It sure has been a busy week of “displacement days” here at BangShift. We screwed the pooch on 426 but we’ve made a valiant attempt to recover with stuff on 4/27, multiple posts on 4/28, and we’re staying on top of things with this look at the Ford 429 today. Ford’s 385 engine series was introduced in 1968, first in the Thunderbird and then in 1969 it served an expanded role in 1969, finding its way into Fords across the board. The 385 designation come from the 3.85-inch stroke that the crank had in this new family of engines. The 385 series lived in Ford production from 1968-1997 making it an incredibly successful family of engines and one that powered everything from the company’s muscle cars to industrial trucks and other industrial applications.
On the performance front, Ford had Cobra Jet, Cobra Jet Ram-Air, and Super Cobra Jet variants of the 429 and of course there was the legendary Boss 429 which was one of, if not the most radical production engine put onto the street by any manufacturer of the muscle car era. The mighty Cammer was never a production piece so we’re not counting that one.
The 429, in the various performance formats had factory horsepower ratings between 370 and 375hp via Ford but in reality, the engines were cranking out well in excess of 400hp. They had strong compression ratios, freer flowing heads, and more radical cams than the standard issue engines that were loafing large sedans down the road. The Boss engine had the huge hemispherical heads and while not exactly an ideal street engine because of the port size, made lots of top end horsepower and as you have seen in the lead photo, was used in some simply amazing configurations.
Like the 427 and 428, we’re going to celebrate the 429 with videos of it hard at work below!
Yeah baby ! Thats what I’m talking about . Boss 429 .. oh you’re so fine . Crushing Chevys n’ Chryslers back in 69 .
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