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Old 12-05-2017, 02:03 PM
2bars 2bars is offline
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Wickenburg, AZ
Cobra Make, Engine: Superformance, 427 FE
Posts: 197
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Default Where are they now?

As my new stroked 427 is getting ready to into the car. I wonder how all your engines have been doing? Those HP/TQ FE monsters.
We write on here about the builds and the problems, but what about:
Reliability?
Long life?
Too much power (I know, never enough) for your type driving?
Satisfied with your choice?

It is easy for us to make big claims when we first put-em-together, but how about after some miles?

I can say from my past relatively stock 428. A original 66 block and heads. Mild cam and intake. My thought was keep it close to stock and I should have many trouble free miles. After all if it could run around in a pickup it has to be solid in the Cobra, right?
Staring with the "stock" build it ran hot. It went through multiple blown head gaskets and a broken piston. All in less than 10,000 miles. A different builder and a sonic test reviled the issues. Retrospect says, it should have been pulled on gasket number 1 and sent to someone new. But from working on older cast engines, putting on a new head gasket and having it work for miles seemed ok - Mea Culpa!
So to sum up, I was not happy with my choice of being too simple and thinking "it should be fine". I believed the guy I bought the engine from and I believed the guy that took it apart and put in new parts (I am not calling him a builder).

So now my Cobra is on engine #2.
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