Reply to "Autolite Inline Carbs"

> Dan Jones in your man. He can answer your questions better than anyone.

I've been out of town and just got back. Looks like Kelly and others have
answered most of your questions.

> The inline carbs came in 2 sizes. I think one was an 850 or so and a larger
> one was 1400 or so. They would only fit in a specific 2 piece manifold.
> I think it was called a Cross Boss. The top piece could be changed and you
> could run 2 carbs if you wanted to.

The smaller 850 was meant to run on top of a plenum intake (Cross Boss and
Bud Moore maxi plenum) and the larger (1400 CFM) units were meant to be used
in IR applications, though were also test for Pro Stock using an IR lower
with mini-plenum.

> I think there were 3 circuits designed into it. A WOT it screamed but at
> part throttle it was awful. It ran way fat. Keep in mind we really didn't
> know what we were doing either.

The early ones didn't have an idle circuit but Ford added that later.
I do know of one guy running a set in a Cobra replica who says they
work great. Richard Openshaw had a set installed in a Pantera but
I'm not sure if he's got the car on the road yet. We'll have a wideband
O2 sensor to tune and monitor the inlines during the dyno testing so
we should be able to see how stable the air-to-fuel curve is.

> Not as tunable as IDA Webers but elegantly simple, easy to jet, and
> the 9510B (1425 cfm) is capable of flowing signifcantly more than 48IDAs.

According to Vizard, the 48mm IDA's start becoming a restricition at
480-500 HP. The larger the Autolites should have the edge above that.
As Kelly mentioned, I'll be testing a set of his Autolites as part of the
dyno project as well as a set of 48mm IDA's.

> Wasn't there some kind of magnesium intake for clevelands that had some kind
> of almost IR thing running 2 inlines? I remember something where there were 8
> individual runners that bolted into what I thought was some kind of sheet
> metal and the runners went between the bottom of the carbs and the engine.

In addition to the Cross Boss plenum intakes meant for a single carb and
the mechanical injection intakes used for dual IR set-ups, Ford also built
an intake for dual carbs for Pro Stock drag racing evaluation. It can be
seen here (along with other inline intakes) near the bottom of the page:

http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/engine/fordv8/cleve/cleve.htm

"As of 1975 this was the strongest engine Ford's engineers had built when
testing packages for Ford's drag racing program. The Autolite inline four
barrels had some problems carbureting during hard acceleration and kept the
setup from being successful in competition. Notice the small cast aluminum
plenums under the carburetors; even at 2 x 1400 CFM the Autolites were too
small for a high-winding Cleveland when being used on an independent-runner
intake; the plenums let the runners share venturis for more airflow."

> But I guess I was right ..if they were so good then why didnt Ford continue
> them.

As Kelly noted, they were never made legal in the series Ford intended
to run them in (Trans Am in particular) and then Ford ended the entire
Muscle Parts program so they were dropped.

Dan Jones