thePULSEMass-Flo’s Chris Richards Turns up the Torque
By Dennis Vasconcelos
Chris, thanks for taking time out of your schedule. You’re about to make a whole bunch of speed and performance freaks very, very happy. It’s not often we get to talk with someone this inventive and successful in the aftermarket performance-enhancement business.
Some of our audience will read the on-line description of what you’ve created and now manufacture,” THE WORLD’S ONLY TRUE PLUG AND PLAY FUEL INJECTION SYSTEM, and know exactly what it means. Others (and by that I mean me) might need a little more info. Can you boil it down to laymen’s terms?
Sure… Basically, “plug and play” means that you can simply install the system, make a few simple adjustments, and you’re done. The whole process can be done over a weekend, and the system will provide vastly superior performance over any carburetor, or any other fuel injection system. Any aftermarket fuel injection system can be installed in roughly the same amount of time, but the installation is usually just the beginning. Every other fuel injection system on the planet requires weeks of tuning just to get them close to running properly. And it can take years to work out all the little bugs. More often than not, they never end up getting tuned properly because the customer either runs out of patience, or money, or both. Even if they do get it right, it will never be as good as our system is right out of the box. The difference is in the type of management system we use. In a nutshell, we eliminate the need for the customer to spend all that time programming. Our system takes care of all of that for you. Plug and Play!
OK, now let loose with some true gearhead-speak about what the system can really do for a car…why someone would want to swap out their factory fuel/air system for yours?
The most obvious reason would be horsepower and torque. Because the system will always provide the optimum air/fuel ratio, it will always provide max power at any given time. A carburetor’s mechanical limitations mean that your air/fuel ratio is close, but seldom ever dead on. Also, a carburetor is as good as it will ever be the day you install it, and it’s all down hill from there. A good fuel injection system is forever adapting to changes in atmospheric conditions, and normal wear and tear literally has no real effect on a good system.
Factory fuel injection systems have their limitation as well. They work wonders on a stock engine, but try to make any significant modifications to the engine, and they are lost. Problem number one is the fact that they are typically too restrictive to allow for any meaningful performance gains. But that fact aside, the stock management systems (with very few exceptions) have no idea what to do with the changes made to the engine. Making horsepower is simply a game of making an engine ingest as much air as possible, and then adding the appropriate amount of fuel to that air, then making it burn that air/fuel charge as efficiently is possible. Stock fuel injection systems are tuned to work with the stock engine’s configuration. Change it, and they are lost.
Our system works with any combination of parts. We just set it up appropriately for the application, and ship it to the customer. We also build in quite a bit of room to grow. The customer can make literally any change to the engine they desire, and the system will pick it up and run, usually without making any changes to the system. If the engines mods are dramatic enough to warrant an upgrade to our system, the needed upgrade is simple and inexpensive.
Power increases are nice of course, but I think the best reason to add fuel injection to your vehicle is drivability. Our fuel injection system can turn a car that is an absolute bear to drive into something that rivals a modern production vehicle, something that once required constant fiddling, into something that you just jump in and drive, day in and day out. Times have changed. Gone are the days when the average enthusiast had time to fiddle with his pride and joy. These days, if you can get away from the daily grind for an hour or so, you want to drive the thing and enjoy how it runs! And when you’re done, you want to put it away and have it be ready for your next ride. Often times, these cars just sit around because they don’t run right. We put a stop to all that nonsense. Your classic car can run and drive like a modern car, and it’s just a weekend’s work to do it.
Let’s not forget fuel economy. You can expect to get significant gains in fuel economy. While it is not the norm, it is not at all uncommon for customers to report gains as high as 75%! You can expect a gain between 25 and 50%. At today’s fuel prices, one of our fuel injection systems can pay for itself in a few years.
I noticed the system is listed for V8s only ~ Chevy 502 Big Blocks, Ford 428 FEs, Supercharged Ford 302s. Why is that? Nothing for 6s or 12s?
We have experimented with success on some 6s and can also convert a 4 cylinder engine, but have not actually done so. Our processor with not run more than 8 cylinders, so the V10s and 12s are out. V8s are where my passion lies, though. I have no interest in 6 cylinder engines, and even less in the 4 bangers…Just not my thing, and I think it is important to do something you love, hence the concentration on V8s.
How’d you come up with the idea for the Mass-Flo?
Honestly, one of my Cobra customers (there was a time when we built kit cars to order) just kept bugging me to come up with something that was functional and attractive. I had plenty of experience with the other fuel injection systems, and wasn’t going there again. So I ended up prototyping my own. It worked so well, I did it a few more times. Somewhere along the way, someone convinced me that I was thinking too small, so I decided to start taking it more seriously. I formed another corporation, and Mass-Flo EFI was born.
Did you design it yourself?
Sort of…All the other companies were designing their own management systems. This is absolutely foolish. A management system had already been in existence for years in a production vehicle and it was everything everybody was looking for already. All I did was come up with a way to apply that management system to an induction system that could breathe and make some horsepower. I then expanded that management system to work on many other applications. The benefits of using production management components are obvious. First of all, they actually work! Second, parts are available all over the world and always will be. You can’t get that benefit anywhere else. The other guys come and go, and the ones that stick around change components constantly, leaving the people who bought last year’s system out in the cold. Parts for my fuel injection system will be around long after I am dead and gone.
I did design the induction systems. These are non-wearing parts. Intake manifolds don’t go bad!
You know some guys are going to be wary of messing with the look of what’s under their hood…
There will always be the purists. I respect those people. Hell… I’m one of them! That’s why I wanted to make it look as much like a carbureted system as possible. Most people look at a car with one of my systems and just assume it’s carbureted. There is not much to give it away at first glance. Most people will not even notice that it has been converted until you point it out. Then they notice the fuel rails, and look a little closer.
Mark Weber at Factory Five Racing (check out www.factoryfive.com), the world’s leading component car manufacturer right here in MA, tells me that your systems are FFR’s preference for the high-end kit cars they build and for their own race cars. How’d you get involved with FFR?
I built a race car for myself once. While in the process, I decided that building these cars to order for people would be a cool business. I sold that first car to that first Cobra customer as soon as it was completed, and the orders started pouring in, including a steady flow from FFR. I had a backlog as long as 5 years at times. That was a fun time. The FFR gang are good people. I spent many long hours with those guys at various events and car shows. Especially Mark. Dave Smith and Mark Weber are some of the best quality people I know. Then the Mass-Flo business grew so quickly that it just sort of took over. There was no time for building cars anymore. I can honestly say that is the part of the business I miss most.
Any particular vehicles you’ve contributed to that really stand out in your mind?
Yeah, just one I guess. The car belongs to that same guy who bugged me relentlessly to make him a fuel injection system. That car has my prototype system on it. I’d say my best memories of that car had as much to do with the people associated with the car as with the car itself. FFR had their annual national event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway one year. Tony (the car’s owner) and his wife Nancy, my wife Colleen and I, and the whole FFR gang spent a few days in Vegas, some of it at the track. I convinced one of the employees at The Richard Petty Experience to take Tony out on the track with the Cobra. It was a great moment for all involved. Tony got a thrill out of being out on the track with his Cobra, and I got the satisfaction of seeing my first fuel injection system, installed on my favorite Cobra, being flogged out on the oval. Both performed well. I’m not sure if the guy from the Richard Petty Experience still had a job when it was all done. He was bending the rules for sure, and there were some important looking people who were looking upset…
What’s next for you?
Pro-M Racing. Anyone who is involved in Ford performance knows who Pro-M racing is…or was, anyway. They had the only rear practical solution for anyone with a Ford who wanted to make some real power. They offered replacements for the restrictive mass air flow meters found in the production vehicles. These meters were not only much larger than the production meters, allowing the needed airflow, but they also were calibrated to various injector sizes, allowing customers to make modifications to the engine, and use larger injectors, without the need for dyno tuning. Sound familiar?
When Pro-M went out of business in ‘05 (due to very poor management), they left a huge hole in the performance world. People scrambled to come up with an alternative, fighting over the remnants of the company. In the end, a few companies came out with their own solutions, but they were and are terrible options. But I now own the intellectual properties, the patents, and the rights to the products. I’ve spent most of the last year resurrecting the mess back into the great company it once was. New molds, more efficient processes, better products. I’ve only recently begun offering the products again. I wanted to make sure that the products exceeded anything that was ever previously offered before we re-opened. We now make mass air meters that are three times more accurate than anything ever offered by even the OE manufacturers!
You can find Pro-M products offered through some of the finest outfits in the business, including Summit, Jegs, Late Model Restoration, Mustangs Unlimited, and more. Our new website, www.pro-mracing.com, should be up and running by the time this people are reading this article. I intend to put Pro-M back in its rightful place.
Mass-Flo EFI, Inc.
www.mass-floefi.com
Pro-M Racing, Inc.
www.pro-mracing.com
(508) 867-6733
