Probably a few FE fans on here so I'll post a few pictures. This is a 482 inch FE that I'm building with a buddy for his Galaxie. Original '67 427 side oiler block with a SCAT rotating assembly and the brand new heads from Trick Flow. We got one of the first sets of heads and have them bolted to the short block. Just waiting for some custom intake gaskets from Cometic and the engine will be ready to fire up.

The interesting thing about FE engines is that there are a ton of different intake manifolds available. And the FE intake is super complex compared to the Mopar big block which makes it weird.

Basically the aftermarket has decided to tool up a bunch of really complex low volume intakes for the FE engine while they refuse to build simple intakes for the BB Mopar. Guess they just love the FE for some reason.........

We're using a tunnel wedge intake which is kind of a cool intake but there is nothing like that available for a BB Mopar engine. The tunnel wedge will be topped off with dual throttle bodies from FAST. The ignition is also from FAST and will all be controlled by the EFI system.

FE fan here! Looks like a very cool build.

Did you flow those heads?

Engine rebuilder 390 FE from last weekend.
Once I get a couple other projects done I plan to add a turbo.
Gotta practice tuning this Sniper NA first though.

Have a buddy that's a big FE guy.
he's got a '70 mustang FE powered, 4 speed, street car. goes 10.20's. on the back window he's got a big sticker that says " Fear begins with F.E."

That is a neat build, especially with the dual EFI throttle bodies. What are you expecting it to make for HP? Is it incredibly expensive to put roller cams in FE's?

Glad to see you went EFI on it

I agree, the intake manifold selection is staggering for these. What do you think it will make for hp/tq? That Galaxie is a BIG car.

Do you foresee any problems with the slightly longer, taller runners on the rear cylinders like that? What's the deal with the center ridge in the floor of the intake port in the cylinder head?

I don't think it will make a ton of power, maybe 625 hp and 600 ft-lbs or something in that neighborhood. The cam is a Comp XR292R solid roller so it is decent size but not huge. Should have a bit of a lumpy idle but hopefully is driveable in the Galaxie.

I don't think it is anymore expensive to put a roller in a FE than a Mopar. Just buy the cam and the roller lifters. The Trick Flow heads only come with hyd roller springs for some reason. Trick Flow makes these heads with hyd roller springs and Ti retainers which seems like a silly combination. So we changed springs and kept the Ti retainers.

Factory FE rocker arms are 1.76 ratio so you get a lot of valve lift from fairly modest lobes.

I'm switching everything I own to EFI and most of my future projects will be EFI.

I've been thinking the same thing about the bb intakes lately. More head choices than ever and seems like less intake choices.

Sweet!
Now lets wait and see if Trickflow makes some heads for a Y-Block aswell.:)

As for intakemanifolds, for bb mopars, Edelbrock makes dualplane dual quads manifolds for RB motors and offenhauser makes singleplane dualquad manifolds for the B series and probably for the RB aswell but cant remeber for sure. OFFY is actualy real cool and has a bunch of oddball stuff in their catalog,check them out you might be surprised of what is available,and considering what i see on their instagram from to time it would not surprise me if they could do some oddball stuff that is not in the catalog aswell.


Totaly offtopic,i wish the smallblock mopar had some exhaustmanifolds as nice as those...

First thing I thought of when I looked at the photo was that the intake is a copy of the Stage V Hemi piece. Of course my money is on the Hemi.

i think that ridge is for pushrod tube clearance. Pushrods go through the intake on FE engines.

Probably the other way around. The FE tunnel wedge intake was available over the counter from Ford back in the 60's. I don't think the Stage V dual carb single plane showed up until 40 years later.

That intake in the picture is NOT a tunnel wedge. My buddy has a set of those and the ports are as big as baseballs with a tube right thru the middle of them on the intake side. The heads are also very large with no tube restrictions. He said they do not really run that well because of the airflow restrictions from the big pushrod tubes.
This is still a very nice looking set up.

Tunnel port intake

I grew up working on FE Fords, I still do some BBF engines.Ford FE series engines, are literally among some of the biggest movers right now for some of the manufatures parts...its scary how many are being built right now. Cheap, easy to find, and decent bang for the buck.460 BBF is same, easy to make great power and torque, and parts ARE available.

The intake we're using is a tunnel wedge. The intake you are talking about is a tunnel port.

The FE is a cool looking engine with the pentroof valve covers and the wild intake and exhaust manifolds. It is a quirky engine with the pushrods in the intake and stuff like that but I guess that adds character. Some of the stuff is similar to a BB Mopar. Shaft rocker arms, front oil pump, skirted block, cross bolted blocks on the race engines, etc.

The ridge in the intake port is for flow. They call it a floor wing or a vane. It sits in the low velocity part of the port and helps the mixture make the turn into the valve. At least that is the theory. I suppose Trick Flow did a bunch of flow bench development with and without the wing but they didn't post any of that information on their website so I'm just guessing that they found that it helps. I don't think I've seen a wing like that in any Mopar ports but I've seen it before in some Chevy engines.

Jay Brown is now selling these intake adapters for FE Ford engines. They adapt a 351 Cleveland intake to it. So you have more manifold choices, and you can swap intakes or inspect the valley without draining the coolant and disassembling the valve train. They are selling like hotcakes.

Wow: Now that is a piece that makes a lot of sense.

I race with a bunch of FE ford guys when I meet with the UMTR stick guys.
Larry's wagon is a cool FE racer
Gus

A friend / customer of mine was looking for a replacement 427 side oiler block a few years ago. I was surprised when he showed me what he had found in an old box !

Mark

Yeah that setup does make some sense for the serious FE guy. The bottom part seals up the engine and leaves the intake dry. So then you can swap intakes in just a few minutes like on a BB Mopar. With the factory setup pulling the intake off is fairly major surgery. You have to pull the rocker shafts and the pushrods and drain the water and so on. Really a big time bother.

That tunnel ram is a sweet looking piece!!!!

I noticed a bid difference in flow swirl pattern on the piston with a tilted port floor on my iron heads from the Edl flat port I have .

Engine is almost together, just trying to round up the correct intake gasket at the moment. Once we have the correct gasket the top end should fall together quickly.

I think I see oil drain holes in the corner of the heads,Is that correct.

[/quote]

i think that ridge is for pushrod tube clearance. Pushrods go through the intake on FE engines. [/quote]

That intake in the picture is NOT a tunnel wedge. My buddy has a set of those and the ports are as big as baseballs with a tube right thru the middle of them on the intake side. The heads are also very large with no tube restrictions. He said they do not really run that well because of the airflow restrictions from the big pushrod tubes.
This is still a very nice looking set up. [/quote]

The intake we're using is a tunnel wedge. The intake you are talking about is a tunnel port. [/quote]

My bad Andy.
You are correct about it being a tunnel wedge. My typo as i was trying to clear up the statement "the push rods do not go thru the intake port" on those heads or intake. I should have said tunnel port intake.
Thanks for sharing this post. Sometimes it is fun to see what other brands have available with out going to Yellow Bullet.

I can see how the floor vane would direct airflow and create a swirl effect. Would this improve on the low end power, OR the Mid range or top end?

That is my guess but I really don't know. I asked Trick Flow for an explanation on the floor wing but they didn't reply to my email. Which is weird since they sent me the heads for testing.

Ford-Edsel (FE) Motor. Leave it to Ford to over complicate everything like the FE intake manifold design. Deck the block or mill the heads, and headaches are yours fitting those intakes. Very cool trick flow is making great heads for old Chrysler and Ford engines. Makes getting good horsepower easy.

Those long exhaust ports are a heat soak, great place for Swain coating.

I agree, the FE head design is very, very weird. But it is weird in a cool way which is probably why these engines are so popular. I've looked at other engines of the era and they are weird in a stupid way which is why they aren't popular anymore. Some of the older BOP designs for example or older Caddy engines have some super odd stuff going on. Integral bellhousings, decks at odd angles, etc.

The ridge in the intake port is for flow. They call it a floor wing or a vane. It sits in the low velocity part of the port and helps the mixture make the turn into the valve. At least that is the theory. I suppose Trick Flow did a bunch of flow bench development with and without the wing but they didn't post any of that information on their website so I'm just guessing that they found that it helps. I don't think I've seen a wing like that in any Mopar ports but I've seen it before in some Chevy engines. [/quote]
I seem to remember a article in one of the drag magazines years ago about adding dams in the intake manifolds intake ports to aid airflow, I guess it didn't catch on back then
I had a hemi motor that had been built by Petty Ent. for a clone NASCAR 1967 Plymouth of Marty Robbins car, it had the big two piece single Dominator flange bathtub NASCAR intake with a bunch of air dams and ridges cut into the floor.
That intake had the best fuel distribution as far as the EGT reading(all within 25 F from part throttle loaded at 1300 RPM to WOT) of any motor I've dyno tested
Ford had so many variations of the FE race heads it ain't even funny

Here is a link to the first article on these heads: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/new-product-overview-ford-fe-heads-trick-flow/

We're still waiting for the correct intake gasket before the engine can be fired up. Should be anytime now.

I admire engines that are not common/mainstream. FE, Desoto Hemi, Nailhead, 409, Wildcat...Polysphere. Not economical to build by any means but many owners are not pinching pennies when paying to have their project built.

A 390 based FE engine wouldn't cost anymore to build than a typical BB Mopar. The 428 and 427 blocks are hard to come by and fairly expensive but Ford FE aftermarket blocks are available. So actually, a person can build a big FE engine easier than a big Mopar engine. There are more places to buy cast iron FE blocks than Mopar blocks...........

Nice article Andy! I can't wait to see the dyno results. You didn't include FE Power in your list of sources.

Thanks, we should be on the dyno next week.

I usually only list the big parts in the source list. All I have from FE Power on this engine is the timing gear. Not a hard and fast rule, somewhat subjective but there is a space constraint in the magazine so typically just the big stuff gets listed.

The big stuff is easy to find, it’s the unique parts that sometimes only have one source that people following the build usually need help finding. And a builder may find other parts they didn’t know existed and can use by visiting those specialty sites. JMO

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.


.

Andy, I will be looking forward to the dyno tests and your impressions with the dual-quad FI setup. I keep thinking about going to it on my 528 Hemi, but have not seen much info on using the D-Q and getting it tuned up correctly. FE Fords are one of my favorite non-Mopar engines, thanks for posting this!

Getting closer. Should have it fired up shortly.

This 482 made 700 hp at 6300 and 640 ft-lbs at 5300 rpm so it turned out to be a real monster. Seems to idle pretty fair with the 254/260 roller cam too. Be interesting to see how it drives in the car.

FEel the power! That things a beast.

And since it is EFI we get full data logs for the dyno pulls. Hard to read in this picture but you get the idea. This EFI stuff is sweet. (once you figure out how to make it run anyway. I trashed the tune file by mistake and cost us a day on the dyno.)

Nice hp/tq numbers,I was waiting to see how that port size worked out on the rpm.

On the dyno it worked out great. We'll need to get the engine into the car to see how it drives on the street with that tunnel wedge intake. It has a lot of torque down low but I'm not sure how it will work right off idle when lugging 4000 lbs around with a 3.55 rear gear.

When you jump on it though it is going to think it has Hellcat power under the hood!

Here is a startup video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te4uSKILr88&feature=youtu.be

Here is a dyno console view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEExZe3eNMI

Where the wide ban readings accurate on that pull at WOT?
What type of fuel?

Awesome results, 700 hp from a relatively streetable n/a 482" motor is excellent. Plus it looks incredible with the period correct dual quad air cleaner on there!

We'll know just how streetable it is once we get the engine back in the car. Might need to go one size smaller on the cam. It is 254/260 solid roller which isn't huge for a 482 inch engine, but it still might be a little big for a Galaxie with 3.55 gears.

Besides, I don't think the owner really needs 700 hp in that car! It is all stock, just a nice driver. Not a race car at all. Not even a hot street car, just a stocker.

How much money in this setup you have now? Too bad they don't look like a standard Holly, stealthy.

I think the parts list is around $20K at retail. The wildcard is the original standard bore 427 block. Those are super hard to find so that would be an expensive part to acquire.

Heads are $2500
EFI setup with computer, dual throttle bodies, ignition, etc. is $4000
Intake is $1000
Rotating assembly is $2500
Cam and lifters is $1000
Rocker arms and pushrods is $1500
Water pump, oil pan, damper, valve covers, air cleaner, etc. is $2000
Block is $2000+
Machine work, balancing, assembly, dyno labor, etc. is $2000
Dyno headers were $700 custom built
Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting......

This is what it would look like in the car with the air cleaner on. Most people aren't going to know that it has fuel injection. The air cleaner hides a lot of that stuff. All you see is the fuel rail and the throttle linkage and those both look somewhat stock like.

Article is posted on the Hot Rod website: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/dyno-tested-make-700-hp-trick-flows-new-fe-heads/