Live from the Auto Meter Northern Class Nationals II

[Mike Delahanty]

Eric - that's what I thought too. Not exactly correct. Look closer. Only about 50 of these were ever produced.

[HIGHOCTAIN2000]

That intake was called a sonoramic, my father had a 1960 plymouth fury 383 with that intake

[Steve Stasko]

Those are short rams. They don't have the valley casting separating the ports all the way to the carb. Only the long rams had that.

Those appear to be the water heated version?

[Mike Delahanty]

We got winners. It's a short ram. Note how the individual runners at the head merge into a single runner half way to the carb. And that name is correct too.



Back to the action at the track. The Quick 16 worked down to Garrett Ghezzi in his AMX vs Decker. In stock it's Chuck Beach vs Marthy Buth in his Turbo Mustang. Watching Buth run, it looks like he can run as far under as he wants. For the overall title its Buth vs Decker.

[Mike Delahanty]

The Quick 16 Stock Finalists were Marty Buth and Chuck Beach - with Buth advancing to race Ricky Decker. Garrett Ghezzi was the other S/S finalist. Buth seemed to be Ble to run as far under as he wanted.

Racing was stopped during the SS Quick 16 to scrape the track to be sure the bite was there.

A $50 Gamblers race was added this afternoon with 100% payback. The N/SS cars ran a gamblers race that was planned. About 30 cars ran the Gambers race.

Several people mentioned that the entire Saturday and Sunday program could be run to completion tomorrow. Have hot heard of any plans to do so

There doesn't seem to be the same support from non D3 racers like last years race.

George Yago's COPO was impressive and sporting a Ray Barton Engines decal.

[Dwight Southerland]

Originally Posted by Steve Stasko

Those are short rams. They don't have the valley casting separating the ports all the way to the carb. Only the long rams had that.

Exactly. This was Chrysler's work at ram induction for racing in 1960-61 prior to the familiar one piece ram RB manifold introduced in 1962. The 'Sonoramic" engines were first introduced with 30" intake runners which gave a boost in torque and horsepower between 1800 and 3600 rpm and was effective on the street. The long runners inhibited engine breathing in higher rpm levels much like the Chevy TPI engines experience with their long intake runners, so the manifold were modified to remove the wall between the adjacent ports and reduce the port length to 15". These "short ram" manifolds were used in some 1961 engines and the NHRA tech bulletin for 1961 identifies the difference between the ram manifolds (30" runners) and short ram manifolds (15" runners) in the inductions description. Interestingly, both sets of manifolds were produced with the same casting numbers, so the tech people would have to know the visual difference.

Here is a write up about the history and development of the early ram engines. Long and wordy, but interesting history. http://www.allpar.com/mopar/sonoramic.html