New Edelbrock Cross-Ram LS3 Intake Looks and Performs Amazing
Designed to make power in the sweet spot of the power band, the new Edelbrock cross-ram intake is also a looker.
While some only care about going fast and put form on the back burner, there are plenty of people out there that like their cars to look as good as they perform. For them, there’s a new intake manifold in town – the Edelbrock cross-ram for GM’s LS3. But this fantastic-looking piece of automotive art isn’t just for looks, of course, it’s also designed to provide plenty of power in the sweet spot of the engine’s power band, too.
“Simply put, we wanted to build the best-performing 1,500-6,500 rpm intake on the market,” Brent McCarthy of Edelbrock Performance told LSX Magazine. “We’ve developed carbureted manifolds, XT Style EFI, and four-barrel LS manifolds in the past, but it felt like we needed something more in that EFI manifold space.”
This is particularly important for cars that get driven on the street, where low-end and mid-range power matter more than peak output. Thus, the Edelbrock cross-ram intake is aimed squarely at street rods with naturally-aspirated Gen IV engines with LS3, L92, and L76 rectangular port cylinder heads producing somewhere between 500-650 horsepower. But it also figures to perform well in autocross, where the driver is going to be on and off the throttle quite a bit.
The new Edelbrock cross-ram intake manifold is available in either black or red, the latter of which looks like it came from the engine bay of an exotic car. Its unique appearance stems from the fact that it features 13-inch straight runners with flanges designed to use two 90mm LS3 throttle bodies, which essentially doubles the airflow or cuts the pressure drop in half, depending on how you look at it.
As an added benefit, throttle response is also greatly enhanced, while four balance tubes located along the plenums help to relieve the pressure that would otherwise create peaks in the powerband.
So how does all of this high-tech wizardry work in the real world? To find out, LSX strapped an Edelbrock cross-ram intake to a 6.0-liter test mule and put it on the dyno. Despite making a bit of a mistake and flipping one of the throttle bodies upside down, the engine’s power band still proved impressive.
Peak power came in at 531 horsepower and 555 pound-feet of torque, with almost 520 of those pound-feet available from 4,000 rpm onward. Thus, this intake seems like a perfect fit for cars that get driven more on the street than the track, with a powerband that’s always ready to light up the tires when called upon.
Photos: Edelbrock, LSX Magazine
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