I know I am kind of an FE fan boy but why shouldn’t I be? The insanely diverse and awesome engine family powered everything from trucks to NASCAR stock cars to NHRA nitro powered machines, stockers, and everything in between. Hell, the damned GT40 was powered by a 427 and it leveled the Ferraris in one of the great showdowns in auto racing history, right? In this case we return to the familiar dyno cell of Survival Motorsports as they have another of their finest crafted FE engines on the stand. This one has grown a few cubes but the good news is that it wears the awesome and rare tunnel port heads so those additional cubic inches will allow for the big breathing units to do their job and bring the peak power numbers down a little, right? In this case we’re talking 562hp at 6,500 RPM.
Tunnel port heads were designed for NASCAR engines that ran at big RPM for long distances. They are not known for making good low end torque because they were not intended to do that. This engine with an increase of more than 50 cubes over stock will be far better than a standard bore and stroke 427. We love the way this thing sounds and can only hope it is going into some sort of gnarly stick shifted Galaxie or Fairlane or something.
We always admire the guys how do it the harder way. A nice set of prepped Edelbrock heads would likely eat these tunnel ports up all over the board but they would not be 10% as cool. Nothing against a great product but when you open the hood of this thing and people who know what they are looking at see it, the oohs and aaaahhhhs will be worth it. Oh, and 562hp ain’t no small shakes, either!
Limited by the low rise NASCAR manifold. Tunnel Ports had a good intake but the same poor exhaust ports that needed a lot of duration to get good flow