SAAC Forum

Quote from: shelbydoug on March 22, 2021, 03:53:07 PM

Quote from: JohnSlack on March 22, 2021, 12:55:17 PM

Quote from: gt350hr on March 22, 2021, 11:46:42 AM
   Scott ,
       The 351 (XE 9.2 deck version) was made in iron and aluminum as you know and was "funded" by the GT 40/Can Am program. The 351C aluminum block program was done for the '69 Indy effoert headed by nearby resident Henry "Smokey" Yunick. When the program fell apart , the "inventory" was sent to H&M Charlotte for "sale" Dyno bought the stuff from them. Ford DID give him five or six iron SK 351C blocks with "square" cylinders but core shift was excessive and to the point where they were unusable. After the Factory backed Pinto effort , Don was "on his own" , with ZERO help from Ford.
   Randy

I've known Randy for 40+ years and this has been a constant theme. Randy will turn on a lightbulb with a fairly simple comment leaving you to wonder if he turned the bulb on with purpose. (Usually that is the case.)

In this case I was bemoaning the inconsistent quality of the low production rare alloy castings. Randy once again brings up the universal principal "How did it get paid for?", "What group was funding it?", Who's authority was okaying the pattern making, the quantity, the tooling and research budget? Of course once an item makes it out of the well maybe this direction is a good direction to go, well then better more consistent castings are approved.

John

OK. Randy is always "colorful" You won't always get what you were asking about but you will get something interesting to the point of being fascinating.
He has the ability to put things in human terms that otherwise I would have just given up on and kept wondering about. So it's always fun to get his reply. Rarely boring.

I'll throw my wrench in the works now and take the thread further off course. I'm good at that. No need to thank me. Did an intake for the 351c aluminum Indy block ever get made or never quite get to it?

I've heard discussion about the 351c Australian blocks having a lot of core shift and being put in production truck engines in Australia.

Were the aluminum versions cast from the HD block molds with the thicker bulkheads or just the regular molds?


I actually had my first D2AE 4 bolt block that came out of a wrecked Pantera. The shop I brought it to for boring told me never to come back again. Seems they thought I had a special block since he had to sharpen his cutters several times in over boring it. He said I screwed him?

He said that's what all the xxxxyyyy's meant in the lifter galleries but I think he was just used to doing the soft iron Chevy blocks vs. Fords with their higher nodular content? I don't know . Never went back to him again.


I actually expected your Boss 2-4 to be a version of the Shelby Autosport manifold. As I recall, Randy gave that one a poor rating?

Doug,
No the Shelby 2x4 BOSS 302 intake manifold moved the carburetors back to clear the distributor, the Shelby intake also has longer ports in the rear, as well as being tilted front to rear. The Shelby intake manifold is better than the stock intake, not hard. I have obsessed for most of my adult life on the "other" 1969 2x4 intake and have owned several prior to the one in the picture in the last post. Randy and I had discussed the standard flange intake manifold for many years. Occasionally he would tell me that he would sell me his when he was done with it.....he spoke so highly of it that eventually I just had to go on a unicorn hunt. By careful evaluation I was able to find 10 of the intakes in the known world. After another year of talking to different people who owned them I finally listened to the advice of the late great Dave Zeuschel, "There is no obstruction to big that you can't fix with cash." I advertised for the intake that I was searching for someone willing to sell me one, name the price. The price is not to be revealed, the deal I made with my wife is not to be revealed. My deal did not set the price or value of that intake manifold, it simply reflected what in that micro-second in time was the pain threshold I was willing to endure to have that intake. Holman Moody also made an intake manifold similar to the Shelby BOSS  302 2x4.

P.S. this standard flange intake manifold also requires the offset distributor to clear the carburetors.
John

Quote from: shelbydoug on March 22, 2021, 10:33:27 AM
Got a picture of that dual 4 Boss intake?

Doug,

It is the intake on the left in the picture set below, I knew I had a picture of it just took me a while to find it. You'll notice no cast part numbers, No FoMoCo, and actually when you see it from below the coolant outlets on the intake face are flawed. When I first got it I got all the intakes out of storage for a "T/A Family" picture. The one in the center is the "other" T/A 2x4 intake manifold for 1969, and the one on the left is a Bud Moore Mini-Plenum as used during the 1970 T/A season.
John

Quote from: gt350hr on March 22, 2021, 11:46:42 AM
   Scott ,
       The 351 (XE 9.2 deck version) was made in iron and aluminum as you know and was "funded" by the GT 40/Can Am program. The 351C aluminum block program was done for the '69 Indy effoert headed by nearby resident Henry "Smokey" Yunick. When the program fell apart , the "inventory" was sent to H&M Charlotte for "sale" Dyno bought the stuff from them. Ford DID give him five or six iron SK 351C blocks with "square" cylinders but core shift was excessive and to the point where they were unusable. After the Factory backed Pinto effort , Don was "on his own" , with ZERO help from Ford.
   Randy

I've known Randy for 40+ years and this has been a constant theme. Randy will turn on a lightbulb with a fairly simple comment leaving you to wonder if he turned the bulb on with purpose. (Usually that is the case.)

In this case I was bemoaning the inconsistent quality of the low production rare alloy castings. Randy once again brings up the universal principal "How did it get paid for?", "What group was funding it?", Who's authority was okaying the pattern making, the quantity, the tooling and research budget? Of course once an item makes it out of the well maybe this direction is a good direction to go, well then better more consistent castings are approved.

John

Quote from: TA Coupe on March 20, 2021, 05:45:13 PM
John,  one of the coolest parts I ever had was a magnesium cross ram Weber intake for 58 carbs. I was in the Sacramento area driving around and saw a shop that looked interesting and I stopped in and on the wall behind the counter were to intake manifolds one Of them was the magnesium intake and the other was a 2x4 intake and I asked the guy if he wanted to sell them and he said he would sell one of them and I could buy whichever 1 I wanted so I took the magnesium 1 which I traded to  JIM INGLESE at the SAAC convention in Monterey years ago for a Brand new set of Italian Weber carbs set up for my GT40 Mirage engine.

      Roy

Roy,
One of the coolest parts I have ever owned is an NOS 1969 T/A standard Flange Holley 2x4 dual plane Intake for the BOSS 302. Wait a minute, I got that from you.....thank you again. I'll probably only ever have one of those, and in a year or so it won't be NOS anymore. However once again the quality of the casting is sub-par when graded on a curve.... I'm not complaining and it is still worth every undisclosed penny I paid for it and every agreement I made with my wife to acquire said intake manifold.
John

Quote from: TA Coupe on March 19, 2021, 07:13:33 PM
Hey John, talking about magnesium reminds me of going to Mickey Thompson's shop in Long Beach back in the eighties and seeing a magnesium 327 Block and I went over and picked it up with 2 fingers. I ended up buying a stroker short block from him and that building had some amazing stuff in it like one of the Bonneville cars up on a rack and pallet loads of boss 429 heads and blocks.  He had an engine dyno there that had been turned into a shock dyno Room. I had my choice of buying the stroker short block or a complete tunnel port 302 that was from the carbs to the Pan. Nowadays I wish I would have bought the complete motor as either one was $1200 at the time.

     Roy

Hey Roy,
Magnesium parts, wow FoMoCo had gone down some limited production rabbit holes with that material. I ran into a couple of 494 magnesium blocks and an FE magnesium block in my adventures in shops in So-Cal. My biggest miss was when I went from Chevy to Ford big blocks. I stopped by Zeuschel's to see if he'd sell me a side oiler block for my first Cobra Jet car. He'd sold all 40 something of them that had been on pallets in the back of the shop the day before to "Big Del Massino" the boat racer. They were still physically there.....they just weren't "Z's" any more. "Z" used to tell us about the toys he'd see over at "Trickey Mickey's" including an experimental spring free valve train compressed nitrogen cylinder system that Dave witnessed Mickey run. All I can tell you was there were a lot of brain cells in the room when those two were in it.
John

Quote from: 98SVT - was 06GT on February 02, 2021, 07:59:44 AM

Quote from: Side-Oilers on February 01, 2021, 11:26:22 PM
Wayne Richards?   Does it say "Solo Performance" on the rear fender?

Yes - dry sump and widened rear fenders. Serious car.

He still owned it when he passed last year.
John

Quote from: pbf777 on March 10, 2021, 05:59:48 PM

Quote from: shelbydoug on March 10, 2021, 12:51:09 PM

It is interesting to me, that those small block GT40 heads from the '60s race program never showed up in aluminum? The 427's did. Why not the 289's?

Aluminum was not exactly a new material to the industry. GM had an all aluminum 221 way back in 60 or 61. That engine design they sold to Rover who continued to refine it.

The killer is Ford GIVING the racers like Nicholson aluminum blocks.

     I believe the 427 alloy heads were a desperate attempt in a weight reduction program for racing as was the other alloy blocks for say Nicholson, and it was understood that the long term durability expected in production instances where cast iron was utilized and well refined to provide this expectation, was not anticipated, nor would any of these beneficiaries really complain.     

     In the case of GM's Buick 215 & Olds F85 engine one nail in its' coffin may well have been associated with the difficulties GM endured with the poor castings and their propensity to develop fluid leaks.  In era, a friend who was a mechanic at the local Pontiac dealer said that on these they had been advised to fill the cooling systems with straight anti-freeze to try and halt any water induced corrosion coupled with the casting porosity causing leakages.     

     There just was a lot yet to be learned in the casting of aluminum blocks & heads.   

     Scott.

   

Scott,
I disagree with a whole heart as far as the learnings of casting aluminum. FoMoCo, General Motors, Packard, had all had a huge compressed education 20 - 25 years earlier in making some of the highest quality aluminum castings desired ever. Thousands upon thousands of very high quality castings. In fact I have looked at the quality of the 1960s automotive castings and just shook my head. There were even thousands of magnesium castings that just indicate to me that possibly the auto makers weren't yet ready to make durable alloy castings.
John

The twist locks were not a factory option for the 1970 BOSS 302, the hood pins were not a factory option for the 1969 BOSS 302. However many over the counter items were available for dealer installed option items.
John

Keep in mind, what your '65 289 HiPo Distributor came with it may no longer have the correct part in it. Here we are 55 years later with these cars and parts going through many hands and mechanics. Sometimes a really pitted points cam may have been replaced by a 13/18 simply because the 10/13 points cam is harder to find. I was rebuilding a BOSS 302 distributor last year for a client and it had a C5AZ-12210-B points cam in it. That would have been the correct 10/13 points cam for a 289 HiPo. However the BOSS 302 has vacuum retard and advance so the points plate has a bearing in it, this raises the actual points plate enough that it requires the points cam to be significantly higher. You can tell this points cam by the groove in the too of the points cam. Just because what you have is what you have doesn't mean it is the right thing. One of the reasons I photograph everything that arrives, documenting all the parts on arrival and disassembly.
John

Quote from: 6s1640 on March 15, 2021, 11:55:00 PM
I had a boss that worked for Ford engine development back in the day.  He remembers seeing dumpster full of these Cross-Bosses for recycling.  If he had only known.

Don't tell Hovander.  He goes crazy for these things.  LOL

Cory

The Hov and I have spent hours not literally... actually hours talking about the "special intakes" for the BOSS 302.

Quote from: CSX 4133 on January 13, 2019, 02:50:45 PM

Quote from: 1109RWHP on January 13, 2019, 02:17:54 PM
They were never used on Trans Am cars. Sold over the counter only.

Then the listing needs to be corrected to reflect that because they claim otherwise.

1109RWHP is correct the CROSS BOSS was outlawed at the first testing session for the 1970 Trans Am season due to the unique Autlolite inline carburetors. SCCA did not trust FoMoCo to follow through with producing them in the numbers to make them available to the AMC, GM, and Mopar teams. Who really blames the SCCA after the Tunnel port and Dominator carburetor debacles.
John

P.S. The FoMoCo family of BOSS 302 intakes;
The first intake on the left is the Ultra-rare standard flange Holley 2x4 that was mentioned in the SCCA homologation papers, but rarely seen anywhere. The center intake manifold is the factory team (Shelby and Bud Moore) intake manifold using special sandcast Dominator carburetors. Both of those intakes require a special offset distributor. The intake manifold on the right is the 1970 team and well connected privateer team intake manifold, the legendary Bud Moore Mini-Plenum. Those were pretty much it in SCCA Trans Am racing for the BOSS 302.