Lessons learned ( or not ) Ford Indy 256 CID

[6R07mi]

Indy Speedway Museum restoration of Dan Gurney's Lotus 29/1 1963
This segment shows reassembly wok on the 1963 pushrod 256 CID "Indy" engine.....

seems there was alot of unique design features, such as the better head fastener design,
that had they incorporated into the 289/302 FSB racing engine development,
they may have not had the GT40 Mk-I engine failures in 1964, 1965 that weren't resolved until JWA received the abandoned FoMoCo
small block patterns and adapted the Gurney-Weslake heads to produce the 1968/1969 JWA/Gulf successes?

What would have been the implications if they further developed into the Trans-Am program instead of messing around with the TP302 ??
It seems Hi RPM performance works for NASCAR,    mid-range torque works best for powering out of corners in Trans-Am and Chevy seems to have had the head start with SBC development 

https://youtu.be/Qa5PiDRhV7Q?si=bvhHTDDxP70H_Rqc

enjoy

jim p

[FL SAAC]

Nice video,  clean, clean,  clean  !

[98SVT - was 06GT]

Gurney tried to get his heads adopted by Mercury for a performance street Cougar. He ran into the "not invented here" attitude that has kept Ford from using many great ideas ever since Zora Duntov tried to get a job there along with his Ardun heads.
The production SBF has always suffered from only 4 head bolts per cylinder. The SB Chevy has 5 and rarely blows a head gasket - so the Ford engineers added a 5th bolt to the Indy block.