Comp, S/C, Street 427 BB Engines

[rodneym]

63/64 is a bit early early for a MR, no?

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by rodneym

63/64 is a bit early early for a MR, no?

Right, but what happened is that once the medium riser was made available, Ford used the smaller of the two basic "non-race" cams in it, which was the one that came in the 427-4v LR. You could specifically request the cam that came in the 427-8v LR in your medium riser, and that was done a good bit. Most people think that the cam that came in the 4v and 8v flavors of the 427 was the same, but it wasn't. If you look through some of the Cobra specs, and some of the stuff over on SAAC, you'll see a reference to the "K" cam, which was really the same as the 427-8v cam, but it would be teamed up with the MR manifold, and other stuff as well. The actual engineering and parts numbers were all very similar. Note, however, that there was one more cam that was above the "K" cam in performance. It had the exact same lobe configurations (duration and lift) as the K cam, but the LSA was much smaller. Nowadays, no one really cares anymore, but if they do, I'll post part numbers/etc. that I am 99.9% sure are accurate as to each of the flavors.

[patrickt]

I know you like "authoritative documents" ... Here are the original three cams -- we'll just call them "regular, fast, and race."

[DanEC]

Originally Posted by rodneym

63/64 is a bit early early for a MR, no?

MR was introduced in 65.

[Bernica]

Here are a couple of pages on cams and manifold setups from back in the day. This is from a '68 or '69 Muscle Parts book. Don't see that K-cam, but I had heard about it...

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Bernica

Here are a couple of pages on cams and manifold setups from back in the day. This is from a '68 or '69 Muscle Parts book. Don't see that K-cam, but I had heard about it...

Yes, it dropped out of the literature, as I recall, around 1966 or so, but don't hold me to that. Some say it never really existed at all, but they are wrong...

[patrickt]

Now, just imagine if you went to Brent L. and said "I want an FE with 14.1 compression ratio and a cam that has a net overall lift of .500, and I plan on running it on street gas." I don't know if you could even get him to do it. In theory, if someone tried to build a duplicate of an original engine, nowadays, that's what they'd be doing.

[Bernica]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Now, just imagine if you went to Brent L. and said "I want an FE with 14.1 compression ratio and a cam that has a net overall lift of .500, and I plan on running it on street gas." I don't know if you could even get him to do it. In theory, if someone tried to build a duplicate of an original engine, nowadays, that's what they'd be doing.

Ah the memories!...
13:1 compression, TRW pistons, SFT cams, Cherry Bombs, Purple Hornies and 40 cents a gallon for 110 octane! Now there I go again dating myself!

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Bernica

Ah the memories!...
13:1 compression, TRW pistons, SFT cams, Cherry Bombs, Purple Hornies and 40 cents a gallon for 110 octane! Now there I go again dating myself!

... and you can't even completely rely on the specs that came from Ford itself. One fella that had an unmolested K cam in his car, when it was pulled and put on a Cam Doctor, the actual specs only jived with the Ford specs when you used the 1.73 rocker arm ratio, not the 1.76 ratio. I think I've been told by someone around here that you couldn't really rely on the ratio being correct anyway. But the point is, if you're a novice, even a talented one, and you set your sights on building an "original Cobra spec 427 FE" you're just setting yourself up for a big heartache....