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Messages - andyf

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16
FE Technical Forum / Re: In depth street/strip tune articles on 427 back in the 60's?
« on: July 02, 2018, 09:53:18 PM »
There was a great article that I read over and over on a drag racer who had a 427 with a 428 crank. The article was much more informative than the usual magazine articles, it covered his testing of different factory heads and intake manifolds and had a bunch of speed secrets in it. I don't have the article anymore and I'm not even sure which magazine it was in. Maybe Popular Hot Rodding and probably in the early to mid 80's. It was about the only serious Ford article I recall seeing back then. FE articles have always been fairly rare, even in the old Ford magazines.

17
FE Technical Forum / Re: Anyone have a base timing table they could share?
« on: June 24, 2018, 08:09:56 PM »
Maybe, but you also want to remember that you have a starter cranking speed that needs a spark. You don't want to be too advanced when cranking the engine.

Nice thing about EFI is that you can throw away all that MSD stuff. Start retard box, gone, high speed retard, gone, advance weights, gone, vacuum can, gone, rev limiter pills, gone. MSD is going to be hurting in a few years after more people switch to EFI!

18
FE Technical Forum / Re: Anyone have a base timing table they could share?
« on: June 24, 2018, 02:28:49 PM »
The first column should have more timing than the second column so the idle speed self corrects if it drifts too low. When the first column has less advance the engine can hunt or surge back and forth.

19
FE Technical Forum / Re: FE Primaries- How To Determine 1-3/4, 7/8, 2" 6"
« on: June 06, 2018, 11:21:15 PM »
If you really want to know then buy a copy of PipeMax and input your numbers. PipeMax doesn't cost that much and it is very useful for all sorts of engine simulation questions.

Another way to look at the question is to ask how big your exhaust valve is and what size is the exhaust port? 2 inch is probably bigger than you need but it would work. Something slightly smaller would probably work even better but it sort of depends on how much time you want to mess with it. Are you going to make your own flanges or buy something off the shelf? Are you willing to build step headers or do you want one constant size?

20
FE Technical Forum / Re: Dumb Dyno Question
« on: June 05, 2018, 10:52:06 AM »
A chassis dyno with a brake on it will tell you what you want to know. You need to be able to apply a small load to the engine in order to simulate part throttle driving and cruise conditions. So the chassis dyno can't be just an inertia drum, it also needs to have some sort of brake to apply a steady state load. Call around and ask the chassis dyno shops what their setup is.

21
FE Technical Forum / Re: Best Street Cam/TC/Gear Combo for 428?
« on: June 05, 2018, 10:49:34 AM »
Quote from: CV355 on June 05, 2018, 09:07:41 AM
I appreciate the feedback everyone!

Right now the cam gives a very rough idle, shakes the whole car at idle.  It smooths out nice once you're in the throttle a bit.  Maybe I'll do as was recommended here and leave the cam for now, get it tuned.  Tighter torque converter and 3.50 rear gears. 

If the cam is still an issue, I'll think about doing a roller setup.  At that point, I'd be putting aluminum heads on anyway.  Might be able to find some heads to lower SCR a bit.


A rough idle could be the cam but it could also be something else such as a vacuum leak, wrong timing, bad plugs, bad plug wires, incorrect carb adjustment, etc.

Do you have a wideband on the car? What does the vacuum gauge say? What is the timing?

I'd be surprised if a cheater cam ran good in a street car since that isn't what they are designed to do, but I also wouldn't be surprised to find a bunch of other tuning problems in a new build. Every home built car that I've ever worked on has had a bunch of issues. That is just the nature of the beast.

22
FE Technical Forum / Re: Best Street Cam/TC/Gear Combo for 428?
« on: June 04, 2018, 10:55:55 AM »
How much tuning have you done with the combination? An aggressive cam will need more ignition timing and some very careful calibration changes to the carb. If you haven't spent a day or two on a chassis dyno then that would be one recommendation. It is possible that the cam is just too aggressive for your application so you might need to change it but you might be able to save it by tuning. Have you advanced the cam to see how it responds?

Another option is the one I'm doing right now with my street car. I've gotten tired of constantly chasing a tune with analog carbs and ignition systems so I'm switching over to EFI with computer controlled ignition. The full digital approach gives you screen top tuning as well as data logging. With full data logging capability it is easier find some issues and resolve them. The Holley Sniper kit will give you a lot of tuning capability for only $1000 so you might consider going that way. Who knows, maybe EFI will tame the combination down enough that you won't need to change the cam and the TC. If so you'll end up money ahead.

23
FE Technical Forum / Re: Best Street Cam/TC/Gear Combo for 428?
« on: June 04, 2018, 10:13:24 AM »
Quote from: CV355 on June 04, 2018, 06:01:18 AM
Hello everyone,

I put another two months of work into my '69, and the streetability is still not where I want it to be.  I'm looking at doing a cam swap, tighter TC, steeper rear gears, and a gentler automatic valvebody.

What would your recommendations be for a mild street-oriented cam / TC / rear gear combo?  I want this to be a reliable cruiser car and right now it's not.  As stated in a previous thread, S-CR is between 10.5 and 11.0 but will be measured soon.  I want to be able to take my wife on a weekend cruise or car show, and right now the car is just too unrefined to do so.


Too much cam, gear and carb are the most common mistakes that hot rodders make. I see it all the time and I make the same mistake myself sometimes. Everyone is always pushing bigger and bigger stuff. Not very many ads say "use our small cam and carb and be happy". When I get lost I always go back and look at the cam that Chevy put in their 502 crate engine. It is tiny, around 220/230 at 0.050. That engine works nice in street rods and heavy cars and older muscle cars. I have a 512 inch engine in my street car with a 245 @ 050 hyd roller and I think the cam is too big. I was sure it would be the right size but after driving it I think I was 5 degrees too big. So it happens to most of us.

24
FE Technical Forum / Re: Dumb Dyno Question
« on: June 04, 2018, 10:05:38 AM »
Quote from: ACHiPo on June 03, 2018, 11:12:55 AM
I'm ok with the dyno numbers for my mild 470, but they start at 3000 RPM and I'd like to know what to expect from idle up to 3000 since that's where it'll likely spend most of the time. 

Why do dyno pulls start so high?  How, other than "butt dyno" do I know how the motor will behave on the street?

The motor is a BBM cast iron 427 sideoiler with a SCAT 4.15 stroker rotating assembly, stock Edelbrock heads with stock rockers, flat hydraulic lifters, and a Blue Thunder intake.

It's going into a street 427 Cobra replica.

Thanks in advance.


If you want to do street driving testing on a dyno then you'll need to find someone who has a eddy current dyno rather than a water brake. With a eddy current dyno you can do idle testing and part throttle low speed testing. Most water brake dynos are designed for WOT testing and do not have enough control features to test an engine at idle or off idle. Water brake dynos are basically an "all or nothing" design. They would cost a lot more if they had more control features and most people only use them for WOT testing so there isn't any reason for the extra expense.

It would cost a bunch of money and a lot of time but if you really had to do part throttle or low speed testing you could call around and find someone who does truck engine testing. But I can almost guarantee you that when you tell them you want to run a FE on their test stand they'll just tell you to forget it. They aren't going to spend several days trying to figure out how to hook a FE engine up to a big rig test stand.

So it is what it is unless you have a ton of money and time to go chase the unicorn.

25
FE Technical Forum / Re: Dyno Mule II
« on: June 03, 2018, 10:41:51 AM »
Sounds like fun. I have a couple of dyno mules which I use for testing various parts. I've run a lot of cam tests as well as rocker arms, carbs, intake manifolds and headers over the years. These days I'm spending most of my time on fuel injection. It is really nice to have a dyno mule handy when the mood strikes to test something.

One thing I'll warn you about is the question that people ask when they see one of my dyno mules. Everyone also asks "what is that going in"? If I tell them it is a dyno mule they'll say "what is that". If I tell them it isn't going in anything they look at me like I'm odd. I had one guy get mad at me for wasting my time on the dyno when I should be racing my car. I told him my race car already has a engine in it and then he got really mad. Guess he was pissed off that I had more than one engine.

So beware of people asking "what is it going in". Sometimes they just can't handle the answer.

26
FE Technical Forum / Re: Mono leaf and CalTrac kit for street use
« on: May 22, 2018, 02:24:45 PM »
Depends what you mean by "ride quality". If you are talking about stiffness or harshness then you solve that with spring rate and shocks. So that isn't a big problem. Depending on how much work you are willing to do you can either slide under the car and adjust the shocks for street driving, and/or change the spring rate when going to the track.

If you include noise in the ride quality bucket then you'll have an issue. The Cal Trac setup has a bunch of moving parts which tend to rattle around while driving. So the back end of the car will sound like a bucket of bolts when you hit a bump.

27
FE Technical Forum / Re: New Trick Flow FE cylinder heads & Intake
« on: May 19, 2018, 02:21:01 PM »
Quote from: fryedaddy on May 18, 2018, 10:37:42 PM
Well, whats the verdict.does the TF's out perform the other aftermarket options,out of the box?say,if you bolted them on the same engine as the others.has anyone done the comparo ,kinda like Jays intake comparo.

Not very many people have the time or money to compare cylinder heads on a dyno. Eventually someone might swap some ported Edelbrock heads for a new set of Trick Flows and maybe they'll come on here and publish the results but it could take a while. I've done A-B head testing on the dyno before and it is a lot of work. You have to line up the dyno time and order all the parts and then thrash hard for a couple of days. Sounds like fun until you do it a few times and then it just sounds like work.

28
FE Technical Forum / Re: New Trick Flow FE cylinder heads & Intake
« on: May 18, 2018, 08:51:12 PM »
620 hp for 406 inches is really good. That is 1.53 hp/in which is a little better than we did with the 482. We were right at 700 which is 1.45 hp/inch and we had a dual throttle body setup.

29
FE Technical Forum / Re: New Trick Flow FE cylinder heads & Intake
« on: May 18, 2018, 12:02:04 PM »
We used 32 degrees. We had the first set of TF heads on a dyno so nobody knew any better. 32 seemed to work just fine, the engine ran hard and the plugs looked okay so we left it there. I wouldn't be surprised that slightly less or slightly more timing would work even better but we had lots of other things to try during the dyno session.

30
FE Technical Forum / Re: New Trick Flow FE cylinder heads & Intake
« on: May 12, 2018, 03:10:33 PM »
Quote from: jayb on May 11, 2018, 08:32:01 AM
That is a cool tool, Andy, I think I might just make one of those myself!

Jay, I have some of the parts on hand to make more of those tools. If you're interested I could send you a few sets of parts and you could make your own tools.

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