Anyone out there still using the Xram intake on their 1984. Mine has been on my 1984 for over 15 years. So far I only had to reseal it only once. I drive the car about 1,000 mikes a year. I understand that many 1984 owners with the Xram said it was a joke and switched to the Renegade. Since my cousin did this switch years ago along with the 8746 ECM and 85 fuel pump and different FP regulator. It seemed at the time that was the game to increase performance in the Crossfire. Since I do not know how the car ran before I have nothing to compare it to. My cousin who did the switch said he beat TPI Corvettes with this set up?????

 

The Renegade will beat the XRam hands down, jus sayin'. The real problem is finding one. If you happen to run across any Renegade that has a SN next to the EGR flange, it will be a good one for sure.

 

Buccaneer I believe I remember you from the old crossfire injection volt. Weren't you one of the pioneers of the Xram? Were you with all those other guys changing ECMs and fuel pumps on the 1984's, or am I mixing you up with someone else. Was there a noticeable difference doing the Xram and ECM switch? My cousin swears there was. Just how much horsepower did the Xram make? I saw the difference in the size of the ports in the stock intake which I still have and the Wealand intake fixed under the Xram. Is porting the stock intake a better way to go?

 

Yes, I was one of the early CFI vault members along with Twin Turbo, Ken73 the owner of forum, Elkabong and Ben73 and a host of others. We did a lot of things back then, not just 84s. You will see more over stock with the XRam, but the Renegade flows a lot more. IMO, doing a good port job on a stock manifold will probably out flow a XRam. The fluid dynamics of the XRam suck IMO. Well, Pat Owney the owner of the XRam said that the XRam would make 100hp...BS! If that was the case, the Renegade would have made 200hp. And it doesn't. Ben73 proved that the Renegade out flowed the XRam hands down. He swapped the XRam out for the Renegade and ran three tenths faster consistently at the track right off the bat, down to like 12.23 ET. So, which one do you think was a better manifold?

 

Sounds like the renegade was the better, but Pat Owney really was convincing, my cousin spent many hours trying to perfect this thing. He actually hand took each wire from the ECM and spliced and wrapped it to the new 8746 ECM and had a chip programmed by some sort of GM engineer. He was satisfied with the results and claimed as I said it would perform as well or better then the TPI Corvettes from 85-87. As long as the car keeps running as well as it does I do not plan to mess around with anything, but should I have a rebuild on the engine since it has 156,000 on the original heads and block I will have the old intake ported as you suggested.

 

Yep, Pat was trying to corner the market first with the XRam, but Jim and I knew we could make a better mouse trap after running the XRam... and we did. Yeah, that was WAY back then in the early days of modding the CF cars. It was ALL one BIG experiment back then. Over the last 30 years, I have learned a thing or two about these cars and you can make them run real good if you want to invest some time and patience. The big thing now for ANY CFI car is using the HAM board and the EBL Flash II ECM and laptop tune it 100%. Easy as hell vs burning chips, trail and error type of thing. You DO NOT have to to ANYTHING to your ECM harness with the HAM board installed in the ECM. Just unplug your old ECM and plug in your newer ECM. Plug in your USB cable into your laptop and start tuning. However, if you don't want to do that, I even give people who buy the HAM a FREE stock 82/84 tune BIN file to get the car driving with no issues and they can tune from there if they want to for more power or economy or just drive it. It doesn't get any better than that IMO. I wished that this kind of stuff was around way back then, how simple would that have been?

TPI cars now with me are absolutely nothing unless heavily modded. I go after C5 with a vengeance and the mustang guys, jus sayin'.