how did they trick out the NASCAR Y-blocks back in the day?

Pir8Darryl thanks for a very clear reminder of how "stock" worked then and now.

1more car I promise, Rex Winter
Dry n windy Lubbock TX

 

Edelbrock made the first dual quad manifold for the Y block in 1954 for the Mercury, I believe it was E254 (probably wrong on the number). Ford offered a Power Performance package in 1956 at the parts counter. B6A-9000-B. 2 special Holley teapots, aluminum manifold and cam (I'm told it was an Isky). I believe 2 air cleaners. One for NASCAR by Purolator and one for street use. The kit was designed for law enforcement and racing. The manifold looked closer to the Edelbrock Merc than the one in 57 which needed a special valley cover. Edelbrock continued manufacturing the manifolds in 57 with bigger ports. I’m not sure if it’s been written down who made the 56 manifold. Ford and Merc used them and Ford won the NASCAR convertible division in 1956.
There are a few builders today. Ted Eaton, Tim McMaster, John Mummert, and John Kasse among others come to mind. The Holleys would be very hard to find today and were different than the normal car. As a side note Karol Miller has a 56 Ford Victoria in the same Manderan Orange and Colonial White as his original. The engine was built by Ted Eaton.

Here what the NASCAR Purolator air cleaner looks like and it was different for the Ford/Merc than the other makes. The proper decal is on the right side The intake is an Edelbrock made for the 57 and the carbs are small base Carter WCFB's.

 

Jimmy six - if you have documentation on an Edelbrock dual quad in 1954, I would pay for a photocopy for my files.

The information that I have (and no written documentation, only "word of mouth") is that Edelbrock produced a limited run of 50 "prototype" dual quad intakes for Ford for 1956 to use the Carter 2361s WCFB to be used on the 1956 Mercury. I don't have a production date on this intake, but the 2361's weren't released until fall of 1955.

Holley wasn't happy about this, and offered the modified Holley 4000's to Ford for 1956 (Holley list R-1268) at a lower cost than the Carter, but wanted Ford to use a different intake.

I don't have any information as to produced the new intake, but the new production intake had carburetor spacings which were too close for the Carter, but just right for the Holley 4000 (a.k.a. teapot, a.k.a. haystack).

Edelbrock wasn't happy about this, as Ford didn't continue to purchase the early intake, so Edelbrock changed the dies to remove the Ford part number and placed an Edelbrock part number on the intake, and continued to sell the wide spacing intake aftermarket.

Two different sets of Holley 4000's were released in 1957, one set for S/T, the other set for A/T. The S/T set used two Holley R-1434; whereas the A/T set used the R-1434 rear, and a R-1437 for the front.

And I completely concur about the original Holleys being difficult to find. One has a better chance of winning an argument with the IRS that finding a set of the R-1268's. The R-1434 and R-1437 do surface occasionally, but are quite pricey when they do surface.

For the non-numbers-matching enthusiast, fairly simple (if you have access to a good jewelers lathe) to make functioning clones of the above using the more common R-1161 Holleys. The major difference was Holley machined "collars" that fitted on the primary boosters to reduce the air flow. Jetting was different, but machining and fitting the collars would be the main challenge.

Even with the collars, the carbs were just too big, even for NASCAR racing. Virtually every set we rebuilt 30 to 45 or so years ago came in with an adjustable set screw on the linkages to limit the secondary travel. One of the series champions from the NASCAR West (not certain of exact NASCAR series name anymore) was from my hometown. Spoke with him at length about this. He mentioned the Holley single 4 for 1957 numbered R-1272 (type 4150) was more "track friendly" because one didn't have to detune it. With the instrumentation many teams had in 1957, getting the linkage restrictions on the dual set "just right" was difficult.

With the instrumentation currently available, it should not be difficult to get the restrictions just right, or possibly with better cams and head porting, the secondary restrictions might not be necessary today.

Jon.

 

Always gotta be one Chebbrainwashed on the bus to throw that crap out there

 

X

 

The stock 312 heads from 1957 flow better than the famed 283 Chevy fuel injection heads.

 

Sir, if you can only remember one Ford winning in NASCAR, you must not have been paying much attention from 63-on. Fireball Roberts was in a Galaxie by 63. Never heard of Fred Lorenzen, Curtis Turner, Dan Gurney, Mario Andretti, Cale Yarbrough, David Pearson, Ned Jarrett, Lee Roy Yarborough for example? Bud Moore Engineering, Holman and Moody, the Wood Brothers? And in most cases, that was Petty Plymouths, not Dodges, until Plymouth no longer existed. And I supplied the steel crank for the Roberts tribute 63 Galaxie, the intake for the 63 next to the Lorenzen 65 which is a Gurney Riverside tribute, and the breather system for the red 63 Curtis Turner car

 

agreed and all those guys used FE,s not boat anchor Y blocks. The 63 Tiny Lund race simply was the first I remembered I was 12 years old at the time. Remember Wendell Holl ? he also raced a ford. Im a big fan of the FE engines. Only poor engineering on them was the restrictive exhaust manifolds.

 

Seems like the South American Fords did damn fine with y blocks for decades

 

If you weren't part of this team in the mid to later 60's you were on the wrong team.

Fords Total Performance program was in full swing with results needed to keep the bean counters happy.

 

I thought someone posted that the Y block Fords won the convertible championship in 56.

That sounds like domination, or close to it, at least to me.

 

I like to look at these old cars, back when NASCAR was “real”. I think thst #28 is Fred Lorezen car. Look at the seat it that car! They just took a stock bucket seat out of a production car and bolted it in with some extra seat/shoulder belts! That back when racing was racing! Miss those days.










Bones

 

The racing was pretty good although sometimes kind of lopsided. Crashes like the kind Ryan Newman took would not be survivable with the lack of safety features that are built into todays cars.

Good to see he walked out of the hospital. Amazing really.

 

As far as how durable the Y blocks were. My brother had a 54 ford and wrapped it around a telephone pole. It was a 239. We went to the junkyard and got a nice 55 2dr customline? body and swapped the engine and trans out of the 54. It was a stick shift. He got drunk I guess and ran it out of oil quite a few miles from home one night. When he came home it woke me up in bed from all the racket it was making. We yanked the engine out of it and replaced it with a 312. We pulled the pan on that 239 and I couldn't believe how bad the crank was. It had one journal that looked like it was chewed a fourth of the way through! All the rods were blue. It was absolutely galled and chewed up everywhere. I have never seen an engine in that bad of shape that was still running. Lippy

 

Great information Jon. My info comes from the net. Yblock intake manifold list. Timmy's list.

I'm was semi guessing since there is an Edelbrock M254 on the list along with the FM 255 and FM 257. It didn't make sense to me that they would go back after making the FM255 to make such a limited use manifold. I surmised the M254 was first.

Spacing has always been weird to me. The manifold on mine is a 257 as I ground it off as a tribute to the 56 power package. I was offered a real manifold for a Ford 56 with the air cleaner but turned it down since I had the 257 already. I purchased the air cleaner from another HAMB member but I didn't know that at the time. He replies here often.

The air cleaner I purchased came complete. Cover, carb plate, and metal mesh air filter. Since my plan was WCFB's I could not use the bottom because of the diameter of the holes and not wanting to use adapters. Surprisingly a 1961 Corvette bottom (they were 3 piece starting in 61) was within 1/8" of fitting the space between the air horns. I use a paper filter from a Pontiac GTO. I believe the FM 255 has a wider space.??? The two 1953 Oldsmobile Carter WCFB's I use are perfect for my 292; the have the same brass tag number.

I am no expert and don't claim to be. On a trip we visited Speedy Bills museum and I saw a replica Curtis Turner 56 Ford convertable which won the convertable NASCAR championship with a big red air cleaner and knew what I wanted to do; that started all this. I am a very good friend of Karol Miller and he has told me a lot of what he did not only at Bonneville but on Daytona Beach as well.

 

Jimmy six - thanks.

Jon.

 

Possibly on a flow bench? on the engine it was a different story. Too heavy of pistons and valve train. A Y block isn't a high RPM engine. and the horizontal intake runners leave a lot to be desired. I have heard plenty of stories of the fabled fast stock Y blocks. Ive never owned or seen one. I would bet money that the worn out stock 283 in the 55 wagon in my avatar will beat any stock normally aspirated Y block in a drag race. I fully intend to bring it to George Rays in April. Bring on your stock Y block car and all the money you can afford to lose.

 

I think it was spelled McCullough https://powerbyford.blogspot.com/2011/06/high-performance-1957-ford-fairlane.html But by april 57 they were gone on multi carbs injection or blowers.

 

Those brazilin Y blocks where a inproved design and those folks never knew anything different. they didn't get FE 330,s and 361,s in their trucks.

 

Just like the 427 ohc, 312 supercharged cars were baned from the track......cause they whipped everything else. Go read about it.......................

 

https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cc-...s-a-high-performance-second-act-in-argentina/

 

and they also banned the big block chevys .

 

Typical... someone wants to know about the Y-blocks used in Nascar back in the day and the thread becomes just another forum for someone telling us how much of a boat anchor they are.

 

If you guys are looking for 1268 s

Gimmie a call. I got a few at obscene prices : )

Oldmics

 

Ain't that the way though.... I couldn't care less about a small block Chevy, but I don't make it a point to blast them for their shortcomings

 

The 426 Hemi and the SOHC were banned and cammer wasnt really banned, just had to run nearly 500 lbs. heavier and be uncompetitive. The big block chevy was never banned as far as I know. GM did pull out of all sanctioned racing in 1963 and even that was baloney. They had a quite few privateers with factory help.

 

Warbird, I like y- blocks, still have the very first 312 my Dad taught me about engines on, back in about 1965! Have about six others, but no matter what you put out on these posts , someone is not going to like it. Someone will bitch about sliced bread! But, that’s how it is in the world! No foul!
Anyone that’s been on this forum for anytime ,knows of Oldwolf’s dislike of Y-blocks, he will never let you down, you mention Y-blocks or even think of Y-blocks, OldWolf is going to tell you about boat anchors! Lol I for one would be disappointed if I DIDN’T hear from him on Y-blocks! This is what makes this forum fun! For me anyway! Lol








Bones

 

This has to be one of the nicest looking air cleaners I ever saw!

 

Back in the late 60s, I did pretty good against Chevys on the dirt running 312 blocks with ECZ-G truck heads from a 1958 pickup. These heads were good for a 9.1 compression ratio and if you could find the same year Mercury heads they were good for 9.7. I ran the valves at .015 hot and could wind the motors a little tighter than using stock specs of .019. Class rules only allowed us a max 500 CFM carb so I milled the air horn off of a Holley 2300 and re-jetted with 68s. Wish you could still buy those carburetors for $28 new across the counter.

 

Didn't Smokey show up with a Mystery engine in 63 and they would not let them race it?