Reply to "Space under engine cover"

Just to add to Phil’s post, his filter looks to be a 14” diameter with 2 1/2” element and you’ll note the lid has some height as well. Not sure how much drop there is to his base. You can’t get as much drop in the base with the smaller diameter filters as you can the larger diameters. However, even though you can get more filter area with the larger diameter filter with deeper drop base, it doesn’t gain you any clearance above the carb which is still needed, and unless the lid has some drop to it as well, it will hit the rib on the underside of the deck lid and this will further reduce the height dimension compared to Phil’s post. The oval filters in the IR EFI system below also extend back under that rib.

If you are talking down draft EFI, I made quite a few of those way back when and I convinced myself the overall height from the valley rail to the top of the filter needed to be no greater than 9 ½” to provide enough clearance and reliably to fit with car to car variation. This was also to allow the use of 9.5” deck as opposed to the 9.2 Cleveland deck. My car was 10.5” from the valley rail to the deck lid rib but people reported 10” or slightly less on their cars. The major contributor to variation are the rubber engine isolators how worn or tightened down they are, and some of the aftermarket ones varied in height. Below is a picture of one of those IR EFI systems and the second picture is the same hardware on a 9.2 deck Hall 4V Cleveland intake that was converted to EFI.

Best,
Kelly