Wow! 7200 rpm is amazing. I shift at 6000. I tried shifting at 6500 but showed no improvement over 6000. At 6500 the 4th gear shift is right at the end of the 1/4. 3.31 rear gear.

Shifting at 7200 and running 9 seconds I don't know how a guy finds TIME to shift. :D

Gentlemen,

I am impressed, and proud to be a part of this club.

Thanks,

Warmest regards, Bret.

KC and everyone else. Thanks. I appreciate your responses.
KC...wish someone would have just said something like that in the first place. I obviously didn't realize the interest in the FE which has brought about all these improvements. I'm familiar with eeking out hp...did a lot of ProStock r&d. It's good to see it finally catch up. I always thought the FE was one of the best "looking" engines made, and it certainly earned it's reputation.

Just to get off the topic at hand
 

Sorry to get off the track guys but has anyone got ideas for Cobra side pipes.

:confused:

I'm currently running 2 1/2 perforated and have had some perforated cones for each end. The muffler is 3' long straight through.

The aim is to keep the noise down. Should I be running some type of spiral through the perforated tube to deflect the gases into the muffler material or will it flow OK straight through and be reasonably quite.

I ask this question as you guys are all focused on HP and we all know that type of thing takes some quitening down for the street.

I currently run 97dB but would like it down 2 or 3 dB. Thats the reason I placed the perforated cones in each end. The perforations/holes equal the 2 1/2 due to the cone rather than a straight plate in the pipe ends.

Make sense?
______
>______ <

Any thoughts guys. What muffler material is the best. Steel mesh and glass or..

The pipes will be assembled and spray painted so will not be subject to coatings or chrome. You can see the pipes (black) on the gallery.

Sorry (not a Fairlane eng.) this is a 351 stroker to 377. Dart heads, Victor Jnr, Ice ign. Crowe Street/strip cam (no specs handy)

Thanks for any thoughts.

Cheers

Bernie

:LOL: Just trying to get you off the topic at hand (hi -jack the Thread) :LOL:

You're welcome.

TURK

I tried to post a pic a few days ago, but with the system problems was unable to. But here it is. It's just a 454 w/ a weber friendly cam. Power is very respectable, but, not like the other high hp motors. I'm real happy with the final product. Just thought Sal would like the looks of this.

Well, I tried to post it so that it would pop up in this post, but, oh well. I'll figure that out later.

David

http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/d...2DSC00219b.JPG

(...fixed the link...Ron)

Pop - pop!
It is may 1966 and the crowd is on its feet in the city of LeMans. Mr. Shelby looks at his watch and decides it is time to start for the pit area. as they come down the Mulsanne straight the welcoming commitee from Ferrari lets the Champagne bottles slide down. The whole crowd lets out a collective gasp.

Never seen before or since. Three cars come down the final stretch almost side by side and the tremendous roar of those cars becomes deafening. The all look identical. Only the color schemes separate them. To the Americans who await the end of the race, this is like the national anthem.

Three full-house aluminum headed, 540hp 427s let out the awe inspiring collective waaaaaaaaaaaaaa as they start to slow down.

I don´t have time to go on, but if there was a time in history, besides seeing General Patton in his tank, when I wish I was a little older, then that was to be old enought to have witnessed it all.

The FE 427 Ford of 1966 through its reign as the world-supercar engine of choice, was and still is the product of deliberate research and development by the world´s ablest engine builders. No expense was spared. The engines that went before it are the prelude to the part where the fat lady finally let it all out: The tremendous effort put into the 390 in 196-1962, then on to the 406 and we had cross-bolts, then on to a bigger bore and better oiling, and in June 1963, there it was.

Everything that came after is history and what a history it is. This engine has a pedigree like no racce horse ever had. It may be coming on in years, but we have a solemn obligation, every last one of us to stand by the work of the people who designed it, built it, tested it, raced it and WON, WON, WON.

Those who raced it in NASCAR in late 1968 say that even with the tunnel port heads, and modified to the hand granade configuration, it was spewing fire through the carburetors at "idle" which was a measly, 2800 rpms. They said they had develped it to the max for this type of racing. That means this engine was maxed out, naturally aspirated at 630hp. Official hp. figures for the High Riser were in the 550 range.

Come to today, it is not hard to belive that 35 years of R&D has brought us another 100 horses. Guys, that is an average of 3 hp per year. Now guys, just through sheer deduction, elimination or statistical inferencing, I for one think that can be done.

Keith, congratulations on your work. May the FE continue to cause sleepless nights for friends and foes alike.

One of my friends sat at the wheel of my Crower cammed GT-500 and said: What I like about the FE above the 385 is that is seems to have more of a teenager spirit built into it. That is why it is so popular.

To be continued.

Steelcomp All is forgiven. Is this a great country or WHAT!! Welcome to the club. Hope in the future you can bring some new and important info to the table and help us with problems on the cars, or motors, You have added another demension and ideas to the club. I think it's GREAT. If we all thought the same, NOTHING would ever get improved. Today was a better day than yesterday:D Just becareful about the bug that everybody get from the word cobra. There is no cure and only some relief.:eek: Rick Lake

BERNIE

On the pipe situation, I was faced with the same problem, not really any good mufflers out there. I just had a 3.5 inch tube made up by DR GAS, very simple straght tube with 90 degree on end. Cut off old sidepipes right pastcollector, welded in a VORTEC cone, installed straight pipe. Pretty loud set-up but no restrictions, more horsepower hopefully. I would guess th db range be in the 115-125 range just guessing of course. Cobras are suppose to make a statement when driving them. Turn the pipe outlet down a hair and it is fairly quiet in the cockpit.

DON

Steelcomp,
...I was trying to locate you guys a year ago or so with no luck. If you are open to it, maybe we can have an offline discussion about G&S, and where the chassis, parts, jigs and all went, etc. I was looking into building two or more cars for friends, or maybe seeing what was left that might be for sale, if anythign. Thanks.

Steelcomp,

Great show of class. Now this thread is likely going to end up going down as one of the best ever...I'm loving the stories and explanations behind 9 second 7600 RPM 427 drag runs...

:)

The Hot Rod Genesis motor is mine.
They published the dyno output - horsepower and torque - from 3000 RPM to 6200 RPM (peak). We also gave you full cam specs (no secret grinds here), and head flow data from .100 to .800 lift. I thought that we were very forthcoming.

The flow bench was a garden variety Superflow. The dyno was an equally common DTS. No magic, nominal correction only(we're in Detroit, so altitude is a non-issue), and only one full day running on the pump.

Mine was a 505 cid 13:1 flat top, solid roller EFI motor. It made 676 at 6200 (a "peakier" 679 with a 950 HP carb). It runs 10.40s at 131 MPH @ 3600 pounds - so the performance matches the dyno numbers pretty well.

I'm certain that there was more power to be had with tuning and tweaking. Another 30-40 or so seems pretty easy. I am greatly impressed when I see smaller engines with much lower compression, and hydraulic cams make significantly more power than I did. Obviously they have a very well matched combination.

Sorry to hi - jack the Thread but I need some ideas from the HP guys.
 

DC COBRA

Thanks for the suggestion. The cones I have made up are similiar to the Vortex cones. Wll put one in each end.

We are restricted here in dB levels ( and elderly neighbours next door).

**)

And I drive the Cobra a fair bit (10,000m in 6 months prior to it going into the paint shop).

Perhaps, the cones will dothe trick and I may not need to place corkscrew flat down the inside to re direct the noise into the muffler body.

Will keep you "Posted"

Thanks to the FE guys for letting me hi - jack the Thread. Just loking for ideas. You guys certainly know.

Cheers

Bernie

Been Away
 

Got back and read thru.
Very Interesting

KC - I am sure you do good work and have a a lot of development time in what you do but, there is still room for doubt with the numbers. Are your heads the same cnc port design as Kuntz? Was he your old partner? If different, how so?
I need heads for a motor as we speak. Wanna sell me a complete set? I would be curious what happens.
I need a set of Shelby Aluminum for a 12:1 motor.
What would the flow numbers be and what type & size valves are you using? 11/32?
Send me a private e-mail with specs and price.

Yup,,
best thread ever,,My local racer friend turns his engine 8000 on a regular basis,430 ci,shelby block with reworked 391 cranks,bbc rods , lightened etc,Dove tunnel port heads,runs on alky,the only problems he seems to have are valve train or dry sump related,I would love to see him dyno the engine,it's a screamer but hard to hook with all the torque, everyone thinks he's crazy to try and compete with an fe,,but he is washed in the blood,raced them for 30 yrs and wont have any thing else,he always puts on a show ,carrying the left front 18 inches at 130 mph on dirt,he rarely wins,but its sweet when he does,builds everything him self ,hes 65 yrs old and no signs of slowing down,I just think it's cool as hell,2100 lb car with an alky fe ,has to be a thrill for a senior citizen,I wonder if he ask for the senior discount at wendys,,hahah,just rambling,,Tim

To answer a few of CSX4027 questions which might be of interest to everyone. we were in business with Kuntz 12 years ago and I imagine his portin g as well as our porting has come a long way in that time.
We purchased 340,000.00 worth of CNC and digitizing equipement to do all of our work in house so it could not be copied or used by someone else. This consisted of a DMG 80 5-axis simultanious CNC machining center as well as digitizing equipement with the latest software. This equipement is second to none and better than most Cup teams have. I have made several changes to our heads as we learn more things that help them. This use to require shipping the head else where and waiting making a small change take up to a month. With the software we have we can grow the port bigger or make it smaller, raise the roof or floor of the port. This has really taken us to the next level on heads. I figure we have machined about 30 sets of FE heads on it so far. We of course are doing a lot of small block heads as well as heads for other shops and Brodix.
We have developed a Stage 2 and Stage 3 head with the Edelbrock casting and a CNC package for the Shelby head as well. This has been one of the best investments that we have m ade in equipement. Every head is cut the same as the last one with every port the same. We can also digitize a port for any body with a good working head and they want to use that port a lot. There is more to the heads than just the porting like valve job, valve back cuts, springs used and pressures. Of course we still have to develope the port by hand and test it but once that is done we can duplicate it. I hope this helps explain our cylinder head program. We are adding programs daily and still need to develope some more. If we can help in any way let us know. Thanks Keith

KC
What have you done about combustion chamber design? You don't mention a word about that. What have you done to focus on low lift/mid lift flow numbers? We have found that more low lift flow (and even over all flow) can be found in chamber design and valve job than in port design, and that flow numbers really mean nothing. How many valve head shapes have you tried? Have you ever wet flowed your heads? What were the results? At how many in. of mercury do you flow your heads? When talking about port volume vs flow, how do you account for the fact that an FE head is missing half the intake port as compared to other heads? (It's part of the manifold) Do you think your flow numbers are relative to the industry? (BBF, BBC, other competition heads)
Do you think the saying "open flow numbers aren't as important as low/mid lift, since the valve only sees full lift once in the cycle"? is true?
Do you back cut your exhausts? If so, why? What were the results? What guide clearances do you run and how do you check them? Are the face of your valves the same angle as your seats?
Who actually decides what changes to make to your port designs, based on what kind of info? How do you determain what spring pressures to run? (Do you, from scratch, determain a proper spring pressure by using the valve train info, ie: valve train weight, lobe acceleration, deceleration, cyl. pressure, etc?) Do you know the recip mass of your piston/rod assy so as to determin the proper rod bolt? And rod? Are your engines built with stroke/rod length ratio considered as a factor? Ring material, widths and tensions? Piston material and clearances? Bearing clearances? Journal dia's and finishes? Oil pressure and type? How much oil do you run in your motors on the dyno? Is the oil pressure the same on the dyno as when a customer gets his engine? Same oil? Bore finish? Head gasket material and sealing?
Have you ever used a spin-tron? What kind of valve bounce do you experience with your best set-up? How do you minimize valve bounce? Why do some cams have so much lash?

These are the kind of questions I'd like to hear answered. And a lot more.

I'll pop the pop-corn.....someone else get the beer.

Steelcomp: after reading your post, it looks like you're trying to get answers to questions that YOU have on (perhaps) some of your OWN engine builds / designs. And you want Keith to supply all the information on tricks / things he's learned along the way through a lot of hard work and trial and error.
No doubt, you know your way around an engine. But do you tell people everything you know / have learned along the way?
Whatever KC is doing seems to be working. He has many record holders running his engines in their cars, and a lot of happy Cobra customers as well. I know of one near me and he had his car on a local chassis dyno and the numbers calculated out to be right where KC's flywheel dyno numbers were. RWHP doesn't lie.......and neither does his times at the track.

Stellcomp we consider all of the things you mentioned and more. When you do this everyday for over 20 years you have looked at all of the things you ask about. There are a lot of things that you ask that are basic questions you need to know with any engine build. It would be a lot easier to answer the questions over the phone or in person. Ther are a lot of these questions that any engine builder would not tell you because of the time it take to learn them.
All of the things you mentioned are good questions. The flow is checked at 28" of water on an 4.250 bore with a radius entry. You of course have to consider that the FE intake port is shorter than normal because of the head design but we still check the size of the port for comparison. You always worry about low and mid range flow depending on the application. You well know that on race engines you may not want real good low flow because the exhaust will suck a lot of the intake charge out the exhaust on over lap but you also want to have some to get the intake charge started. Like everything else there is a happy medium. I plan on answering a lot of the questions you have when I get ready to write my FE engine book in the future[HaHa].
I would not be very smart if I had worked on these engines and heads for 20 years and not learned something. We seem to do a pretty good job with the heads and engines because we have some of the fastest ones in the country.
You can be assured we have a handle on all of the things you ask I'm not sure I want to tell them to everyone, this is one of the reasons they buy engines from us.
We have done chamber work on the FE head and we use the Edelbrock 428 casting when we do this because there is a lot more material to work with. We unshroud the spark plug and the valves with better angle of entry to the chamber from the valve job than the 427 machined casting. This is only needed when you want max power. We weld up chambers, intake and exhaust runners and move them all over the place. There is not much we have not done with these heads, that is why about every NHRA record held with a FE has our heads, well just about all the fast ones in the country have our heads. Back cutting the valves is pretty common and this needs to be done with different angles depending on the valve job angles. We have about 10 different valve jobs we use on the heads depending on the application and they all get different angles on the valves. You will always play with different style valves as well. This all just depends on how much they want to spend. WE can do FE heads that flow 400cfm intake and 300cfm exhaust at .900 lift if that is what some one wants. There is always a trade of with flow. We have wet flowed some of the heads to check how the mixture hits the chamber and the cylinder. We also check the swirl as well. When we find something that makes good power we will make notes and mark that program and work from there. The problem with the FE is that the pushrods go through the intake and this is a restriction in the intake manifold. We will weld up the pushrod holes and move the pushrods over and open up the intake in this area. This requires off set rockers and lifters which is used often in other engines. The engine does not know what it is and we have fixed most of the short comings of the FE engine.
We could get into the crappy factory valve train and how we fix that problem but I do not weant to tell everything. We have the Super Stock engines where we are shifting at 8000rpms and crossing at 8400rpms. Most people thought you would never be able to do this with an FE and the all out race engines we have turning 8600rpms. This is no problem with a small block but most people can not do it with an FE.
What most people do not understand is that we are bringing race technology down to the nice street engines and with the new parts available they are able to make some real nice power now. Thanks and good luck, Keith