I thought I would put together a posting about my FE build. I am putting this engine in a Kirkham cobra. This has been a long dream of mine. Maybe others will find this info interesting or even useful.
I have built several older cars for myself over the years (small block fords, small and big block chevys). I have come to several conclusions regarding my hobby cars:
1. If I want to race or be really fast, I’ll use a new corvette. Older cars are not as safe or capable in most cases
2. I like sound and feel. So good torque and lots of noise makes fun for me.
3. I like reliable. I don’t like when my MSD distributor failed at 1000 miles, or my electric fuel pump died after a year. I tend to keep things simple and reliable for more fun.
So I found Blair Patrick down in Tennessee. He is great to talk to and extremely knowledgeable. There are other good engine builders out there, and some on this forum, so no offense to others, but Blair worked well with me. He certainly has proven himself in the world of the FE.
I like assembling an engine. I can’t do the machine work. Blair assembled the short block and heads, and then I put it all together. Blair and I agreed on an iron block from BBM. I don’t want to spill over onto the painfully long thread about aluminum blocks, but I didn’t feel a need to use aluminum block to achieve my goals. I know the weight savings won’t be meaningful to me. Others can have their own opinions.
I wanted to keep the stroke small, to allow the engine to rev better. I will be equally happy on the street with 400 or 500 horsepower, and with less stroke, there is less stress on the rotating parts and maybe more revving. It is fun to rev an engine past 6000 rpm.
Stock stroke on a 427 is 3.78”. Scat and RPM don’t make forged cranks in that stroke. You can get a custom one done, but the price becomes much higher. So I went with RPM motorsports 3.98” stroke forged crank. Made offshore (in china I think), but machined nicely by Blair, who knows what to do to make this brand work in a new build. 4.25” bore for the pistons. Something like 450 cubes when done.
The original sideoilers came with solid non-roller lifters, which is an option, but seems smarter with modern oils to use roller lifters. I chose hydraulic roller lifters (the BBM block does have oiling to the lifters available, both through the pushrods and separate passages through the lifter bores). Blair recommended limited travel hydraulic roller lifters from Morel. Very expensive but beautiful pieces. They really do have limited travel to the plunger. I suspect they work like a solid once you get going, but don’t need to check valve lash too often.
When you set the "lash" with the rocker arm, if you go a full 3/4 of a turn, you will bottom out the plunger, so need to add less preload to these lifters than you might normally do for a hydraulic.
Blair came up with a custom cam for me. His trade secret I suspect.
For heads, I went with BBM aluminums, with limited port work by Blair. Some nice gains in power over stock iron heads here, although you could argue it is all overkill for a street car that weighs 2000 pounds. Aluminum heads may allow a little more compression on pump gas than an iron head, and probably better power at all rpm. You could say I am hypocritical for going with iron block but the aluminum heads, but I think there is a lot more bang-for-the-buck in heads vs. the block itself.
We put restrictors in the
oil passage to the heads, to limit
oil flow to the rockers. I also used solid pushrods to limit
oil up top. I used 5/16” pushrods, the beefiest ones I could order, to minimize any interference with the pushrod tunnels in the intake. Edelbrock performer RPM intake because it is the easiest to find. Blair recommended port matching the intake to the heads, but I didn’t because this is probably overkill for my intended purpose (just my opinion).
I went with T&D roller rocker system. Not their super fancy race system but the less fancy system that does not require special machining of the head. Trust me, it is plenty fancy! Very nice setup and only a few bucks more than competitors. Just as beautiful as the lifters.
These are roller lifters, unlike stock, so need much less oil than stock rockers. Stock lifters and some aftermarket are bushings, not roller bearings. Bushings are probably adequate for most things, but need more oil than roller bearings.
The only trouble I had assembling the whole thing was with the rockers. On an FE, you have to tighten down the rockers against the valve springs. I used nice studs in the head, with custom washers and nuts from Blair. But I got a little too vigorous on one of them and pulled the threaded insert out of the aluminum head. I had to repair it, by drilling the threaded insert out of the head and replacing it with a bigger threaded insert. I can explain more if someone wants to discuss. That caused me a lot of stress for a couple days.
The bottom line, is that aluminum is more delicate than iron, and you have to be meticulous in technique of torqueing. You have to tighten the rocker studs evenly and very carefully, against a good bit of valvespring pressure.
I went with a moroso oil pan (road race version) and a nice melling oil pump with hardened shaft, blueprinted by Blair. The moroso pickup for the oil pump sits a little too far from the bottom of the pain when a windage tray is used, so I skipped the windage tray. Blair normally modifies the pickup arm to be closer to the bottom of the pain when he does the build using a windage tray.
When I oiled the engine prior to start-up, i was amazed at how quickly oil came up to the heads. On other engines, quite a bit of priming is needed to get the oil through the engine. On these FE's, they really do put a lot of oil to the heads, so much so that I can believe running at high rpm can empty the oil pan and drown the heads.
The stock FE's back in the day used special metal trays to direct oil back into the block. These trays won't fit with aftermarket rockers. Even with non-oiling pushrods and restrictors in the head passage on both sides, there is PLENTY of oil to the valvetrain.
Used a romac balancer – very nice piece. I prefer these made in australia units to the cheaper made in china ones from other brands. Romac makes a nice repro unit that includes a single bolt-on integral pulley, as the originals did. Using original distributor with dual points. Yes points are not modern but I’m doing it anyway. Points can fail, but I have been happy with them on other cars, and I hate how my MSD magnetic pickup in my Pantera failed out of nowhere with little use… I’m not the only one to have such a failure.
Just getting the engine in the car now. Should be stupendous once it actually starts!