|
|
|
|
Original Message
|
| RE: 396s and Tunnel Ports |
| By Mel - 09/04/2001 8:33:33 PM; IP 152.163.206.186 |
| I'm glad I inspired you to do some searching into your archives. You can bet that there is a lot that we have never seen or will ever see that's in Ford's archives. When I worked at H-M the 396 had already had some of it's finest hours. The short stroke allowed them to run with reliability above 8,000 RPM and with the Tunnel Port heads they really kicked some ass. The Tunnel Port heads really should have been released as production items in '66 as they were holomogated with the FIA in Ford's GT 40 cars the year before, however the blocks and heads were aluminum for that project and they didn't breath quite as well due to the smaller valve size. They worked well enough for Ford to show Ferrarri the fast way around Le Mans though. H-M built the 396 engines at least through 1971 for racers other than NASCAR, they finally quit as Ford downsized the racing programs. Another unknown engine that Ford developed was the Boss Hemi 6 Liter, ( looked just like the Boss 429, only smaller) 366 cid as NASCAR was thinking very hard about downsizing the engines that would be allowed to race, as speed was getting out of control and the restrictor plates were universally hated by the builders and the drivers. I attended some tests in Dec. '70 and saw 8 of them in the garage area for NASCAR to check out. I never found out what happened to them after that. |
|
|
This thread, so far...
|
|
|
|
Post A Response
|
|
|
|
|
|