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Original Message
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| FE versus MEL |
| By P - 12/22/2000 11:53:15 AM; IP 63.169.28.113 |
There's been a post or two about the MEL, and I thought I'd offer a perspective on the difference between these two engines. I obviously believe the FE is superior in every way to the MEL. I stand ready to be "corrected" if any of this info is not historically or technically correct.
The MEL is a totally different design than the FE. The MEL is a “plank head” engine, with cylinder heads similar to the Chevy 409. At one point back in the mid to late 1950’s the MEL put out 375-HP, but it was detuned every year thereafter for some reason. It was designed to be a “Lincoln hauler”, with a lot of torque, and it did that job well. I understand all engines were even test run for 10-hours as a part of the Lincoln quality control process. However, when it came to racing, the MEL was “a skeleton in Ford’s closet” according to one boat racer I know who is in the APBA hall of fame (twice). He said the 427 was a great engine, but the MEL was not all that hot. The MEL eventually evolved into the 462 Lincoln engine, and it was a smooth and torquey motor, but not the race-bred bruiser that was born in the middle of the “horsepower wars” like the FE was.
The FE evolved into several great performance engines during the “horsepower wars”, including a 360-HP solid lifter 352, a 401-HP 390, a 405-HP 406, and of course the NUMEROUS variants of the 427 (all of which had a rating of 425-HP despite many changes being made to obviously improve the performance). Actual performance ratings of the 427 engine in "street" form ranged in the 450-HP range and up, and the competition engines were as powerful and exotic as Henry Ford's gold card would stand ! The winning LeMans 427 (with aluminum heads) was "detuned" from NASCAR spec to around 499-HP. RPM was limited to 6000 because they wanted to be sure the motor held up for 24 hours (it did). When the engine was dynoed after the race, it actually produced 4 more horsepower than when it began.
The FE is indeed (as someone so elegantly said in the past) the "royalty" of the Ford Motor Company big block history.
P
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This thread, so far...
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