RARE! Cross-Boss Autolite In-line 4 Intake, Ford Boss 302 4V 

When I was a young engineer at Ford, circa 1992, I had a supervisor that specialized in engine induction. He dabbled in carbs, turbos, superchargers and installed them on whatever he could get his hands on from Mustangs in the 60's to Mark VIII's in the mid 90's. One day he asked if I had ever heard of the in-line 4 bbl that Ford had done for the Trans Am series. I replied no and he reached down and pulled one out of his bottom desk drawer. Said he was on the design team for that project. Super cool carb and super cool boss. Tom Johnson was his name.

Just about as close to a fuel injection system as you can get while still being an emulsion "carburetor" Ford was never shy about going racing! Thanks for sharing, excellent! J.

I worked at a speed shop in the mid ‘70s. It was not the best paying job, also not paying on time. That was the time to leave and he couldn’t pay me my last paycheck. So I made a deal a NOS Cross Boss intake instead of the paycheck and I gave him some money for the NOS 875 in-line carburetor. This also reminds me of a Drag Boss 302 Maverick. I think it was the Berger (?) Brothers that ran it with a custom top plate on the Cross Boss manifold and two of the larger CFM inline carburetors.

I am an old man with a serious hard on for engines. Have had it for over 50 years. I don't care if it is a ford, chevy, pontiac, dodge, whatever. The cars themselves are a close 2nd, but what they have under the hood is what gets me in tripod mode. Thanks 69Jenks for a fabulous RU-vid presentation.

The 60's and 70's really were a time of great experimentation in auto racing.

About 25 years ago I had a grabber yellow 70 Boss 302 with that intake.......of course it was a 1/24 monogram plastic model, but I did do a good job building it. I also had an orange Boss 429 too😁👍

Owned at 69 Boss 302 when new and a 70 later long in life. Loved those cars, always "lusted" about the cross boss 302.

The " holy grail " of Ford performance , right up there with the 429 SCJ with the NASCAR Holly three barrel carb .

That Autolite inline 4 by itself is worth a chunk of money.

Before I met an old friend he owned a Boss 302 Mustang. He bought one of these carb/intakes and ran it at the drag strip and on the street. Don't remember much else. I do remember seeing pictures of this set up in "hot rod" magazines of the period. It is a cool intake and carb!

This is cool. Lifetime Ford and though I’d seen most all the rare stuff. This was a new one for sure. Thanks for sharing this.

I used to see the inline carburetors for sale at swap meets on occasion in the late 80s early 90s, never saw the manifolds though. Now they are whispers and stuff of legend. I wish I had bought a couple back in the day :/ Thanks for this video, outstanding.

That's really cool! I've never seen that setup before. Thank you...

Thanks to a viewer on a previous Vid of mine mentioning & making a comment about this Intake, I thought I’d do a clip about it after finding out that there’s not much out there on it 🤷🏼‍♂️🏁

My old friend, Ray Hoffeld, just passed. He was involved in racing years ago. He sold two brand new, never unwrapped Cross Bosses, complete with carbs, a couple of years ago. I don't know who bought those, but when he would pull those out, spanking brand new "in-the-box", it was like looking at artwork. I had always hoped to buy one of those from him. Too bad I didn't know he was selling them, but I'm sure he got a lot more $$$ than I could afford.

When iwas in high school,1978, my auto shop teacher had one of these,every Ford guy in school tried to get that but he wouldn't give it up. Unfortunately this great man who was not only a great teacher and a great influence passed away recently. God bless you Sir . Mr. Phil DeChambeau Henry Ford ll high school Sterling Hts. Mich.

Bought one at a carburetor shop in VA about 1973 FOR 175.00. Always intended to buy a Boss 302 to build with it. Mine had the 900cfm model which you appear to also have. They also made a 1400 which you always saw on the dual tops. Strictly high RPM Trans Am stuff.

There was a set up that used two of these, in the US they were used on 289’s as well as the Boss engines. Whether or not they were used in Trans Am, I couldn’t tell you, but the local performance dealer had two sets of these on the walls. Pretty cool old stuff!

My good friend bought a new Boss 12:1 302 shortblock, 1970 Boss cylinder heads, Cross Boss intake, and the 850 inline carburetor from Ford. The heads ported by Valley Head Service w/ titanium valves, and a big wicked cam (big mistake). I helped him put it together and into a '65 Mustang 2+2 fastback.

Been around ford's all my life and I've never seen one of these. Thanks for showing !

All of my ford researching since highschool and I somehow missed this. Kraxy

that cross boss 351 by Rousch looks awesome! I do like the idea of the inline carbs allowing straighter runners to the intake ports!

I've been searching my memory, and think I may have heard or read about an Autolite inline 4-barrel carburetor, but had never seen one. And had definitely never heard about the Cross-Boss intake setup. That just looks totally badass. I don't mind that you keep panning the same pictures over and over in the video. I'm just feasting my eyes on that badassery.

Hi, I can help fill in some info. I ran one in the early 70's on a boss 302 drag car. The combo was developed for the trans am series. In 1968 Ford won Trans Am with a "tunnel port" head 302 with dual 4 barrels. SCCA was going to outlaw heads that were not available on production cars and 8V carbs for a single 4 barrel. Ford built the Boss "Cleveland" heads (already in development for the new 351C) in response. The cross boss intake was not a new "technology", many cross ram intakes for hi rpm use were available for several other makes, Chevy & Chrysler ran them on small & big block engines also. (Check out the "rat roaster" for the 426 hemi.) Ford also ran one on the Boss 429 for NASCAR. The cross ram style intakes were available from Mickey Thompson and others starting in the mid sixties. The Autolite inline was totally new. Fuel distribution with a single 4 barrel carb on a cross ram was not good, Most successful setups ran dual 4s. So the inline carb was built to alleviate the problem. Another, probably smaller issue, was carb cfm size. The largest Holley 4 at the time was 850 cfm. Interestingly the Holley Dominator was being developed for Ford by Holley for the NASCAR Boss 429 about this same time. The Autolite in line was a great idea to solve the distribution problem and potentially give a large performance advantage over the new Z 28 Chevy thus the 2 different cfm sizes to try, the 1400 cfm being close in size to 2, 4 barrels as previously used, in one carb! And a 850 in case the 1400 is outlawed. Now the bad news! As most "new" experiments, the carb had "baked-in" problems. The layout is basically 2, 2 barrel carbs, which would work, however Autolite used the float, and needle and seat from existing regular passenger car 2 barrel carbs. Hey, might as well "save some money" right?! This, with the bowl size being criminally way to small in volume, plus the tiny 5/16 fuel inlets doomed the carbs for racing. As a side note, they also used the accelerator pumps from the 2v carbs also, at least they used 4 of them! The jets and replaceable air bleeds, were great, similar to Weber carbs, lack of lots of easily available parts/sizes were not. As much as I liked the set up, a tunnel ram with conventional Holley 4s worked much better! Dyno Don Nickelson, did much development on the carbs early on for drag racing, but never obtained a performance advantage. Every thing of importance I know about them came from him! Now can we talk about the horrible exhaust ports! (Solved by Gapp & Roush) a few years later! Hope this helps. Also check out Hot Rod magazine from those years, I don't remember the month, but they were on the cover! Best of luck! First On Race Day!

I have read about these first time I have seen one Cool great Vlog

That's cool first time I ever seen one of those👍✌

Wow I've never seen that. Thanks so much for sharing!! Definitely Bad Ass!!

WOW have never heard of that. Thanks for sharing. Amazing

thank you for doing this video since i saw this intake here its been in 3 different magizenes but you showed it to me first you are the man thank you

I think maybe possibly I recall seeing pictures of this intake in auto magazines back in the day.

I saw one on a 66 mustang with a boss 302 back in 1980 at a car show in Monroe CT, hope he still has it .

I remember reading about this intake in the car magazines back then. Never seen one in person.

I built a Revell model kit of a 66 350 H Mustang that had this setup in the kit.I have always thought it was aftermarket and wondered why it came with a stock model.Now I know.Subbed

This looks like something you would see on an aircraft engine. This would also be really cool to make out billet aluminum

That's wicked! Hello from Tennessee, BTW 😎

I have Always wanted to get my hands on the Autolite inline 4 carb... I would love to try two on a tunnel ram! Thanks for posting this...

Pretty cool. Thanks for the information.

I've seen these in a Hot Rod magazine many years ago. only they had two these Autolitle carburetors sitting atop of a manifold. it was reminiscent of Hillborn injectors. that was back in the days when Autolitle and Motorcaft and FoMoCo were a big part of Ford Motor Company. the Dura Spark distributors and control modules were made under the Autolitle and Motorcaft names. and used some of the same components as MSD ignition uses. in fact the pickups in the distributors are the exact same thing. and Autolitle and Motorcaft carburetors utilized the same components as Holley carburetors. with the diaphragm accelerator pumps and power valves. I always liked the fact that Ford Motor Company used reliability proven components. that high performance parts manufacturers used. its something that a lot people don't know that Ford did.

My dream car of many decades ago was an AC cobra with a cross boss 302 boss instead of the 289 or big heavy 427. Today, though, it would be a factory five cobra with a "cleveor" (?) 427. (351 boss block, stroked to 7.0L and aluminium heads.)

I was lucky enough late 70's to have purchased 2 manifolds and 2 carbs. One was the 875cfm set and the other was the 1400cfm set (which was brand new). I raced stock cars back then and had a 289 with Boss 302 heads and installed the 875 set. It took some tuning but when right it was awesome. Unfortunately I got protested just about every week as they said the rules stated a single 4bbl and they claimed the inline carb didn't conform to the rules. The sanctioning body had to rewrite the rules stating no inline carbs. A good friend has them in his collection of Ford parts but won't sell them. I wish I knew at the time how rare they are now. The sound that the (Boss 289 with the Cross Boss) was scary.

saw one very similar about 2 months ago, the gentleman swore it was off a 260 cid '66 Shelby Cobra, it didn't have the Cross Boss foundry lettering, it had Ford embossed emblem marks, He also had one with, I believe 4 Webers, that came off a GT350 mustang.

Very cool, my friends old man had a 351 with triple 2 barrels in a fast back. The motor as chained to the frame cause it broke motor mounts

When I was 18, long ago, I bought a never used Cross Boss manifold and a very used 1425 cfm version of the carb. It now sits in storage. I had always wanted to put together a boss, but, life...

Very cool part !

I saw one on a transplanted Boss 302 in a 65 Mustang circa 1974 in Denver. Very bad-ass The two piece manifold design lent itself to a number of possibilities by swapping the top plate to use a more traditional Holly or one/two of the Autolites or triple-power. The Bud Moore manifold demonstrates this flexibility ... now build a custom top plate for 4 x 48IDA Webbers ..

I know alot about the 302 and I have never seen this. My 67 Cougar 302 needs one.

I would love to have one of those

Super Rare , Never seen one in Carolina , Ripper...

Super cool

Thats like a hens tooth, I've never seen that before.

Good stuff 🤙

There was a NOS one for sale on eBay last year . . . $7,500.00, and worth every penny . . . the carbs show up on eBay every now and then too, also not cheap.

The guy below is right it was for Trans Am, to break Penske’s dominance. This is as close to fuel injection with a carb. Hot Rod magazine and Sports Car Graphic ran articles about it saying it would flow close to 1,000 cfm if memory serves me correct. They also had a 2x4 setup that was aligned side by side ramming in to the intake ports

Nice set up. I not seen one I think in person

I've only seen one, intake and carb sold for $7,200. That is one rare beast. I believe they made two a 825 CFM and a 1450 CFM.

Wow! My dad used to race this carb setup in the early seventies here in Regina Saskatchewan, Canada on a circle track. He had the 850cfm version. At that time I think Ford called it the "off highway operation" O.H.O. program. I still have the period race parts catalogs and specs. here with me, lol. I wish I had the price list for it! The Boss 302 he had also had the ultra rare Ford Nascar rods and pistons with titanium valves in the heads as well. Seems to me he said that the whole engine, carb and intake cost him around $1500 Canadian dollars at the time in 1971 or 72, which would have been nearly half the cost of a new sedan back then. The reason he bought the inline carb was because the Holleys they were using were having fuel starvation problems during hard cornering. The inline 4V solved it. Old school exotic parts for sure. Eventually that engine got sold to a guy who put it in a dragster. Don't know what happened to it after that. Thanks for doing this video!! These are really cool engine parts that only made a brief appearance, that few people ever knew about.

Wish I had one ❤

That looks.like a power maker.. especially with a tunnel ram and boost..

I knew a guy in high school who’s dad had a complete Cross Boss set up on a 351 Cleveland in a drag boat.

I used to have the issue of HOT ROD with this on the front

Looks killer Janks 🏁🏁🏁

I have seen a few of the dual 4V manifolds in magazines. Never seen a single 4V. Rare is an under statement.

The Holy Grail of Ford small block racing division ...

Wow I've never seen one, at first I thought it was TBI

Where in the HECK did you find that?????

GM and Nascar, Transam outlawed the very best of Ford's engines, the Cammer which would have crushed the big block era in Nascar and the Cross Boss which was vastly faster with much more horsepower and a ridiculous hi end amount of power. I'd love to have one but many parts were not available to the general public.

I've always thought of the manifold and carb as being close to a 4 barrel Weber down draft. I'm wondering if the SCCA banned these because there was no common plenum in the intake manifold. You basically had one throttle venturi for every pair of cylinders front to back. If these had stayed legal I suspect every other team would have bought ones over the parts counter.

Looks like a Weber Design.. They had interchangable Venturi's? Webers did too and Jets changes were easy as well. You basically can Change the size of carb without buying a new one. Flow rate CFM. If they they are a reversed engineered Weber they should be really good. Had 44MM Duals on a VW a few years ago. Very smooth and linear.

Neat.

How is this setup performance wise compared to a traditional four barrel intake?

I'm curious as to why they used an in and out water cooling system and if it was a closed and separated cooling just for the intake. Seems overkill for intake manifold design although it is intended for racing and not a daily driver.

Huh, never heard of this. It sort of looks like 2 Weber IDAs without velocity stacks put together in one casting. Interesting idea.

Developed by Ack Miller fords performance advisor back in the 60s

Looks like the predecessor to the EFI of 87-95.

*Would this be hard to duplicate today, is there a market for it, and could you modify the top of the intake to either accept the single four barrel carburetor, or have two four (left and right) barrel carburetors...*

I know a guy that owned multiples. Sold them all last time i saw his Ford cache lol

10 or 15 years ago Demon made a similar carb and intake for Chevys and Fords.

Wonder how that set-up would work on a healthy 289 ?

I did not know this Cross-Boss even existed! Who produced the intake. was it Roush? It certainly looks awesome! Was it produced only for Aussie Fords? Thanks for posting sir. Cheers from Michigan USA.

I bought one of these setups at a swap meet along with NOS Factory Cleveland heads with the original twine around the rocker shafts 10 yrs ago. I paid everything in my pocket right down to every penny. Ran out of gas on the way home. $1163.74. for everything. Had them in my shop for 5 yrs. Then some druggy broke into it and stole them. Police caught the guy who did it but never did recover the cross boss or heads. Ugh....

I've seen them on Ford's from the trans am series only seen 2 on the street

5:36 is Roush coming out with a reproduction or is that fuel injection...

Looks like a pair of modified webers with a top plate added

Barry Grant I believe remade these for a short time

What the hell is this?! Nice 👌

Wasn't there a production cross boss with eight Weber carburetors?

My dad had one these he’s been a trans am nut since he was teenager some one stole it from his shop in late eighties.

Dyno numbers? 302 Boss. NASCAR High Port 351 Cleveland?

Ford also made a 8 v cross boss it is in the Ford off hiway only parts and performance manual

G’day mate, I’m a lucky owner of a Autolite D0ZX9510 B .. which I’d the 1425 cfm, for a 4v clevo

try and find a Bud Moor intake for a 351 Cleveland 4V.

Inline carbs were not new to racing then as Porsche used two three barrel Weber carbs on the flat six 2.0 litre motors from 1967 , also some Shelby 289 used 4 weber 48 or 50mm Weber carbs good for about 50 hp more.

This one was almost top of the Trans Am racing game - with the engine so attuned to top end power they needed something super clean running at low RPM but would breathe massive amounts of air at high RPM and this was it - almost. The Cross Boss had the perfect blend to do the job - except... At high G cornering speeds, the fuel in the bowls climbed the side of the bowls uncovered the jets, and fuel mixture went straight to hell. Really close to the performance of mechanical injection in a carburetor yet still legal. Too bad - it almost made it, but fuel slosh killed it.

I remember reading about these when they were introduced. Ford wanted to run them in the Trans-Am series. The rules were that it had to be available to the public. It was......sorta. You could go to a Ford dealership and order it. But it would never come in.

Never seen anything like that on anything here in the states

Gap and roush we're going to run two of these in pro stock and they got banned, or was it somebody else! This was going to be a big deal for Ford. It's a pity they didn't put them into production but then again that combination is basically for racing only

A car dealer in Muskogee, OK in 1970 tried to obtain a boss 302 with this set up from Bud Moore, but multiple engines blew up in the dirt car he sponsored. Apparently the engines were dyno mules. I heard the words "cross boss" in 1970

For the man who has everything...Didn't they make a twin Autolite Inline as well?

Didnt they also make one that used two of the Autolite inline carbs? I cant help think this was a attempt to copy the performance of the Weber 48 IDF series.

Well done and very rare are you Australian