They called it the 90-day wonder and when the world learned of Ford’s SOHC engine in the middle 196os it sure was. A crash development program at Ford lead to an engine that was designed to hammer the competition on the high banks of NASCAR tracks. Well, NASCAR did not ban the engine but placed such ankling restrictions on any car that would run it Ford never actually got one into competition and if they did, it sure did not do a whole lot.
Enter drag racing. Run on gasoline, alcohol, and nitromethane the engines quickly gained a reputation for making tons and tons of power but reliability (especially on fuel) was never a major strong point. The history books show that when they ran, they really ran and more than a few events were won by racers packing this unique brand of Ford firepower.
Today these engines are valuable and highly coveted. They can be built now with aftermarket parts basically from scratch which is awesome and it opens the door for builds like the one you see here. This engine was built by Barry Rabotnik at Survival Motorsports. Barry’s one of the big names in the world of FE power and this is one of his neatest creations.
The engine makes some great noise on the dyno and according to his caption:
It has a 8-71 blower (just under 8 pounds of boost – street deal). It has electronic fuel injection. It probably has the longest stroke ever put in an FE – 4.750! On a variety of fuel mapping and development pulls we made it to 882 horsepower at 6600, and hit 767 pounds of torque at 5100 RPM. The engine has much more potential with more boost – just a pull change away.
(And yes – we saw the oil leak too. We checked everything and its just a pan gasket where it meets the timing cover. We were tight on time & decided that we were “safe” and put the hour into more tuning instead of making the repair.)
