Shelby Mk V

[Guido36]

I owned one of the three engines that were built for the Pete Brock designed de Tomaso P70 and Sport 5000 - as shown on the backbone chassis at the November 1965 Turin Auto Show. Had they spent the development money to correct the chassis and used this engine the Mangusta really could have been up there. My engine came from Colin Chapman at Lotus which was a candidate for a still born Lotus Can Am project. The engine was a very interesting piece: based on a 289 Ford design, this was an aluminum block 305ci with external oil pump and shallow wet sump - about 4 inches deep. The bottom end consisted of a flat plane crank and Carrillo rods with special forged custom Venolia pistons. The heads were visually very close to the Mk1 Gurney Weslake heads - which they predated by a couple of years. They had finned de Tomaso script valve covers, shaft rockers and Weslake hallmark slide injection. Where they differ from the later Gurney Weslake heads is that the combustion chamber volume was 0.5cc. These were Heron heads with the combustion chsmbers being in the crown of the Venolia pistons. Ignition was via a Mallory dual point distributor Power output was reputedly around 500 hp although that seems a tad optimistic to me! I still have the build sheet on my engine which was gone through by John Dunn - formerly with Ryan Falconer. I would not be surprised if these heads later had combustion chambers added to become the Gurney Weslake heads. What still intrigues me most however is the external oil pump 289 style aluminum block. Was this one of the XHP based Indy engine blocks from 1963 perhaps? If you google de Tomaso P70 images there is a black and white photo of the Turin Auto Show P70/Mangusta chassis with one of these engines - but with 48 IDA Webers in place of the slide injection on my engine and in the de Tomaso P70.

I have photos of my engine but the upload failed - not sure why.
If I could figure out how to post the photos I would be happy to do so - tech help anybody?