Unless you have been living under a rock the last few years, then you have undoubtedly heard of the show Pinks. In the original version, racers use to put up their cars as a prize for who won an overall average of races down the 1320. When your car is at stake, the last thing you want to do is drop your savings account on your engine. There has to be a delicate balance of parts that you
need to run fast and ones that can be purchased cheaper. Sean Barney,
Pinks veteran, needed more power and it all had to be done on a budget for is 2800-pound Falcon. How do you make 800 horsepower on a thin wallet? Sean turned to Ford Performance Solutions to help solve this problem.
Check out more at
Ford Performance Solution's site.
The engine would use a combination of freshened parts and new ones to make the added horsepower. The tired big block Ford came to FPS with a total displacement of 460 cubic inches through a stock block and Cobra Jet heads, making an estimated 700 horsepower. Through new internal components, head work, and a more sophisticated valvetrain the hope is to gain an additional 150 horsepower.
The Bottom End
With additional power there is always the need for more strength. The tired two bolt mains need some support, so the crew at FPS opted for one of their main girdles. They include longer ARP studs to add to the strengthening power of the girdle and to help displace the stress of the crankshaft evenly. The girdle is sandwiched between reused stock main bearing caps and a RPM 4340 forged crank that is also nitrided. The nitride treatment helps harden the metal to help reduce wear on one of the most important parts of the drivetrain.
Doing the leg work between the piston and crank is a set of rods that are also from RPM. The H beam rods come with a direct wrist pin oiling port, ARP cap bolts, and is made from forged 4340. The last part of the short block is the custom Ross dome piston, engineered for high compression nitrous use. The top of the piston has been polished to help eliminate any hot spots. Since the bore and stroke combination remained the same, no block work was required and the short block went together quickly.
The Top End
The first step was to take the existing Ford Super Cobra Jet heads and port them using Ford Performance Solution’s in house CNC machine. The team then flow tested the heads to make sure they were going to support the additional power. Due to the large camshaft lift of .886, a custom setup on the rockers were in order to ensure the geometry was correct. An additional .020 longer valve with a big block rocker on the exhaust and Windsor on the intake, using FPS’ PWR steel full roller rockers was needed to make it all work.
With the ARP head studs in and the heads torqued down, it was time to finish up the rest of the valvetrain. Lunati supplied the roller lifters and one piece push rods. To support the valvetrain, a rocker stud girdle coupled with a Valley Girdle Pro helped elevate stress off the top end.
The final parts included an MSD offset distributor, reused Edelbrock intake manifold, and reused valve covers that are designed to clear the rocker stud girdle. With the engine complete, it was time to ship the engine back to Sean in an effort to win some cars, all done on a moderate budget.
Source:
Ford Performance Solutions
Web:
www.f-p-s.com
Phone: 714-870-7935
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