My only experience with them was in my Uncle's 61 F350 service truck and some old lift equipment. Hated the sound of the starter, but the exhaust note was pretty good. Also hated that stupid front mounted exhaust crossover, who the hell came up with that crap? Burnt my arm more than once on that stupid crossover.
There are built Y Blocks in full size cars, normally aspirated, turning in the 11's. Picture is the E Code engine in my 57, a California survivor. View attachment 3349734 View attachment 3349734 View attachment 3349734
Yeah but that boat anchor you sold me came out pretty sweet, eh? Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
We're only talking good things here, right ? OK, then ... my fondest OHV Ford story ... It's summer 1965, & we're sitting in Oscar's out in El Cajon drinking coffee about 2 in the morning. The only other car besides my '54 Chev hardtop is a half green, half black primer '55 Mainline with no hood, Casler recaps, & 2 big 4 bbls showing. We're half done when the pass side guy walks back to us & asks for a little help. Since we're both 6 volt still, jump start's not an option, so we push him back to the back row & 3 of us give it all we got for 30 feet & he dumps the clutch. Damn, what a rush ... I think he said it had a Schaller 1/4 speed cam & a half inch stroker. I will never forget that sound ...
Joe, both the valve covers and the stainless headers come from "Spotlite Kustom Accessories). They are a small startup outfit manufacturing a reimagined line of nostalgia inspired accessories for older engines. You can check them out here, http://www.spotlitekustomaccessories.com/ Not sure if the site is up to date, as I know they were working on a valley cover that would work with the factory 2x4 Y block intake, and that should be available by now as the prototype was shown a couple of months ago. The quality of the two items that I bought was excellent.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=639785326188004 My old Y-block with a few mods,cam,highlift rocker,milled heads,homemade intake4x2,Headers made from a freeset/cracked SBC rebuilt to Y-block
I think Y-blocks are pretty good. They make very good power with nothing but stock off the shelf parts, all you need is the right combination.
I've not built a y-block yet but plan to for a late 50s/early 60s style 32 coupe. I've started to collect some speed parts. Edelbrock 657, polished edelbrock valve covers, and some mallory dual point dizzies.
Are 4 barrel intakes hard to find? Seems like a heap of triple carb items but not so many 4 barrel for the Y's.
Factory 4bbl intakes are not especially hard to find ... especially the early small-base ones. New aluminum 4bbl intakes are being made now as well.
Not hard to find but the price of a cast iron "B" manifold has gone from Boat Anchor to the $200+ range these days. They do work well and take some easy mods. John Mummert makes and sell some very nice Intakes. Not to mention all the other goodies. I run a Blue Thunder intake on my TBird stroker. It's a real quality piece. These 4's generally outperform the trip setups.
Y-block won way mird races in 57 than chev and had wsy mire power. Had ford kept developing the Y-block it would of gt even better. I always consider it a down grade when a y-block is removed to fit a 302/289 windsor. Sent from my SM-T805Y using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I gained some respect for the y block a couple weeks ago while visiting the in-laws. My father in law uses this old Ford daily on the farm. The engine looks like it has never been cleaned but it runs great. Only thing wrong was a sticky throttle that was easily fixed.
If by "way more" you mean 17 more, then sure. But the Y block was supercharged and the Chevy was NA, so that means absolutely nothing, other than that Ford's design was so inferior to the Chevrolet that they had to resort to supercharging to make it a fair fight. (BTW, though Ford won more NASCAR races in 1957, Chevy actually won on driver points). If you consider a swap to a Windsor engine a retro-grade on cool factor, then yes, I would agree. But if you consider the Y block a superior performance engine to the Windsor, I'd kindly ask you to pass whatever it is you're smoking over this way and PM the contact for your dealer, because that is some good, strong shit.
Ted Eaton,Lorena Texas(near Waco) is an absolute genius with Y BLOCKS. I've seen his altered roadster with homemade intake manifold run at Little River (Temple-Academy) and this machine ran low 9's at 140 plus about 3 years ago; this roadster is a SCREAMER! He operates a successful machine shop and is very knowledgable with this Ford engine.
Maybe I've posted this, but the story of Karol Miller driving his '56 Victoria to Bonneville from Texas and kicking ass is one of the great "common man" stories that I love. http://www.yblockguy.com/articles/KarolMillerStory.html
56 312ci y block 9.5 compression Fenton 3x2 intake Holley 94’s Edmunds air cleaners Mummert aluminum heads,valley pan and thermostat housings Thunderbird valve covers 57 garage can fuel filter Roto Faze dual coil,dual points distributor Rear sump truck oil pan Frank Rice Aluminum timing cover and water pump Just got it out of the shop that I trusted to put it together for me, L&R Engines. Have been collecting parts for years,wanted to be a little different
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