Here’s some shots of my sons 48” F1 with a 292, 312 heads, a little cam and three twos. He built the engine for his high school senior project. Should be a fun truck when finished, work and college don’t allow much time or money. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Like I said before I started out with Y blocks. And being a hoarder I never hauled them off for scrap. So I still have a truck load of engines and parts. And I just sold and shipped a B intake to a HAMB member in Calif. $100 for the intake and it cost $ 72 to ship and I spent $5 on tape packaging it. Its not the one pictured I sold that one earlier. and then located another one in my hoard.
Love the Roto-Faze, never seen one in a Yblock until now. Do you mind telling what it cost to have a set of Mummert's heads polished in CA? They look awsome.
Good sounding engines, and pretty, but for me, unreliable junk. I had 10 over the years. I could never sell one, and had to junk all my 292s. I found a taker for my 272, with the offy vcs, and 3x2 intake, with 3 97s, but he was my best friend, and got the buddy deal.
Im with studie Eric. I never had what I would consider a good reliable Y block. and certainly wasn't about to spend money rebuilding one when I could buy a really good running FE for less than the parts would cost. So most of my 55 & 56 fords got a 352 FE. I remember there was a older guy drove a Y block 62 ford. And when you met him on the highway you could see a plume of blow by escaping from the road draft. I had one 59 ford with a almost new sears allstate rebuilt 292 and it had plenty of blow by. and low oil pressure. I always suspected some one had ran it dry of oil. It was bored .040.
I started out with Y blocks. Eventually learned to not like them. All it took was to swap a 59 -352 FE into my 56 and quickly realized those Y blocks where boat anchors. Tea Pot carb . dual advance dist. Enough blow by to oil your lungs. Yes today you can spend mega dollars and make one fly. But spend the same dollars of a FE or just about any other brand of engine and it will run circles around the Y blocks. My 55 ford wagon I installed a 262 six from a truck. Stock engine. I got it running again after several years and I have a $100 that says it will beat any stock single 4 bbl normally aspirated55 or 56 Y block. Bring them on and we will go up the road and race on the 1/4 mile eleven point river bridge a t Dalton Ar. Ok at present the 55 in my avatar has a stock 65 220 hp 283. with hedders and a adapted edelbrock carb. 100,000 mile engine only had timing chain replaced. I have $500 says it will beat any stock normally aspirated Y block. I keep hearing the stories about the fast stock Y blocks. And in all my life ive never ran across one. Them like 348 & 409 chevys and v6 GMC.s they strongly deserve their bad reputation. And fater stating all of this. I still have 4 or 5 Y blocks in my hoard. I did manage to sell two large base intakes and a set of heads to HAMBERS. but no one really want the core engines.
Your dad was smart. He got your mom to get in the chevy and mash the pedal to the floor with the engine not running. He then adjusted the linkage so the carb only opened a bit over half way. Its a trick all fathers used when they had teens.
You can infer that Ford themselves knew the Y Block wasn't a proper foundational engine, since it really was the only go-to V8 for 4 years. It replaced the Flathead in 1954, which was an improvement in performance. But by '58, the introduction of the FE clearly established the Y Block as the middle-of-the-road option for FMC products. The Y Block really only had 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1957 as the primary engine before it was relegated to a non-performance, basic drivetrain role.
No,my Dad did not do that,but I'm sure a few did. The point I was making,is many now days,seem to think SBC started right out being the best of the 40s,50s OHV V8s,but it did not! yet got there by the end of 50s. I like all V8s,it's all nuts an bolts,have rebuilt most types. The brand game is fun. Even raced most of them as power in one or more of my race cars in the 60s on. Fact is SBC is a super design,but started out as a pig 265 in 55. Like most things SBC needed things refind/fixed in it's first few years,55 up 57 Chevy was busting there ass trying to out run the older Ford Y-block. Check NASCAR races. Info of early OHVs for the younger guys they may enjoy; https://www.hemmings.com/blog/article/studebaker-v-8/
My uncle quit the chevy dealer in 55 because the engines blew within 90 days. and he got $12.50 for a warranty change out. Went to ford. In 57 he bought a new 312 ford. and by 58 he had a larger MEl engine in it. I think the Pontiac engines where much better than any of the ford or chevys. They part opening throttle was a well kept secret that many dealers and garages used to help avoid warranty comebacks. Did you ever check the chevy to be certain it was getting WOT throttle?
I love the idea,but yes,I was the motor nut,my Dad was a really super carpenter an did play a little with cars. My Grandad was the master motor guy ! I knew how to do tune-ups at Grandads Flying A gas station by 1953. The big Pontiac,when raced,had a oil feed prob. of the dis/oil pump gear on the cam. So to make those last,you had to drill 1/16th hole pointing at the gear on cam,from oil feed galley= like I said,at one point or other I raced nearly all the brands,when oval track racing in the 60 an 70s.
I read a blurb from Crane Cams or somebody like that, they claimed the factories back then purposefully installed somewhat weak valve springs as a natural rev limiter for the same reason.
The head mechanic at the dairy equipment shop I worked at after I got out of the Army always adjusted the throttle linkage on every milk truck that had a new engine installed so the it only got half throttle or so. Milkmen were notoriously hard on new engines. After a month or so we readjusted the linkage for full throttle - solved most if not all of new engine failures.
There are a lot of variables when it came to performance and who won street and drag races. skill of the driver. state of tune. gear ratios. ect. Little things do add up. Its possible for a well tuned inferior designed engine to out perform a poorly tuned or possibly a part opening throttle better designed engine. Hence the tale of the grandpaws Y block blowing the doors off the 283. The 283 in question may have used the heads & intake from the leaking 265 ? the camshaft timing might have been on purpose retarded. Its almost certain the dealership since it was a warranty job did not put a high performance tune on it. and almost certainly adjusted on the throttle linkage. On the other hand the grandpaw,s Y block was in the hands of a savvy gas station owner who likely kept it in a state of sharp tune. Like a said I started out with Y blocks. I read all the articles about them. I read about Racer Brown souping one up. And had mine tuned up. However in the mid 60,s even a stout running Y block couldn't beat the small block chevys unless it was tall geared powerglide equipped dog. Any serious drag racer then had a stick trans and a 411 posi rear. The small block chevy if it had a Muncie 318 trans. You shifted by the speedometer. no matter the rear gears. If you had not recalibrated the speedometer . You shifted to second at thirty MPH and shift to high a 60 MPH. A guy my age that died this year. He had a 56 chevy 4 dr htp. 265 & cast iron powerglide. 2 bbl engine. and a 411 rear end. hard to beat. It ran a consistant 75 MPH 1/4 on the Dalton bridge. now my 56 ford with the 59 FE 300 HP 352 stick and 411 gears could beat most 300 HP 327 chevys.
Looks like a good old thread has been resurrected..... We like them!!! When my daughter had a HotRod built for her on a TV show (she’s VERY LUCKY, and we realize it), the question of traditional/cool motors came up. Troy and I discussed it and I knew of a great and nice builder, who has been extremely nice to my daughter. The Y-block guy Tim. So I asked Tim if he was willing to build her an engine, and he was. He built up a beautiful 292 for her that runs & sounds just as good as it looks.
Hard to tell from the photo but it looks like the engine is resting on the time proven traditional old tire to support the engine during transport.
I'm not sure, this was during filming when Troy went up to Hanford Auto and got the motor from Tim. It may be a wooden crate or tire under the blanket?
Reliable Y block; Going back an rereading a few post,some thinking things they found bad was design. In most of those case's it was poor owner care or owner before them messing things up,not design of 239*,272,292,312* {* had things I too did not care for}. Another factor I see in many notes,is there own point of view in real time being in the 60s vs earlier in the 50s when things were new in there first 2+years. My self at the end of 1953,when the new model year for 1954 Ford came out with new OHV 239,I was not impressed,it seemed too small. I liked Olds Rocket an Cady V8,Buick,most of all I liked Study V8 in 1953,not from size but that it was designed with steel crank an was kind of a baby Cady,the jump Study did in size after the first try,was looking good too. My Uncle raced stock cars,an Grandad was a great motor man. They got a brand new Ford 272 out of a wreck,and kicked ass with it !Then a 292. When they got there hands on a 312,and found out it had bigger mains that burnout about 5500+ RPM and up={ bigger main makes more heat in oil and smaller on less heat with both at same high RPM }. Were the 292 could live at 6500,so the thing that worked was to have 312 cranks main turned down to same as 292,and put it all in a 292 block. That made a screamer. Lots of wins. For you total SBC lovers,283's at the time were over boring too 302,some a little more,but still lost. As time moved on, around 1957,by then SBC got better and the older Y-blocks were at the end of Ford doing updates. If you were not there,don't guess at what was and was not ! Even if you love SBC and seem to dislike "Y"s,you need to also know I used SBC as power in my race cars starting in mid 60s an like them too. All the new OHV V8 designs needed fixing in the first year of production. No one got it dead on right away.
Dana is correct when I started with Y blocks 1964 they where nearing the 10 year old mark. A car was considered junk after 10 years or 70,000 miles in the mid sixties. And the pony car made its debuit 64 Mustang. and fairlanes & falcon small block V8 289,s. A running Y block could be ought for $50 a core was almost free. the chevy small blocks had more value. FE,s where becoming available.
I have had several Y blocks over the years. Mine have been reliable. As stated, owner neglect has been the down fall. Mine are usually worn smooth out by the time I get them. The only catastrophic failure we have ever had (Well @Lancer actually had) was when the oil pump pickup tube was unable to pick up oil because of all the sludge. It grenaded after I had sold the wagon to Lance James and he had driven it probably a year or so. @guthriesmith has a 56 Ford that has a ton of road miles on it. It's tired as well, but has served him well. I will admit that I am building A 302 for my 55, mainly for financial reasons, but the Y block that is coming out, is getting saved for a future project.
Back in the day, a friend of mine removed the 272 from a 55 Ford Fairlane and replaced it with a 312 Merc, with a Wolverine cam and a 57 ford dual quad Nascar set up and an open drive 3 speed out of a Ford P/U. It performed really well for what it was. It was a little ratty 55 Fairlane that surprised a lot of people. It was a sleeper.
The story my uncle told me many years ago was if you took a new 272 ford and a new 265 Chevy and padlocked the hoods shut, the Chevy would not make it from Iowa(home), to California. The Chevy's burned oil from the start. But inspire of the flat cams, crankshaft dampener flying off, valve guide wear, and little low end torque, the little Chevy is the one everyone tries to beat.
Growing up in the '60s and being a broke kid with a hard-core Ford love, I had more than my share of Y-blocks and knew many other owners (birds of a feather and all that...). I've seen them absorb neglect/punishment that would kill any other motor (with the possible exception of Mopar flathead sixes, which seemed to be indestructible) yet I've also seen many that blew up for no observable reason. Broken cranks were common; myself and my friends bought numerous parts cars with broken cranks, both 292s and 312s. That's what killed the last one I owned. A 292-powered '56, it was the proverbial 'grandmas car' with only 65K on the clock when purchased and once I got the teapot to quit leaking proved to be a reliable, smooth runner that I put 50K miles on. Until one morning on the way to work cruising at 50 mph it made a single 'clunk' noise and quit. Post-mortem revealed a crank broke into four pieces and the front three main bearing saddles broken out of the block. There were no untoward noises prior to this either... But there was a few runners; one local guy had a well-warmed 272 with a T10/4.11 gears in a '55 2-dr post that terrorized the SBC guys in light-to-light challenges. His brother was a wizard at making Fords run... Abuse? Two cars I recall that amazed me. One was a '56 wagon with a 312. The knucklehead that owned it managed to break off two of the bolts that held the rocker shafts down on one side. His solution was to loosen the head bolts, put tie wire under them, then tie the shafts down. He drove it like that for at least a year that I know of. The other one was a '60 Starliner a buddy bought from another guy we knew. A 292 car, the guy had blown all forward gears out of the CruiseoMatic in a neutral-drop burnout attempt. He then proceeded to drive it in reverse roughly 25 miles home. He got it incredibly hot, and while he made it home, when he shut it off it seized. So badly we couldn't get the pistons out, not even with a sledgehammer (believe me, we tried...). So asking around, we found a t-boned '57 wagon with a 312. The price was right, we went and looked at it and it seemed to run good; quiet and no smoke. We got gulled... after getting it in and running it awhile, turns out it was full of gear oil and STP. Well, it runs, he was broke and oil was cheap enough. Then the oil pressure started going away. Before long (and after using increasingly thicker oil), oil pressure would bump to about 5 lbs on start-up, then drop to zero. He drove that car like that for six months (it sounded like someone rolling a can full of marbles) before finally seizing it in a unwise speed contest. Interestingly enough, we got this one apart and after his Dad coughed up the money he had it rebuilt. No hot rod though, that Starliner was heavy... The Y-block, if considered in the era it was introduced in, was no worse than and better in some respects to it's competitors. But there were multiple factors that prevented it from becoming 'popular'. First, Ford did a lousy job of getting their performance models into the hands of the general public. Whether that was a corporate decision or due to the dealers not ordering any of the cars, hard to say. Ford rarely made it easy for the dealers, as many of the options were furnished as loose parts in the trunk, requiring dealer installation which many were loath to do. Both GM and Chrysler sold specific models that came with their top-of-line motors, Ford didn't. Second, the introduction of the FE made the Y-block a 'second tier' motor although that didn't preclude Ford from further development work (think about how the SBF went from an 'economy' motor to a motorsports staple). Lastly, Ford joined the AMA in '57 and the AMA 'no racing' ban took effect. Ford, being a newly-minted member, took it to heart and virtually stopped all racing/performance development until Henry II figured out that GM and Chrysler were still doing it out the back door. But by that time, car lines were changing. With the introduction of compact and intermediate-sized cars, the large, heavy Y-block no longer had a place. Let's face it; virtually all of the pre-55 OHV V8s are obsolete, and most of the later '50s ones too. Only the SBC survived beyond the '70s. On a dollar-per-hp basis, none of these make sense. Can they be made to run? Can they be good, reliable motors? Sure, all it takes is money and/or determination. But it's really an exercise in nostalgia and I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'll pause and admire every Y-block I see, but I personally won't be spending my money on one...
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