Well Folks results are in. Mr. Craine was our Nostradamus here. My lower guess was close but some tricks at the end got us a few extra ponies. I do have a gift for a lucky contestant. No,not shrimp cocktail lol.. I have a new size 2x "What the heck is a Y Block" T shirt. Free to the first request (if you want to admit you take a 2x.. Joe has plenty of these shirts and so do I. So, any closet Y Blockers out there?
Started out with some warm up pulls. 36 degrees of timing. Carb built to stock specs by Drew (performed great as far as function). I used a 4 hole 1 inch spacer. The original engine probably had one of those 1/2 inch phenolic jobs, but I could not find one. So rather than bolt the carb direct to the manifold, I used the 4 hole 1 inch. First pull yielded 290 horse. Ouch...We determined that the secondaries were not opening fully so we put a zip tie on them and tried again. Next pull 307.. Well it did improve... I was starting to think that my suspicion that this might be a 300 horse motor was proving to be correct. In looking over the data it's pig rich.11.6 up top. Down low and in a cruise test it was actually not bad 12.7. Since it is a 4160, no option to lean the secondaries, so we took 4 jets out of the front. Stock jets were 64s.. We had to hunt to find some 60s. It responded with a 311 number . It was still about 1/2 point rich but we had no smaller jets. Next we did some timing loops in the end 40 degrees is the sweet spot and it made 317.. With timing and fuel dialed in as good as possible time to try a couple other things.. I put on a 1 inch cloverleaf spacer and we hit 320.. We were pulling some vacuum but not a huge amount, 1.6 inches... Carb is small but not choking the engine too much. Pretty much had this combination maxed out.. I borrowed a 1.19 Autolite so I bolted that on hoping to see some more gains. One pull disabused that notion. It was dangerously lean, over 15:1. No jets on hand for that baby and since it is a borrowed carb I did not want to tear it apart..Just to see if the carb was really holding it back we put on the dyno shop 750. It is well sorted out and we got the best so far pull of 327..As the last effort we cooled it down to 120 water and 170 oil temp and made a final pull, 333 @5400 376 torque at 3500. It appears peak torque is lower than 3500 but the dyno is not happy being loaded at a lower rpm. I would guess peak torque is some where between 380 - 385.. I will post the actual dyno sheets a little later when I get some time.
Obviously there is not a 360 horse number as this engine sits.. In my opinion the intake is the main culprit, with the cam not really helping much either.. I thought the carb would be the real cork in the bottle but it performed pretty well.
So could Ford have made 360 horse? Maybe... If they had used dyno headers, that's probably 15 horse If the engine was blueprinted with a minimum chamber and tightest deck clearance and loose bearing and piston clearances, thin hot oil, that might be worth another 15 horse, so it's possible .
The cam, while showing a 308 seat to seat duration and 228 @.050 did not act that big at all. No idle lope, 19 inches of vacuum, and an easy 650 rpm idle. I lay most of that mildness on the super wide 114 LSA. On the other hand power peaked at 5400 rpm and it pulled strong to 5700. That probably is in part due to the 114 spacing. This is a really well mannered engine, starts immediately, idles effortlessly, takes throttle cleanly.. Would be a real joy in a street car. When you think about it, a 390 police interceptor made 330, so this thing makes that with 30 less cubes..
https://youtu.be/fQ4vw3Xnqq4
