Hot Rods Smogger 460 Ford BB Questions

It seems that you can still buy cast plates for both Cleveland and 385 Fords Check out these guys ad for info. You can see where the stock exhaust port bottom was in the picture of the plate on the head. ............................. http://www.pricemotorsport.com/html/body_ep-22__high_port_exhaust_plate.html

 

I can't find any pictures of either the Stude or the Pontiac that I did. However here is a somewhat representative picture of a port plate put on an aluminum 318 MoPar type head to allow the use of the W heads injectors and to facilitate using the later head on a 1926 Dodge Bros. engine. The first picture is the head without the adapter plate. You can see the spacer welded into the head to stretch it to fit the 26 bore spacing.

 

RichFox that is impressive work! But why fit such a head to a 1926 Dodge engine? Surely a stronger block, rods, crank and pistons were available? Must be a story there.

 

RichFox,
197.917 mph is impressive to say the least. And in a Vega! I think that would be a very scary ride. So what do you consider to be "normal and cheap hop up tricks"? Just wondering what you did to go that fast. And that is indeed fast.

 

Here you can see the advantage of a '26 Dodge for running in the SCTA Vintage 4 class. Five main bearings. Compair that to your model A. When I built my big Ford, PAW had what they called the "Master Rebuilders Kit" Cost $1100. It came with resized truck rods, bearings, Arias pistons, a Flat tappet Crower cam, rings, gaskets, lifters. Pretty good deal. With my closed chamber heads that gaveme about 11.5 compresion ratio. I mentioned installing 492 CJ valves in the 460 heads. Ground and polished the back sides of the valves to look like the stainless parts they sell. Cleaned the intake ports a little and ground the heck out of the exhaust to the point of needing exhaust plates to move the one bolt away fron the port. Modified a used Offy Port-O-Sonic 4 bbl intake to accept an 1100 cfm Dominator, and used a Mallory dual point distributor. Started with an MSD box on it, but that died right away, so I went to car quest for standard replacement coil. The Vega had a best run of 208.526 with an injected 455 Pontiac through the 5. I never ran the Ford past the 4. It would have gone 200 if I knew what I was doing. View attachment 2948586 View attachment 2948586

 

If you like that, here is a picture of my two 1932 Plymouth four cylinder engines. Both of which set SCTA records in the V4 and V4Flathead class. As you can see on the OHV engine I adapted a '57 Ford Y block head. On the flathead I made a finned twin ignition head. Along with the intake, exhaust, distributor drive, among other stuff. If you don't know it can't be done, maybe it can. This picture was taken in the Speedway museum. Where the Plymouths are now. The Plymouth is a completely different engine from the Dodge.

 

Quite amazing things you have done Rich. Are you working on any projects now?

 

I have had some health setbacks that slow me down, a lot. The Dodge Bros. project still needs work. And i just finished adapting SBC stack injection to a Y block Lincoln. Destroker 368 to be legal for the SCTA C/AIR class.

 

Sorry to hear you are slowed down Rich.

You ever messed around with the Ford 300 inline six Rich? I guess there is a flow through head that Ford made for the Australian market for the 300.

 

No experience with Ford six cylinder engines. Had a lot of fun with 270 and 302 GMC sixes. In the Army and out.

 

I used that cam because I was going to be moving across the country, towing a U-Haul trailer and wanted a good mid-range cam. (see avatar). The truck had a top loader 4 speed and 3.73 gear in the 9 inch rear. The torque peak was around 3800 rpm if I remember correctly, which worked out well at about 60-70 mph.
I got the cam from PAW, not sure who made it but Comp Cams seems to come to mind. Don't know if they're still around.
As for the timing with a vacuum gauge, (an "olden days" trick) I warmed the motor up, attached the vacuum gauge to the manifold and adjusted the timing till I got the highest vacuum. With the 112 degree lobe separation, vacuum was a bit lower than stock but not as bad as if I'd used a 108 degree cam.
Throttle response was quick, the motor loved the premium gas available at the time and I had no issues related to cam choice. The truck was my daily driver for over 4 years.
As for daily driving, that old truck surprised more than one muscle car guy on the streets in San Diego. They were laughing when they pulled up alongside me but I was laughing as they grew smaller in my rear view mirror.