Can Am FE

[thatdarncat]

Last night I saw a post on Bangshift for a video from the 1970 Can Am series. It's a film called "The Heavies" and it focuses on the McLaren team at the Road Atlanta race, but widely covers all the top Can Am cars that year like Lola, Porsche and Chaparral. I was watching the video on my phone when all of a sudden I caught a close up engine photo, and what immediately caught my attention was a set of "Mercury" FE valve covers! Best I could do was a screen shot from my phone, sorry. Checking out the picture you will see it is an injected Tunnel Port, I would assume a 427. No idea which car this was, they only jumped right to the engine shot on the video. Keep in mind this was 1970 so a few years past when any FE was on the showroom floor with those Mercury valve covers. And interesting that anyone was running a FE since I would have guessed most Can Am Ford teams would have been running the Boss 429 ( 494 ). Here's my screen shot picture:



Here's a YouTube link to the 11 minute film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0aP_6It7Pw

Anyone have any more info?

 

[mmason]

I think I found some info. Scroll down to number 24 and 27 under no photos at this link.
http://www.racingsportscars.com/photo/Watkins_Glen-1970-07-12c.html

[thatdarncat]

That's a great resource, and I see the site also has the drivers listed with all the cars they drove over the years too. Too bad they don't have pictures for either for this race. Watching the film again it appears the car has white body work, at least on the upper middle. Doing a quick search I didn't see specific websites for those drivers, it sure would be interesting to know some details of those FE's.

[FERoadster]

That's great to see some FE's in CanAm.
I looked at the Merc VC's and something didn't look quite correct so I checked some of my sets and these pictured seem to be custom. The end of the script Y seems to be straight and the 65-67 Merc  have a curve in the Y and the script looks much heavier. These also most likely would be Cast aluminum? If anyone has a set I'd like to buy them for a reasonable price.
Richard >>> FERoadster

[machoneman]

http://www.holmanmoody.com/can_am_gal.html

http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z11344/Ford-Holman-Moody-Honker-II.aspx

One of many on the 'Net. Try Holman-Moody Can-Am and variations ending in Can-Am ala' Honker Can-Am, Honker II Can-Am, Purple Honker for more.

The earliest iterations has 289's, then 351's, FE's and then the all-aluminum 494 CID Boss 429. Sadly, only the early iterations of he 289-351W series were competitive against, later say 1967 and up, the onslaught of the McLaren BBC's, then the all-conquering 1,000 hp flat 12 factory Porsches.

[Katz427]

The 289 cars were very competitive in the early days of the series. At that time it was widely held that the gt40 heads on a 289 were better than anything for a SBC at the time in 1965-66-67 time frame. Then a couple of teams used 351's with Gurney heads that were also competitive. But the Bbc motors then grew to 454 and 468 inch motors and some larger. McLaren had an agreement to not sell his latest chassis unless they were powered by a BBC. His chassis were the best by far. The real problem for most teams was that fact. They were always running last years model.

[Katz427]

I just thought I should add that Ford sold the 289 heads for the Gt40 as an assembly known as the 289 "heavy duty" of which there were about 500 pair cast. Several cobra racers used them as well as the trans am racers. The heads worked very well and there was a single and 2-4 manifold available for this setup. The lotus and lola chassis with these were very potent. A racer friend managed to get a couple pair from a local cobra racer about 1971. We spent a lot of long nights after the feature race completed waiting for another protest and teardown as the Sbc guys could not fathom how their 350's just got beat by a 302 ford.

[MeanGene]

Having grown up about 45 min from Watkins Glen, I started going to the USRRC and Glen 500 races in 65, so I saw these cars run in person. The 289's were VERY competitive against the almost always larger Chebbies, 327s, 365s, Chaparral aluminum maybe 327s etc. In those days there were also a lot of big Olds engines used in McKees, Genies etc. Gurney, Jerry Grant, Lothar Motshenbacher (Motschenblossom according to the horrendous Glen announcer lol) et al were very fast with 289s, the cars were very light and the SBF made them even lighter. Gurney-Weslake heads made them even faster, and as the USRRC withered and died and the Can-Am grew around 66-67, the engines continued to get bigger, the early 351s coming in 67- I used to have one of those early 351 race blocks with the small mains etc., and a NOS set of later Gurney-Eagle heads. IIRC Peter Revson ran a McLaren with the 351 setup for a while. Went to Mosport in 67 and saw the original two M6's of McLaren and Hulme run away with it- and a hilarious Trans-Am race with Alan Moffit running away with the lead, and a furious battle for second between a Camaro and a screaming Mini Cooper- and the Mini kicked the Camaro's ass. We were on the last corner before the line, and the Mini would come screaming by with the inside front wheel off the ground like he was on a tether, crowd cheering for him, and the very frustrated Camaro jockey, tail hung out, trying everything to pass the little screamer
The 427s did appear here and there, sometimes in the lightweight X-1 test car, but weren't very successful in that series

[machoneman]

Mea Culpa!

Yes, you guys are correct and I did change my earlier post!

I was thinking of the later big block era (ie. the intro of the FE Ford, then Boss Ford) where Ford's efforts were not rewarded. But yes the SBF's were good, really good early on when the series was in its infancy, the cars were lighter and CID displacement rules were on the smaller side. Btw, I always thought Ford would have a winner in the all-aluminum Boss 494 engine but by then factory support was winding down for a sport where one not could buy one of those racer's in a dealer's showroom on Monday!

[Katz427]

Not to beat on this, but were the aluminum 427's about 396 cu inches? Would have been hard to get a 4.233 bore in an aluminum block without a siamese block and have a cylinder sleeve thick enough. From seeing a Dove block based on the Canam they were not siamese. I was always led to believe they were ~ 396 inches.

[machoneman]

I think that's an unknown since few details on these engines were made public IIRC. Also, I doubt many if many or any of these H-M supplied engines to the Can-Am teams were of the aluminum block variety actually made it into the race cars. NASCAR-oriented Holman-Moody had tons of iron blocks for NASCAR and F.I.A. based GT-40 & Mark IV racers neither of which used nor were allowed aluminum blocks. Reliability was a key issue even though Ford apparently did cast some aluminum FE blocks in '68. Porosity and terrible head gasket sealing issues were IIRC major hurdles.

http://dovemanufacturing.com/sohc_purpose_block.html

[bn69stang]

Very cool pics , and history thanks for sharing with us ..