I thought it was man-a-fre on here that had a vidio of his running but i cant find it could have been somone else. If there setup right they run like bad out of hell! I dont believe the original man-a-fre built in alanta was desighned for the street but it can if you use stong gears to keep it wound.
As said above, they run increddible when tuned right and used in compe***ion. For street driving though? I'm sure someone out there is running one just fine but from what I hear they dont work well at all. Unlike "log" style multi-carb intakes like those from Offy, Edelbrock and Weiand, the Man-A-Fre is a direct port setup and basically works like mechanical fuel injection, and we all know how that is on the street vs. dragging. -Dean
I had one on a big block Chevy, I played with several different carbureted induction setups on that motor, Offy medium rise dual quad, Edelbrock street tunnel ram dual quad, Offy dual quad cross ram, the giant bread box looking Edelbrock tunnel ram.. forget what they were called..? and a Man-A-Fre the Man-A Fre was by far the most kick in the *** balls to the wall setup of them all, a bit thirsty but still streetable. not to say that would be the case with the small block version but I never should have sold mine, it was that fun. I have pictures and an old clip somewhere..
Seems like I remember reading in Hot Rod mag back in the day you had to jet the carbs kinda small to get it to work well on the street. Thats one nice looking fuel line set-up.
yeah all i realy know is it started in atlanta then to new york etc. man-a-fre here on the hamb has a very old atlanta manifold ~actualy has all the letters on it for all you man-a-fre buffs. and it runs ****ing great, **** its got an auto and 2:10 gears and its still great. granted you have to **** around with tuning 4 carbs but once you get them set YOUR set i put a vid of the car tearing around with the man-a-fre on it on my youtube account. im sure i posted it on here at some point in time. theres no sound so its not an awesome vid. but its a real time tear in the car. i think my youtube name is knuckledragger53 if you want to search. other wise im sure if you search my posts and look for a something about man-a-fre intakes it should show up. timm oh, an its on a small block. you may have seen the car at the hamb drags possibly with a different intake on it though as we'd just swaped motors before hand.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130510 that should link you to the post with some pix and vid
There is a clip on youtube of a guy's BBC with one running...but not driving. I found it a year ago and did not bookmark it. I read up on the BBC version back then; there was just one real sucessful national-level guy running the drags with one on a BBC....1965 season I think
hot rod pro, that is a pretty darn nice setup. Did you make the fuel lines yourself and that cool collector fitting?
selectively? interesting choice of words, but alas, no offense taken at all. i offered no real "opinion" as such... i pretty much wanted to post the picture i found a few years ago when i was looking into a small block with a man-a-fre setup. as i mentioned, and i'll elaborate here... from what i have read and been told from guys who've run them both on the street AND the strip, they're a handful to get streetable, but run like an *** ****ed badger on the track. not unlike any mech injection setup.
yea, he sure did. had a "tech" of sorts a while back... insane amounts of detail and craftsmanship in that fuel line setup
I saw this BBC Man-A-Fre setup for sale at last months Long Beach swap. If it suited sbc I may have been interested but at $2500 maybe not!!
We went with an offy on mine to port match with the Brodix heads. I've heard that the Man-a-fre's are hard to run on the street also. The offy I have runs like a striped ars ape... Once you get them tuned...they pretty much stay that way. Idle is effected with humidity and temp on occasion, but overall...the offy is very streetable. The offy setup is very similar in design and is port matched like the man-a-fre. We just couldn't port match it close enought to the heads we have. If you find a good one, you'll pay for it generally unless someone has no clue what they have.
history on the man-a-fre? well it's been a while,but this is what i remember. i grew up in hapeville ga. (suburb of atlanta) next to the airport. cant remember his name, but he had a blue stude coupe, a duece sedan and a garage in the back yard. pinkie thomason was his friend and maybe helped him design it?. pinkie ran 6-2/s ona MG td,352 stroker chevy. there was also a 55 chevy d/g***er at the strip running as a test mule. i remember the stude was being driven on the street daily. i saw it a lot because i worked at the drugstore in hapeville. some of these things rememberances may be fuzzy, this was 1963 or 64. I talked to a vendor in St LOUIS at the g***er meet a while back,he had a maf that said something california. So i guess they had california and atlanta castings?.
I ran one on the street for a short time in the early 70s in a 4 spd 62 Corvette. That is where I learned to adjust carbs. On the track all you adjust for is WOT. To actually drive it on the street with other cars around you, it takes a little more fiddlin'. I got it dialed in finally after I ditched the Unisyn POS and got a Holley syncronizer. There is no way to run progressive linkage so it takes some time to get it to idle smoothly. Touch one adjustment screw on one carb and you have to adjust the other 11 screws. Basically you are trying to syncronize 4-2 cyl engines tied together with a common crankshaft. It was not fun to drive in real life situations. It ran like a sripe-ed *** ape! (possibly a more highly evolved version of the spotted *** ape??) The throttle respose was amazing. It might work better in an automatic with a high stall speed converter but with a clutch it was very hard to be smooth. I'd almost fry the clutch trying to be smooth or break the tires loose giving it more gas. Break the tires loose?? **** YEAH you say. Smoke the tires or the clutch at every stop light or sign??? Not fun. I guess you could live with it if you drive it from your enclosed trailer 4 blocks away from the show field to your power parking spot, but if you actually drive it, you will tire of it very quickly. I did...and I wasn't an old fart back then! There is a reason that you don't see them on the street...it's not like no one ever tried. The Grafitti coupe has raised them to mythical proportions until you try to drive it in the real world. It is real cool in the fantacy world but not as cool in the real world. I wish I had kept mine because it had the optional electric solenoid controlled direct port injection. I took it off for street use. I have never seen a complete port injected one since that one.
Tommy you're right...the direct linkage is a awesome for throttle response...once you get them dialed in. That's how my offy is...each carb runs 2 cylinders...when you hit it...be pointed straight! I run it on the street with a little fiddlin...but the offy is easier to do that with. I have a 6 speed from a vette with a 4:30 9" and cheaters...it's a blast to drive!
Yes RacerRick. Go out to Charlie Price's vintagespeed.com and do search. I used the Rochester 2G's, which is the same as on the man-a-fre. Kinda pricey, but what isn't anymore.
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