Mammoth Mercury Monday

[thatdarncat]

Animal Jim and his Tunnel Port 427 powered '57 Merc, "The Big Animal".

[ScotiaFE]

Very Kool!
It does have a animalistic look to it.

[jayb]

Is that a tunnel ram on that engine, or just a tunnel wedge with some tall carb spacers?  What year were the pictures taken?  I was not aware that anyone ever made a tunnel ram for a tunnel port...

[thatdarncat]

I haven't been able to find any good engine photo's of The Big Animal. Here's a link to the Animal Jim website:

http://www.animaljimracing.com/index.html

It say's Jim started racing the '57 Merc in 1969, won track championships in the '70's and continued to run the car maybe into the '80's. I remember reading about Animal Jim's exploits a lot during the '80's, he had quite a few other race cars. He still has the car, but sadly I've never seen it in person. Maybe one of our members closer to his home base has a good engine picture? I'm guessing it maybe ran the single plane dual four tunnel port intake, but that's just a guess.

[babybolt]

On his website AJ has a "News & Ask Animal" where he posts his email address.

[cjshaker]

If you look closely, you can see space between the carbs, well down below the carbs. So it looks like very tall spacers sitting on top of the single plane 2x4 intake.

[machoneman]

Animal ran all kinds of FE's in that car in the era. We pitted near him and the car many a time at Rockford Dragway and I still have a few pics of the car in the pits. Never had time though to speak with him or even look at the engine. My bro' James did though as we both thought the car was rather unique as by the early-mid 70's nobody ran that old of a Ford. Heck even 55-57 Chevy's were getting kind of rare.

And yes he did run TP heads although he likely mocked up a tunnel ram himself. He was quite the engine innovator btw. Read his own words here:

http://www.enginebuildermag.com/2014/12/five-points-ponder-prior-pri/

Btw, what was really amazing were his exploits some years later with his 7 second Mercury Zepher, heavy nitrous use and really big CID Boss engines!
   

[falcongeorge]

Is that a tunnel ram on that engine, or just a tunnel wedge with some tall carb spacers?  What year were the pictures taken?  I was not aware that anyone ever made a tunnel ram for a tunnel port...

There was a mustang in PHR in the seventies that ran a Weiand Cleveland plenum on a fabricated tubing base, as I recall the car was pretty fast too, I think it ran nines on slapper bars in like 1977.

[machoneman]

More on Animal Jim's cars, although this is a series of still pics. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9UC4OaDRoA

[thatdarncat]

That's a cool video montage.