Five years later and prior to his untimely death from lung cancer, Sr. parted the curtain on yet another small-block innovation: the cross-ram intake manifold. Sporting two 4-bbl carburetors positioned side by side, he raised the rpm bar another 500 notches, enabling the little engine to explore higher levels of output and placing increased demands on the makers of other high performance pieces. Then, he was gone.
Around 1966, Edelbrock was the focal point for yet another small-block breakthrough. This one I experienced first-hand. At the time, I was Editor of HRM. The occasion was the NHRA Points Finals in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While roaming the pit area, I occasioned upon a racer
friend of mine who typically had the pulse of “stuff” going on in drag racing, Jere Stahl. He’d told me about a Modified Production racer using Stahl headers and thought I’d like to see what he was running for an intake manifold. Because they were friends, he also encouraged Vic, Jr. to take a look.
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The racer was Carroll Caudle, a soft-spoken, hard-working engine builder from Amarillo, Texas. Typical among successful hot rodders of his time; he built what he couldn’t afford to buy and innovated where others hadn’t had the vision. Turns out Carroll had begun with a stock Rochester FI intake manifold, sometimes called a doghouse design. He’d made a horizontal slice through the top of the manifold, thus removing the plenum and exposing all eight runner entries.
The engine had originally come with a low-profile 2x4 intake and NHRA allowed any manifold that retained the number and relative position of the OEM carburetors. Fabricating a new plenum to accept two in-line Carter AFB carbs, this out-of-the-way Texas racer had inadvertently opened the door to another small-block pathway…and higher rpm. Vic seized upon the occasion and immediately requested that Carroll let him take the design back to the West Coast and “refine it” into a production version. Results? The renowned Edelbrock “Tunnel Ram” came into being, though it was initially crafted by Carroll Caudle.
Upon Vic’s return to Culver City, his group of confidants quickly discovered that a much higher range of rpm was inherent in the manifold’s concept, more than originally thought. Racer Brown, who’d long since departed HRM and was running his own camshaft company, was enlisted to provide valve action into the 8,000-rpm range, then the “twilight zone” for small-block Chevys…or just about anything else, for that matter. Tom Spaulding came forth with an ignition system capable of that much crankshaft speed, cylinder head porters grabbed their grinders, and the valve spring guys turned their caps sideways. It was all new blood for an emerging young engine.
As is the case in so many evolutionary processes, we tend not to see the internal and progressive steps as they materialize. Time seems to move slowly so that only when it has passed do we have an opportunity to look back and compress all pertinent events to get a focus on its impact. Vic, Sr.’s belief in an un-tested engine package and his relentless pursuit of proving that belief were compounded by fortuitous events that led Vic, Jr. to the inquisitiveness of a young North Texas drag racer and a revolutionary manifold concept. Despite all these events, the history of the small-block Chevrolet V8 could easily have taken quite a different path to glory.
