I think John Christie was the guy who, by his own admission, told Shelby about AC losing their supply of Bristol engines for the Ace, and that Ford had a new lightweight small block ready to roll.
Agreed, that first car was quite obviously faster than the average Cobra 260 road car, but then the average Cobra road car could embarrass just about anything else on the road.
Cheers,
Glen

Honest, Brent, I don't want a stroker! :o It's unlikely that I'll pull up next to a 427 Cobra in my neck of the woods!
Driving to work, I use 1500 to 6000 every day, and no I don't do it at every set of traffic lights! The boys in blue lock us up here for dragging on public roads....
So, the rev range I would be chasing is 1500 (or OK, 2000 if using a slightly shorter diff) to as high as I can get. :D
Cheers,
Glen

Glen,

Feel free to give me a call sometime. Maybe I can explain some things better over the phone than I can with words on a computer monitor.

I've been following this thread since day one and now would like to add my 2 cents for what it's worth,real world expirence....
The very first engine I every modded was a 302 in my truck in the mid 70s, I wanted a "hot rod" engine and at the time Ford had a small booklet out,called From mild to wild,outlining how to go about it, gave all the cam specs/intake/carb/everything.... I followed their recommendations to the letter and build a "hotrod" 302. It would scream from 3000 to 6500 rpms and run like a scalded dog.
Now this was my daily driver,I raced every chevy pickup in town with a 350 and beat them all, I was a happy camper.....then comes the daily driving part,from idle to 3000 rpms, it was a dog, no torque,no bottom end, but I still drove the truck for 5 or 6 years adding 70,000+ miles on it.....
Fast forward to the mid 90's, I'm restoring a 65 Mustang Fastback for myself and have decided on a 351-W for the car, it's going to be a street cruiser/show car/sunday driver, but I would like for it to have some "pep" and go if I need to step on the gas pedal...but still get decent gas mileage..

While planning the engine a buddy comes by and we're discussing the engine and he reminds me of the 302 I had in my truck years before and how it was a dog to drive around town,he was right.
The 351-W came out of a 1972 LTD in the junkyard,50 bucks bought, had to bore it 40 over to clean up the cylinder walls, did a ton of port/polish work on the stock heads myself and had larger chevy valves installed to replace the puny little Ford valves. Settled on an Edlebrock alum., dual plane intake and a Holley 600 double pumper (used), now it's time for the cam..
My buddy kept reminding me of my truck engine, it was way overcammed for it's intended use, so I settled on a hydraulic flat tappit cam with all of .484 lift and 272 duration, mild by anyone's standards.......
It idles at 800 rpms smoothly,while pulling 17 inches of vacum and has a ton of torque from idle on, makes execellent power to 5500+ rpms and coupled with a Tremec 5 speed, I get 23mpg cruising the interstate at 75 mph.......with drag radials on the rear, I break into the 12's in the quarter mile running thru the 2 gaint mufflers I have on the car.....
This engine has 100+ quarter mile passes on it and at least double that in "stoplight" passes, 2000 miles on 3 different road courses and 30,000 highway miles on it and I just recently took it out and sold it to a relative and now it's living a hard life in a 1983 Bronco 4x4.....

With the trans/rear gear combo you want to use, I think a nice 300 to 350hp/302 with about 10 to 1 compression and a camshaft in the low 500 lift range and 280 duration range would make a really nice engine with good low end torque and still run up in the 6500rpm range when you want to put your foot in it,all the while doing it on pump gas.....
High revving screamers have little bottom end and poor idle/street manners,which is where your spend 90% of your time driving....
Again, just my 2 cents for what it's worth........
David

love the story of your truck, but lets's keep in mind that we are talking about a 2,100 lb Cobra here, not a 3,500 lb truck, or even a 2,900 lb. Mustang like I have, etc. A 289 or 302 will have plenty of torque for the fun factor desired.

If you look around, a good 289 block can be found vs. the the more common 302. Yes, the 289 does give up some low rpm torque compared to the 302, but it does rev quicker due to the shorter stroke. In an ultra light car the 289 is a good choice.

and...

I agree, but with a different conclusion. There's a lot of enjoyment to be had by staying close to the original spirit & experience of the car by not going "modern" in the drivetrain department.

Z.

I don't think you can tell the differance in the way the 289/302s rev --there is.019 differance in the stroke and both have the 4.0 bore

A late 302 roller block would be my preferance if I was building a 302 for myself, however if I was building a short deck sbf I would use the Dart block and most likely in aluminmu.

I agree with you on the weight issue, I think whats gonna hurt him off idle is the toploader coupled with a 3.07 rear gear......also depends on how tall his rear tires are also......

I've had three 65 Mustangs with toploaders (still have 2 of them),2 street cars and one road racer, I think a rear gear in the 3.25 to 3.50 would be better for his use with a toploader....

David

I had a toploader, & 3.00:1 gearing in my car for about 7 years. I did two things to make the combination work. First of all I had a taller first gear added to the toploader when it was being restored by David Kee. This one:

2.90 First Gear
Component Manufacturing

Secondly I added about 80 HP +/- with the addition of a vintage Paxton supercharger. You can probably get the same increase by going with aluminum heads.

Z.

........................

Thanks David, for more of the real world comments.
Can you tell me why you decided on flat tappets?
Cheers,
Glen

Thanks Brent, I will do that when I'm a little closer to actually wanting some hardware. I appreciate the advice given by you and others so far. I done a couple of engine re-builds quite a few years ago, but I really know nothing about things like cam design.
Cheers,
Glen

They won't unless they're modified as the newer aluminum heads come-tight chambers, bigger valves and better-flowing ports. There's a lot of science in modern aluminum heads. You would need to do a lot of modifying to iron heads to approach modern TrickFlows or AFRs. And then the weight still works against them.

............................

Jerry, the stroke on a 302 is around 0.130" longer than a 289; not much, so all other things being 'equal', they should both have the potential to rev nicely with such a short stroke (2.87" and 3" for the 302)
While looking up these figures, I checked on the bhp and torque figures for both...
289 K 271bhp @ 6000 and 312lb/ft @ 3400
289 A 225bhp @ 4800 and 305lb/ft @ 3200
302 GT350 250bhp @ 4800 and 310lb/ft @ 2800
Agreed, bare figures don't show the shape of the power and torque curves, so you can't assume from these figures that the 289 A and the 302 GT350 with power peaks at 4800 would be real slugs at anything higher than 5000.
So what do these figures prove? ....er, nothing really. But logic tells me that stroking to 331 or 347 would produce an engine that's less happy at higher revs. But more powerful, yes.
Cheers,
Glen

remember, the A code 289 didn't have screw-in studs for the rocker arms like the K code engines did, so it couldn't hold the heavier valve springs needed to rev (the studs would pull out of the heads at high rpm). By the time the 302 based GT-350 came on the scene (1968) emission regulations were in place and the engine was de-tuned.

there were bottom end differences between the A code & K code 289's as well that enabled the K code to be a fun little rev happy machine with decent reliability,

Z.

............................

the sore loser Corvette crowd were on the race officials to keep things pretty "honest" in the Cobra/Mustang camp. Once the Cobras tried to race with an oil cooler. Corvette racers complained, saying it was "modified" and not eligible to run in the stock class. So the Cobra's oil coolers were disconnected, and still won the race. Using Corvette's logic against them, Shelby has the oil coolers re-connected, and ran the same cars in the modified class, and won that one as well.

Not to say there wasn't some "creativity" shenanigans goings-on in both camps. And once the Cobra were overseas racing against Ferrari, the scrutiny became even more political.

Z.

Z, I included the 289 A code as I assume that there would be more of them around than the K code.
Cheers,
Glen

Kurt - your heads are CI? Your power and torque figures are impressive, if I recall correctly? OK - so what lifters? And if I can enquire, which gearbox and what diff ratio?
Cheers,
Glen

yes they (289 A code engine) are more plentiful, and it's not too expensive to upgrade them to handle higher rpm usage.

Z.