Motorheads; Would You Buy?
 

Hi,all you ford guys out there.
I want to see how much interest there would be in a high end Ford small block engine that would produce 610HP and 485ft of torque on pump gas with No power adders, and would be very nice to drive on the street. No kidding! Preliminary tests show 485ft. of torque at 3000rpm and 610hp at 7000rpm with a redline at 7500rpm, on pump gas, with a mild cam. These would Not be mass produced crate engines, but would be built one at a time. Based off of a 302/351W with combinations of 331/347/357/383/393/408 cubic inches. The first tests were done with a 347. These would not be cheap engines either, because of the high quality coponents needed to run 7500rpm reliably. And the cost of the exotic cylinder head used. The heart of this engine is a new aluminum Hemispherical cumbustion chamber- 4 valve per cylinder head,That's right - a 4 valve Hemi head, that uses custom push rods and shaft mounted rockers to open the valves Without overhead camshafts. The spark plug is located in the center of the cumbustion chamber. The first engine used a competition prepped block, 4340 steel crank,4340 H-beam cap screw rods,forged custom pistons (10.0 to 1 comp.),fully balanced with an aluminum Fidanza flywheel, and SFI dampner, premium moly rings and bearings,a main stud girdle,windage tray,HV oil pump,Canton oil pan,Comp cams roller timing set,Extreme energy hyd roller cam and lifters,MSD dist and 6AL ignition,port matched Edelbrock Rpm air gap intake,and a Holley 750 carb. 347c.i. and 610HP. Now imagine an exotic, velocity stacked, fuel injected set up on that! Cost on the engine described above is around $15.000,Dyno tested and tuned,ready to run. Would enough people buy one at that cost to make me consider building these engines for the public? How about the guys with the GT40s?

bluoval
Probably would not buy one, just bought aluminum blocked 427 stroker from KEITH CRAFT, made 612 horsepower---615 torque on pump gas. Very street friendly with hydraulic roller, motor was complete fresh off dyno for $14000.

DON

BlueOval,

Wow, that sounds impressive! But, for that kind of money, I would have to find a side oiler. It would provide much more value to my car.

Now if you engineered a means of variable valve timing to make torque across the rpm range, it would be much more attractive. It's very hard to design VVT in a pushrod engine, though. I would expect that an engine with your specs would be pretty flat off the line and to start producing some power about 4,000 rpm. I built an engine like that and it was a pain around town. Great on the track though!

The covers for the hemi head could be very attractive. Should be a strong selling point. Any pictures?

Paul

I agree, wouldn't be interested in a SB at that price. I like my 427 side-oiler for that kind of money, and it also happens to be period-correct for the car.

Would this be the ARAO 32 valve heads I've seen on another website? I looked into a set of these awhile back, but the little objective information I could locate stated that it made the valve train very heavy and the cost of the heads was QUITE alot. If you have new information on them, in terms of reliability, please post it in this thread as I'd be very interested.

Rich

Side oiler :LOL:

Sounds interesting, tell me about the heads. Are they those Aero pushrod heads? Are they cast with coolant passages going around all of the areas of the valves and near the plugs? Have you driven a car with one to prove out reliability yet? If it's a proven reliable motor I bet there could be a place for it, especially in GT40's

A little more info on 32 valveheads
 

Thanks for the feedback guys.
I really didn't mean mean for this type of engine to replace a big block FE. It would be more for the guys who love high winding small blocks. Although I think the 393 stroker windsor engine making over 700Hp would get some attention.
Yes, it is the new Arao head. And yes they are costly, $5,000 per pr. That's why the high price on the engine, plus there is a lot of dyno time, trying several different cams and spring combos. So the cost could be less once eveything was figured out, plus paying full price for parts right now. No deals with parts venders yet. So I think the price for an engine like this could be more like $12,500 once eveything was ironed out. As far as some of the questions on the heads: I would keep the cam on the mild side of lift and duration to keep the spring pressures low, because you are working two smaller valves with one pushrod and lifter, this is how you keep it durable. You don't need a big cam with the 4 valve head anyway. The test that Arao did with a 357 c.i. small block showed 650+HP and 525ft. of torue with a 219 dur. cam @.050 and .479 lift int. and .519 ex. Plus the torque was 500ft. down at 3,000rpm and stayed above 500ft. all the way past 6,000rpm. That's impressive even for a big block. With that kind of torque at 3,000rpm it will be very streetable. For more head info check out araoengineering.com

How about rotary valve heads?
 

Hmmmm,,,, I wonder how those heads (cost and flow) would compare to those new rotary valve heads also available for Fords.

Web site claims 14,000 rpm is possible. doesn't say the BLOCK will hold together, but the "valves" (or lack thereof) support that rpm.

http://www.coatesengine.com/products.html

Ernie

http://www.coatesengine.com/eGallery.../V-8engine.jpg

Ain't technology wonderful!!