bertram31.com

Finished the 302/325hp engine for the 66' Mustang fastback. Been 5 months of fun.

Enjoy the eye candy.

It looks too good to get dirty.

Beautiful!

Pretty work, Bro...

If that sucker runs as good as it looks......it'll be a SCREAMER!!

Hb

Sweet, Bruce!

Nice Bruce!

Bruce,
Nice looking iron what is that going into? I am back in Florida for the long weekend, Going to drive back in a Budget rental Truck with furniture and stuff, leaving either Tuesday or Wednesday. Give me a call or stop by over the weekend I'll be loading the truck. Did you get in touch with Mike M from the Bahamas he called me today. Got some good and bad news about my knee, call me 561-310-7179. I lost all my contact numbers when I did an upgrade on my I-phone last month. over a 100 contacts and photo's, they should call it a throw up instead of a up grade. Pete Fallon

real nice bruce

Nice! How about some specs? How are you getting 325hp? I see the edelbrock carb...heads, too?

Beautiful, but you can't just post that without telling about the build. Carb, manifold, cam, heads, pistons, etc.?

Be sure to post a video when it is running! I want to hear it!

So thats what keeping your head on straight. I am building a sbc. 406" massive machine work on a " million" dollar machine everything in the auto race machine shop world is totally different now .truing up the block is wild just for example deck height ran from .020 to . 013 .this is taken from centerline of crank.driver side bore was shifted .007 .block is now bored .030 and torque plate honed dead 90 degrees and exact spacing between bores. I am using AFR aluminum heads completely CNC you should look into the flow characteristics of AFR heads. Good luck!

John,
Exterior parts are polished Edelbrock torquer intake, ported and polished to match the head work of porting, polishing, cc'ing the chambers. I went thru 6 dremels. Edlebrock carb. MSD ignition.

Most of the interior parts other than the basic block, heads, crank and milodon oil pump are custom . I don't even have a clue to what were some of the original Ford part numbers as the boxes were tossed after assembly 30 some years ago. I had a list somewhere with some other important engine info from back in the days but I think that was some of the crap my mom tossed when I moved away for school and she kicked my dad out..

My dad ran Ford's advance development lab in Blue Bell PA during Ford's heyday of motorsports racing support. Since Ford never really got into full fledge supporting drag racing, he gave me a bunch of parts to field test they were doing there.
His lab came up with a combination of custom and factory no longer produced racing components and built a dozen different engines most of which I grenaded.

Ford was more into durability because of its type of supported motorsports at the time but engine guys being engine guys most wanted to see how much the little 289/302 could put out.

One such build had nice power 323hp, decent idle and durability which isn't racing material but great for this build since the car is getting power steering and air conditioning. Much of the man hour labor on that engine was producing good flow from the carb to intake to heads to cc'ing the chambers to the exhaust without using a high lift high duration cam. Back pressure and bad flow kills power. When that engine came off the dyno it was disassembled as a non entity and the parts packed away to be hauled around for the next 30 years.

Every 4 years or so I would unpack the box and make sure they weren't rusting wishing one day to use them again. Who says hording doesn't work out.

Btw if anyone hasn't noticed the engine color is Yanmar engine. I always like that metallic charcoal/gray paint. 1 coat of etching primer, 1 coat of high build primer, 3 coats of color and 2 coats of clear. Will look nice with the car being 67' Corvette heavy flake green with two side by side white racing stripes. It will be a bit before its run, But i'll video it.

Total end result will be how well the car people fit and tune the custom headers and exhaust due to the various suspension components. The front end is getting rack and pinion, disc brakes all around, sway bars and apparently not one company out there makes a set of headers for this exact car build.

The car will look like a stock 66' fastback body wise but all the suspension components are modern day stuff for safety and great handling. Car should be done by December I hope.

The body just got linex'd and is still on the frame jig.

Bob,
If I was going all out racing or what I consider an all out performance car, I'd be going a whole nuther direction.

I was fortunate a couple years back to help put together a 76' Ken Veney Vega funny car with a Keith Black blown Alky motor and travel and run it. That time quelled my long desired days of shoving a 427 Ford cross bolted main block in a 1970 Maverick which I took out to school with me and drove on the street for two years before I bought my first pickup.

And yes the science of engine building is awesome these days.

Bruce i pick up a new method for cam button tolerance from the zull guy. Install roller cam as normal and install cam button that you think is right along with timing gear cam retainer.before degree wheel install timing chain gasket and then take old timing chain cover with 1/4" hole drilled in center where cam button will ride then place magnetic dial indicator thru hole to strike center of cam button installed.with that measurement you can grind button to get perfect .008 installed clearance. I use to use machinist straight edge but that does not take for account timing chain dimple. Never too old to lean new tricks.roller cam installation are a hold new arena.

Awesome Bruce. This is one where we need the audio though. Awesome talent and skill you have. I remember torquers from I was in HS. Single-plane. Very cool.

Wow!

Bob,
The day we stop learning new things is the day we jump in the hole and have the backhoe dump dirt on us.

This summer I've been learning to free dive. Made it to 50' at the outer wall of the Lake Worth inlet channel at the red marker. Hope to make 75' by Dec.

John,
Be a bit before I have audio on the new build but heres a clip of the funny car after the KB engine was changed from a nitro to alkyl and put into the FC chassis. Motor was in a dragster when we picked it up west of Ft Worth Texas. FC roller came from SC.

Turn up the volume.

Free dive to 75' ------ OMG i through that was for the teenagers! Incidently the 406" sbc is strickly for the strret actualy a replacement for the 350" in the vette.just fascinated with this machine in the speed shop that does everything by computer.so i hung out in after hours and went for the nine yards .although i went with forged crank ,rod,pistons, and roller cam i am using dual plane manifold and 750 cfm ,vacuum secondary holley carb. Went to comp.cam bumpstick with 112 LSA ,550" lift not hardly a race cam by todays standards.the AFR Heads are 195 cfm with 2.05 intake and 1.60 exhaust no crazy stuff like offset lifters and lifter bore insert with Chrysler lifter with 245 cfm heads ,that is track stuff .this is top down get some wind in your face 0 to 80mph like the texas chopper used to do for me .last shot Bro i am 68 YO.

Projects are fun! So you going to be able to drive that car down here or what? They do a car show in December every year @ the local HD. Nothing serious, so I will probably put my ride in it this year.
50' free dive is impressive in my book. I go all the time but usually 20 footers or so. I did a 45' about a month ago. Decent black grouper down there and I regretted not having a gun. I was using a sling, which is a different game when going that deep. I do not have the skills to do 75'. My buddies tell me that if I take a free dive class it would be easily achievable.

My sleeper. Not as pretty, but healthy.

Thanks Bruce. Nice sound. I'm still looking forward to a sb Ford cam lope. I miss that stuff. My old B31, with 454s, sounded nice wide open. As Doug said when he was on my boat, "there's nothing like 454s in full song." Crows Nest, with the 8.2s, sounds like a garbage truck floored. Just not the same.

Kevin,
Other than working with diesels, I never got into gas turbo stuff. I saw it becoming more and more common at the track especially in pro mods. It can produce some good power especially with nitrous injection.

Looks awesome.

Once the serpentine belt and polished pulley kits come in along with the power steering and ac compressor, the engine will look much more cluttered.