.

the car junkie daily magazine.

.

A Pair Of The Rarest Factory Valve Covers Ever Is For Sale On eBay For $3,499


A Pair Of The Rarest Factory Valve Covers Ever Is For Sale On eBay For $3,499

Many people have never heard of the Mercury M-335 engine and that’s not too shocking because it is one of the most rare and short lived engine packages of the murky days when Detroit manufacturers weren’t really supposed to be racing but actually were. During the s0-called racing ban, Ford actually complied with the rules to start with, Chrysler kind of did, and General Motors nodded in agreement and then ran a full-bore racing operation out of the back door. In 1957 the Mercury division got the chance to use the 369ci engine that was formerly reserved for Lincolns up to that point. Bill Stroppe was running Mercury’s racing efforts at that point and saw the 368 as having potential to trade blows with the the liked of Chrysler and General Motors. In stock form the engine was making 290hp, which was not enough so equipment had to be developed to bump the output.

That equipment came in the form of a dual quad setup, solid lifter cam with specs FAR rowdier than what came in the standard cruising model, and a compression of almost 11:1 in racing engines which the end result of was 335hp on the dyno at Stroppe’s shop. Thus you now know why these things were called M335 engines. There are no records that we can find to denote how many were actually installed in street cars but it was not many. The majority of them went into stock cars and frankly, the program was not much of a success. There were some decent finishes but not the winning results that Ford had been hoping for. The bigger 368 was soon showed up by the supercharged 312ci Y-block and was quite literally blown off the track by the smaller, boosted engine.

And that brings us right back to these valve covers. If you are a Ford-o-phile than these are really some high grade unobtanium, perhaps some of the highest. If there’s someone out there restoring an M335 powered car, and we’re guessing that there is because there’s always someone restoring something, this could be one of the last loose sets known to mankind. We’ve never had anything cast before but we’re guessing buying these babies would be cheaper than starting with a phone call to a foundry and having some made from nothing. Still…$3,500 for valve covers. Yeesh!

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE PHOTOS AND THEN HIT THE EBAY LINK TO SEE ALL THE INFO –

mercury1 mercury2 mercury3 mercury4

 

eBay Link: Here’s the first set of $3,500 valve covers we’ve ever seen!


  • Share This
  • Pinterest
  • 0

4 thoughts on “A Pair Of The Rarest Factory Valve Covers Ever Is For Sale On eBay For $3,499

  1. Tubbed Pacecar

    WOW! REALLY makes me wish I had never parted with the MAGNESIUM Boss 429 Valve Covers I had back in ’84….they’d be worth a pretty penny now!!

  2. John Brown

    I was expecting to see Crane Corvette or K Weaver Family as the seller after reading about the price. I’ll have to add Achilles-10 to my list of overpriced sellers from now on. If these kind of asking prices are going to become the norm, I’d like to have everything I ever sold back. Evidently I wasn’t asking enough money since the items actually sold…..

  3. Travis

    Could 3D print a set and have some loose run tooling made for less than $3500. Castings should end up about $150 each, tool would probably make 100 sets..
    Wouldn’t be original OEM castings though.

Comments are closed.