31 replies to this topic

[Fr@nk]

Please help me:

1. Ford GT 40 Mk IV had Weslake heads for his "427" big block ?
2. It is the first Ford had them, or also Ford Mk II mounted Weslake heads ?
3. Gulf Wyer GT40 ('68) was the first Ford car that mounted Weslake heads ?

thanks

I've read all the three versions of this story.
What's the true one ?

[Manfred Cubenoggin]

Don't think so, Fr@nk. To the best of my recollection, Weslake heads for Ford stock blockers were all strictly for the small-bore engines. I suppose more accurately, they are 'Gurney-Weslake' heads.

However, I do believe that the Weslake people did up some special heads for John Surtees' CanAm Lola circa 1968 and that was a large-bore Chevy.

I stand to be corrected on all this, of course.

Edit: Should have digested your post a little more thoroughly before responding. Sorry. As to your point #3, I cannot be sure of that but I can tell you that Dan Gurney was using those special heads on his USAC Champ car in 1968 and possibly even late 1967 and I would think well before they may have appeared on the GT40's/Mirages. It occurs to me just now, in fact, that they were fitted to his CanAm Lola T70 in 1967.

[cstlhn]

Gurney Weslake heads were used in 1968 & 69 on the Mark I cars and the 5 liter motors.
MkIIs used a medium rise aluminum head with Ford XP (experimental) part numbers.
MkIVs used tunnelport heads. So called due to there round intake ports. Both the MkII & MkIV had 427 CI (7Liter) engines.
There is still some debate regarding wether the MkIV heads were aluminum or cast iron. I have internal Ford memos indicating both were used.

[Tom Glowacki]

The Eagle that Jochen Rindt drove at Indy in 1967 used the Gurney-Weslake heads. Gurney won the Riverside season ending race in that car in 1967. He used them on his own USAC cars 1968-1969 and in his Can-Am Lolas and McLarens 1966-68 until going with the big-block Fords and Chevys. I think his 1965 McLaren M1A had them as well.

[Ray Bell]

I don't think so, but I wouldn't lay my life on the line over it...

The first ones were, IIRC, in a Lola.

And I think I recall (less sure of this...) that they were on experimental (or pre-production) 351 blocks. Or at least blocks with an extra inch of deck height.

[Tom Glowacki]

For once, opening my mouth before checking some sources paid off. Karl Ludvigsen, in Gurney's Eagles, has the MK II version installed "at the eleventh hour" in the M1A for the October '65 Riverside race.

Lothar Motschenbacher also ran the G-W heads in his M6B.

[M Needforspeed]

I can confirm they mounted Gurney Weslake heads on Jochen Rindt eagle weslake at Indy 67, after he failed to qualify with the "usuals" ford heads.

[Fr@nk]

Thanks, as usual, for your answers:

cstlhn

Gurney Weslake heads were used in 1968 & 69 (1) on the Mark I cars and the 5 liter motors.

Manfred Cubenoggin

...and possibly even late 1967 and I would think well before they may have appeared on the GT40's/Mirages...

Right, John Horsmann says that (1) in his book "Racing in the rain", but Wimpffen' book "Time and two seats" reports the Mirage M1 car at the 1000Km Nurburgring 1967 (Piper-Thompson) as "Mirage M1 Ford-Weslake", so also in 1967 Wyer's team was using Weslake heads.

cstlhn

MkIVs used tunnelport heads. So called due to there round intake ports. Both the MkII & MkIV had 427 CI (7Liter) engines.
There is still some debate regarding wether the MkIV heads were aluminum or cast iron. I have internal Ford memos indicating both were used.

Do you know if the MkIV heads had a particular name or if Ford engineers done them a code ?

[chuckbrandt]

I should clarify a very interesting feature of the tunnel port heads. They were designed for Nascar after the 427 SOHC was disallowed by the ruling body. They wanted to get the large round intake passages of the SOHC in a pushrod engine. The Ford FE engine is somewhat unique in that the pushrods pass through the intake manifold which extends further into the head than in most engines. Anyway to get the large round ports to fit they ran the push rods through tubes in the center of the intake port. It should also be noted these heads had the largest valves installed in a pushrod FE 2.25" intakes. The top of the bore of the 427 block had to be notched for clearance for the valves.

Chuck

Here is a comparison of the medium riser vs. tunnelport intake side.



Here is an add showing the pushrod tubes in the intake.



Note you could buy the SOHC and tunnel port engines over the counter, or tunnel port heads and intake separately. The part numbers are all C7 indicating the engineering work for these heads was done in 1967. The one tunnelport head I had was a C7 casting number but the casting date was 1970 indicating they were viable service parts into the early 70s. By the same token, my 427 side oiler service block was cast in '72. If only a guy had the foresight to stock up then

[JSF]

I know John Wyers team did a lot of development work on the gurney weslake heads for the GT40 program. I have seen a few diferent guises of combustion chamber shape they tried at the time.

[Weslake]

I have just been looking at the original March 1966 drawings (AAR Type known to us as MK2)

These show two basic Head types

Type 1 known as Street Head
Type 2 known as Competition Head

The main difference being the shape of the combustion chamber and the size of valves used.

Other differences were the rockers and pedestels two types of each altering the ratio.

I think the competition one would be the one drawn september 1965.

Heads should have external factory mark to show which is which.

It was good to see that in the Classic and Sportscar gt40 test the Gurney Weslake powered car still out dragged the others even the new Ford GT.

Stuart

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by chuckbrandt
.....my 427 side oiler service block was cast in '72. If only a guy had the foresight to stock up then

That applies to all of us, of course...

But what I'd really like is an explanation of what this 'side oiler' term means, please.

[chuckbrandt]

From '63-'64 the 427 block was described as "Center Oiler" and shared this feature with all the FE engine family such as the 352, 390, 406, 410, 428 etc. The oil gallery runs down the center of the block and feeds the cam bearings and then the main bearings.

On a "Side Oiler" which was introduced in '65 a new gallery was cast into the side of the block to give the main bearings priority oiling and then the cam. This was supposedly needed for sustained high RPM on NASCAR tracks. Only 427 blocks from '65 on had this.

Chuck

[Jerry Entin]

Gurney's 1967 Rex Mays winning Eagle.
photo by Gil Munz-scanned by Ike Smith

[Ray Bell]

Thanks, Chuck... I've wondered about that for a while...

Sometimes it takes a bit of guesswork to work out what various nicknames mean.

Who, for instance, could possibly conclude that 'wide block' meant an engine with heads that sat out wider than its successor? The block being the same...

[Huw Jadvantich]

Perhaps we should have an Atlas guide to 'specialist terms' or racing slang; At one time I had no idea about 351s, 289s, 302s and 427s. I met up with a guy who was really into American cars, and his conversation would go something like "427 with side oiler 600cfm rock crusher nine inch dif etc etc." He could have speaking in Russian, so I decided I should really look into all this stuff so that I could actually have a conversation with him, and he patiently coaches me on what is what -Its a whole new world.
It must work the other way too, and with Europe vs UK vs Australasia, and even between different types of racing.

[Tom Glowacki]

Actually, Huw, a side oiler would have been hooked up to a top loader and not a rock crusher.

[chuckbrandt]

As you may have noticed I'm somewhat of a Ford FE engine family enthusiast. Let me know if you'd like a disertation on the Low Riser, Medium Riser, High Riser heads or are curious about the L1P1 (lippie) cam

Also there are a couple of really interesting SAE papers written about the 427 used in the GT-40 Mk II.

http://www.sae.org/t...l/papers/670066

http://www.sae.org/t...l/papers/670067

Chuck

[Huw Jadvantich]

Yep, he just told me. Its fascinating how all the Ford/Mopar/GM combinations match up, or, er, do not match up as I have quickly proved. You can quickly show yourself up in this company. I'd love to see a guide, and a dissertation on what low/medium/high riser means.

[Ray Bell]

There is some mingling...

Chevy also used the A833.

[chuckbrandt]

Ford, Chevy and AMC did all use their own versions of the Borg-Warner T-10 transmission in the early years of sporty 4 speed vehicles.

AMC was always an amalgam of parts from the big 3.

Low-Medium-High Riser terms refer to intake and cylinder head development within the Ford 427 program. The 427 was Ford's primary performance engine from '63 - '68 and received a lot of development effort.

The '63 427s got a cylinder head that was only a little changed from the cylinder heads of the 390 and 406 of earlier years. It did get larger valves and a machined combustion chamber. This head and intake combo would later be termed "Low Riser" and it should be noted that it fit under the stock production hood of the Galaxie.

For '64 it was decided that to make more power for drag racing the intake charge needed a straighter shot and the "High Riser" head and intakes were designed. The ports on the High riser are much taller, the floor is in roughly the same position but the roof was raised about 1/2". The intake manifolds that coorespond to this new head were much taller as well raising the carburetor(s) several inches above the Low riser. It was impossible to fit this induction system under the hood of the Galaxie and Fairlane (Ford Built 100 '64 Fairlanes with 427 engines for drag racing called the Thunderbolt), so a tear drop shaped hood bubble with inlets in the back was fitted.



For '65 they took a more scientific approach and designed the "Medium Riser" head and intakes using a flow bench as part of the GT-40 program. Although the ports were shorter and a little wider than the "High Riser" they flowed better making an easy 525 HP in the GT-40. An interesting side benefit was that the "Medium Riser" setup fit under the hood of production cars.

All three styles of head require matching intake manifolds and Ford sold dual plane manifolds for each one with single or dual holley 4 barrel carburetors. The Medium Riser got a couple of other interesting intakes, one a single 4 barrel design with the carburetor offset slightly to one side to equalize runner lengths called the "Sidewinder", and the other a single plane dual 4 barrel intake with an air gap underneath the runners which is refered to as the "Tunnel Wedge" intake.

Simultaneously with all this the SOHC heads were being designed for the 427. This hemi head had large round intake ports because they weren't pinched by the push rod placement and a camshaft mounted on top. The cams were driven by a 6' long timing chain that ran off of a sub camshaft mounted in the normal location. This engine was outlawed by nascar but found dominance in drag racing for many years.

Then as mentioned above, in '67 the tunnel port heads and intakes were designed. The desire was to have the large round ports of the SOHC in a pushrod engine. To make this happen the push rods passed through tubes in the center of the intake port of the manifold.

The SOHC and the Tunnel port were never sold in a production car, you had to buy them over the counter at your Ford dealer. But the Medium Riser was used on all production cars that got the 427 through '68.


Chuck

[Huw Jadvantich]

and the l1p1 cam?

[chuckbrandt]

The L1p1 cam had me scratching my head for quite a while.

Ford built one factory experimental drag pickup in 1963. The current owner, Bill Naudain, traded his brand new thunderbolt for it in '64. Bill is a real story teller and one of the many I heard the day I met him and saw the truck involved a "lippie" cam. He said that Ford wouldn't give him any monetary support for the truck but when they saw a racer was doing well they would frequently give him free parts. The story was they sent out the lippie cam (which I had never heard of at the time) and it was supposed to be the latest and greatest thing, but they couldn't get it to run right. Don Nicholson said it worked great for him. It turns out there were some girls hanging around the shop when they installed and they got it timed wrong and that's why it didn't work for them.

I spent several weeks trying to corroborate his stories and the "lippie" cam eluded me until I finally found this ad in a Holman Moody catalog. Mystery solved.

CDB




More info on the F-100xl at www.f-100xl.com

[Bob Riebe]

Originally posted by chuckbrandt
[B]Ford, Chevy and AMC did all use their own versions of the Borg-Warner T-10 transmission in the early years of sporty 4 speed vehicles.

AMC was always an amalgam of parts from the big 3.

AMC did not use an amalgam of parts fromt the big 3.

As you said, many used the Borg-Warner T-10 variations (and Doug Nash made the ultimate version) but other than that, AMC used their own versions, 20 and 35, of the Dana rear-end.

AMC switiched to a Chrysler auto some time in the seventies, from the Borg-Warner M-11 and M-12.
The only thing wrong with the Borg-Warner was it was not designed to be set-up for hi-po work.

Bob

[Ray Bell]

Not to mention the NP A435, of course...

[Fr@nk]

But my question was : did Ford Mark IV use Weslake heads ?
In the last book of Janos Wimpffen ("Winged sport cars and enduring innovations", I bought it for Christmas gift) he says that when he's speaking about 1967 season.
Following your answers I understand that is not right, because the Mark IV used Ford heads only (tunnel heads).
What do you think about Wimpffen's statement ?

Best wishes for a happy new year everybody.

[chuckbrandt]

Originally posted by Bob Riebe

AMC did not use an amalgam of parts fromt the big 3.

Bob

I'm probably talking about their later years, but here is what sketchy evidence I have. We had a '74 AMC Ambassador when I was cutting my mechanic teeth in the late 70s. It had an AMC 360 engine, but a chrysler torque flite transmission, Autolite/Motorcraft (ford) carburetor and charging / electrical system.

Probably just an expediency in the fading days of the Pacer

Chuck

[chuckbrandt]

Originally posted by Fr@nk


What do you think about Wimpffen's statement ?

Best wishes for a happy new year everybody.

I would tend to disagree with his statement but I've learned it's foolish to say never no way in situations like this. I am quite certain that the Gurney Weslake heads only fit the smallblock. But it would not surprise me if they put in a smallblock for a race or two if they thought it had an advantage. I recently read they ran a four cam indy engine in a GT-40 at one point. I'd love to track down a picture of that configuration. Did any of the Mk IV cars race after the '67 season?

Here is the GW setup in GT-40 Mk 1 1083

[Bob Riebe]

Because of the style of cylinder head attachment the FE engines used, Weslake style heads could not be used unless a total redesign was done.

Even if the FE heads had attached in "standard" form, Surtees found out that what works with small engines, cannot neccessarily be transfered to large ones.
Bob

[Fr@nk]

Finally I have the answer.
Mr Phil Henny, former Carroll Shelby's employee at the time of the Gurney-Foyt MkIV's win at Le Mans, wrote:

"the 427 ci was a NASCAR engine, cast iron side oiler and aluminum heads. Weslake heads were never manufactured for the Ford Big block."

Phil Henny is the author of the book "Just call me Carroll"

[MKIVJ6]

Dave

At Le Mans the iron ones were used.

Best

[Bruno]

Originally posted by Fr@nk
Please help me:

1. Ford GT 40 Mk IV had Weslake heads for his "427" big block ?
2. It is the first Ford had them, or also Ford Mk II mounted Weslake heads ?
3. Gulf Wyer GT40 ('68) was the first Ford car that mounted Weslake heads ?

thanks

I've read all the three versions of this story.
What's the true one ?

i pidi pesanti. . . e Piedone. non era pesnate?