427 teardown

[Katz427]

Hello! I am new to this forum but see that there is a group with plenty of FE experience. I raced FE oval trackers back in the 70's but that may as well be another life. All our stuff was 390's back then. I am old enough to remember the intro of the tunnelport and saw my first parts in 1967 at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix where Ford had a display. Now fast forward to about 3 wepks ago and I find a 427 at an "estate" sale and could not resist! The old gent passed away and no one knew much about the engine.
I have it apart and had the heads pressure checked and magnafluxed and they passed ..Ok! No cracks between the plug hole and intake seat ( I was worried about that). The crank is steel w/screw in plugs and std on mains and rods.
The block has 8 sleeves and stitch lok pins between the cylinders and is .030 over. The bores are actually in pretty good shape. The machinist said he felt thing would clean up nicely at .010 over.
There are TRW 2299 pistons in there now. They look pretty much like new just like someone brushed the cylinders and installed.
I know looking back at some old posts that many are not keen on a sleeved block. It is a side oiler date looks like 9A10. I guess the real problem is all 8 have been sleeved.
The other deal is the LeMans rods. These have been polished and shot peened and the later thick shank bolts. I know from looking at old posts these can be a concern and I will mag them. Maybe they should become display art ?
I planned on installing it in my 1966 Galaxie and just cruise to shows maybe a couple  1/8 mile drags for the local clubs.
I know the tunnelports are not the best street head but they are Ford racing history. I am looking for advice on what I should check out. Maybe someone has been this way before and can give some advice. 

[jayb]

Welcome to the forum, and what a great motor to get back into FEs with!  Given the end use, I'd be much more worried about the block than the LeMans rods.  I don't think the rods will give you a bit of trouble if they Magnaflux OK and have the good bolts.  Usually when you sleeve two adjacent cylinders on an FE, you can develop cracks at the deck in the thin spot between the two cylinders.  Is that where the Lock n Stitch pins are?  Maybe that's a solution, but I don't know for sure.  If you put it together with that block, just be aware that you are running a risk, and if you start seeing coolant in the oil, or white exhaust smoke, you'll know where its coming from.

What intake manifold do you have for the engine?  Just curious.

One other thought would be that big cubic inches would help keep the flow velocity up in those big ports, making the engine much more street friendly.  So maybe think about a stroker kit; that would require different rods, and take the concerns you have with the LeMans rods out of the equation.

Here's a couple of threads on tunnel port builds here, to give you some ideas:

http://fepower.net/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=729

http://fepower.net/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=2489

[Katz427]

The lockn stitch pins are in the narrow portion between the cylinders. I thought maybe to be a preemptive attempt to keep the cracks from developing.
The engine is equipped with a 4500 holley dominator single 4 intake. I remember a couple of racers running 427 FE's in the 70's and one was Maynard Troyer out of Rochester, NY. I thought the engine may have come from his stuff or maybe someone else in that area. (Back in the era when local Ford dealers actually sponsored cars for drag and ovals!)
I agree that a stroker would be a good idea. When I got the manifold off I thought Wow! Those ports are plenty big enough! Maybe not alot of velocity until about 5k! Reading what Brent and Blair Patrick have done with one got me thinking about a stroker.

[cammerfe]

We put a TP in Brother Lon's '67 Mustang toward the end of the '68 summer. The parts came out of the LeMans program. I was told they were items used in the testing that went on in France. Lon used the car as his daily driver during that summer, complete with a 4.44 Detroit Locker. There was NO lack of torque at any speed. Traction WAS a severe problem.

Some of this was undoubtedly due to the dual plane intake manifold and the pair of 652 center-squirter Holley carbs. I believe the 'lack-of-low-speed-torque' story to be simply one of those apocryphal stories likely started by Roger Huntington. It simply wasn't true for us. Go Get 'em!!

KS