Ford 427 SOHC engines

Great history! Thanks for posting this information.

 

A guy brought this into the shop last fall to get the carbs working right.

 

Damn! How cool is that?!! Thanks for posting this, oj.

 

What was this in, oj? Looks like it might have been a Cobra replica? Is this someone out there in the valley?

 

Its' in one of those Polish Cobras, all aluminum. The owner said a lady at a show looked at it and said 'you didn't say no to nuthin, did you' and that summed it up pretty much.
I couldn't really get it to run right, the superchargers needed to be disconnected because they are too close to the head and couldn't get the right amount of air when the motor needed it. I could make more power without the superchargers and the owner didn't want to hear that.
Oh well.
btw, theres a guy not far from you with a drag race cammer still in the crate. they fired it off a couple years ago for supposedly the very first time, i had a video of it. He also has a couple liteweight '63's, nice cars. the cammer has the 2 -4's, magnesium covers etc.

 

Thanks oj. Very cool!

 

Brain fart and old man disease on my part. Anything that happened to me over a week ago is fuzzy. I swear Frank owned a cammer but he has so much cool stuff that it's hard to keep track.

 

I was told that Ford made 500 cammers for Nascar and another 400 service(crate) motors. I've got crate motor number 364. I'm putting it in a '67 Fairlane HT. Hope to have it on the road before the end of summer.

 

..............Thanks for posting. Hope you post up some pictures of the Fairlane when the time comes.

 

I hope my memory is accurate, but, in the late 60's after I got out of the Army in 1968 and wanted to add a four barrel to my 1963 260 Ford Fairlane, I got some sort of factory takeoff (and for the life of me I can't remember what happened to it) from Gratiot in Chicago. As I remember you could buy crate SOHC motor for $1800, that was a lot of money to me back then when I was making about $100 a week

 

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^^^Holy smoke. Is that real? I can't imagine that its competitors would have liked seeing that show up.

(There's something funky going on with the first exhaust tube...)

 

Looks like some sort of heat riser...

Show up at a roundy-round track with that, and watch the SBC boys start crying murder.

 

Excellent thread.

I have been wanting to find more info on the earlyest/62-63? sohc design concept, many yrs back i got some parts from a hemi old timer, were talking about the 1964 dohc hemi deal and he mentioned to me that the original sohc design was first considered for a multi valve (3V). old timer told me the first/original plug placement was put at the exhaust side on purpose for more room for two int valves, with the other multi valve stuff ford was into back then, seems like there could be some kind of truth to this. Would anyone here have Any kind of info on this???.

have seen pic of early version and have been wondering about this for a while.

 

Wow, never seen that photo before. Thanks for posting it, Kazoom. Hope someone can come forward with more information..................Don.

 

Saw that car at Mission a number of times in the seventies. You can piece together a cammer from 100% re-pop pieces nowadays, short answer as to why you see so many all of a sudden.

 

Had one in a black Model A Tudor at one time as well.

 

Oh, oh, I just got a boner...

 

Motor Trend, 1964

 

More

 

Yessir, and Mr Bill did some damage with that car!

 

Many years ago, (like 20) I was over at Tom Posthumas place in Ladner, buying a set of headers for my Falcon. He took me into the shop, said "ever seen a set of these before?" and pulled a pair of Tunnel-Ports out from under the workbench. SCHAAAAWING!!!!

 

Ford also had prototypes for 289 SOHC and 3-valve SOHC 302s: Hot Rod...


(Of course, GM also experimented with SOHC configurations for Chevy and Pontiac motors, and Chrysler did the DOHC Hemi -- at one point in time those Hemi heads were owned by a guy in the KC area and had them on display during a Hemi Owners meeting. We were all slobbering over them.)

 

It's a damn shame that NASCAR then, as well as even worse today, just wouldn't let the boys have at it with their best junk. If the Mopar, Ford and GM engineers would have kept at the one-upmanship who knows what would have ended up under the hoods of cars back then. I was never a big Ford fan but seeing the cammers knock off the hemi would have been a beautiful thing to see. The big Ford vs Mopar vs GM rivalries were fun and gave meaning to the races.

Look at how NASCAR always beatdown innovators like Smokey Yunick or had rivalries where drivers go to blows on the track.

It always seemed cool to me as a kid to see the big 425 HP on the hood of the cars as they blasted by. Your could always tell that it was a Ford or Dodge or Chevy.

Today NASCAR is a battle of personalities with the cars not even mentioned most of the time. The COT - what the hell kind of car is that? And uggh...Danica Patrick the most hyped driver never have to won a race.

 

nitrobrother, thanks alot for posting that excellent mag info, is there any chance you could post the rest of the last artical info?, it is a Fantastic Read!. I also heard about the 3V sohc 302 and the bit of info about it there makes me think even more that the first 427 "experimental" concept could of also started out the same way, imagining the spark plug moved down on the current 427 sohc, i can see how a two int idea would of worked with a forked rocker, (kind of like the old DBI 3V hemi head forked shaft rocker). Sure would be neat to find out if they had a initial concept 3V wooden mock up for the 427 experimental also. I noticed also the 302 3V sohc mockup also has its spark plugs on the exhaust side just like the 427 prototype in the pics, neat that ford also used some of the 427 versions parts on the 302.

I got into the multi valve pushrod heads yrs back and have a few sets of the dominion 32v sbf heads so I am Very interested in any/all the multi valve projects from the past. man, I would love to find more pics of the 3V sohc sbf mock up also.

 

Isn't that a Holmann & Moody installation? I recall similar selling at Mecum auctions

 

Great info, nitrobrother and falcongeorge! Thanks a bunch for taking the time to post......Don.

 

a better pic of the 427 SOHC's little brother... the 3Valve 302 SOHC...

 

Sorry, been moving this past week and I didn't get reconnnected to the world until today. I've hunted around and evidently I don't have a scan of the rest of the article. A lot of my magazines were put in storage, so there's no way to get to the issue, but I'm pretty sure it was from 1968 if that helps in searching for it. If I get a chance, I'll do more hunting myself.

 

Aha, found the cover, June '68, on the Interwebzzz...