- No good cold air. Use a moto drill and cut a hole in the air box the size of the hole in the hood. Use a good house hold weather strip around the hole to seal it when the hood closes. At WOT the CFI can't breath. This hole helps a lot.

- 1.5 roller rockers. About $180.
- I had an X-Ram but now there is Renegade - get one.
- The heads are low compression. They're about 72 CC combustion chamber. I changed to 64 CC Vortec heads. It raised the compression ratio to about 10:1.1.

- Put on 2" TBs. Stock TBs are equiv. to 450 cfm together- dismal. 2" TBs raise to about 700 cfm.

- Don't go with any higher than 65# injectors. Anymore causes plug fouling.

- 85+ fuel pump is a must. Regardless what these 'newbee' '84 guys say you need a 'constant' 14 psi at the TBs. Less than that will cause sputtering and hesitation.

My '84 dyno'd 220 rwhp, 315 rwtq and 265 hp at the flywheel. I dyno'd at 5800 rpm. I told the technician not to take it over 5800. It may have done more. It didn't flatten. I used to eat LT1 C4s with an auto and compete very well with C5 coupes with auto.

 

Why 1.5 rockers why not 1.6? What brand of roller rockers did you go with? I want to get a set for my stock heads. Any problems with the roller rockers?

 

Can't recall the brand of rockers. At the time X-ram sold them. The heads I put on had 2.02" intake and 1.5" exhaust.