![]() ![]() The 429/460 makes plenty of horsepower and torque without having to sell off the farm. You can do a cam and manifold swap and make abundant street power. It was a natural marriage between a powerful big block and lightweight car models. ![]() Just two years into production, Ford introduced the 429 Cobra Jet and Super Cobra Jet for compact and intermediate sized rides like Mustang, Torino, Cyclone, and Cougar. The intent was low-revving luxury power.įord soon found the 429 had great potential as a high performance engine. Ford didn’t conceive the 429/460 as a high performance engine. Poly-angle valve heads combined with port sizing made the 429/460 Ford a powerhouse. Ford took the valuable assets of the big block Chevy and married them to its own traditional approaches to engine design with the distributor and oil sump in front. The result was a Ford big block similar to the big block Chevy. Unlike the small block, Ford conceived a totally new poly-angle valve cylinder head with “right size” port sizing for its new big block. It called its new big block engine the “ 385 Series” family of big blocks displacing 429 and 460ci also known as the “Lima” engines for their manufacturing plant Ohio. Ford took the 90 degree Fairlane small block blueprint and grew it to big block size. They needed to be lighter with a less complicated manufacturing process. Enter the Ford 385 Series Engineīy the mid-1960s, Ford product planners and engineers saw the need for new technology in its big block engines. It was also a quiet smooth luxury car powerplant long on twist for heavy Lincolns. At Ford, the abundant torque the MEL made worked perfectly in marine applications and for drag racers. Not sure why anyone thought this was a good idea, however, it was proven successful-especially for Chevrolet’s 348/409. The MEL had these bizarre flat-deck, no chamber cylinder heads similar to Chevrolet’s 348/409ci big blocks where the angled block deck made the top of the cylinders the combustion chamber. In fact, the FE big block remains the standard for Ford enthusiasts and the aftermarket.īoth the FE and the MEL swiftly became dated mills in the marketplace back in the 1960s. The FE went on to win Le Mans, putting Ford in the world’s spotlight with new respect from around the globe, settling a battle of egos between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari in the wake of a business deal gone bad. ![]() The MEL made brute low-revving torque for just about any application, which made it perfect for luxury cars. There was also the MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) fat block displacing 430 and 462ci produced from 1958-68, a low-revving luxury car monster mash that ultimately became a popular mill for marine racing applications. Ford’s legacy of powerful big block V8s dates back to 1958 with the skirted Ford FE Series 332/352ci engines that ultimately grew to 427ci by 1963 and 428ci by 1966. ![]()
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