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WerbyFord
New Member Joined: 15-November-2020 Location: Northern CA Status: Offline Points: 12 |
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Posted: 15-November-2020 at 2:40PM |
Hi there, I just found this great
forum. A few of you might recognize me as WerbyFord from fordfe.com, long time member
there. Folks over there named the computer program I wrote the Gonkulator.
There are others, but it’s hard to beat the Gonkulator for dyno or dragstrip
issues, especially with big FoMoCo power. My 1st car was a 1970
Cobra N-Code, you know, the one that makes 360hp which is only 10hp less than
the 429CJ. And that’s how the Gonkulator began back in the mid-1970s. My dad got me those Muscle Parts
books for $1 each (I suspect he got em free actually), and we hunted parts and make
that N-code into a 429 Impressor Kit. Now, so it says, if you take your 360hp
N-code and do the Impressor Kit, you add 64hp. So when you’re done, you have
360+64=424 HP. You can then add CJ heads for a “Controller Kit”, making 35hp
more and have 459 HP, and you’ve essentially built yourself a 429CJ with
headers. It cost a few bucks but we went
ahead with it: $15 for a factory shaker scoop
& complete air cleaner. Didn’t even need to paint it. $10 for the factory molding after
we cut the hole in the hood. $0 for a 720cfm 427-4v Holley, we
had that already. $20 for a new 429CJ cam $20 or so for a set of lifters $50 IIRC for some 1-7/8 headers
(perfect) that needed painting. $40 for an iron 429SCJ intake. And some spray paint. This was back when Gerald Ford was
president, so prices may have changed a little… I realized quickly that something
is wrong with all that math. And it’s the following: The N-code really makes about 320hp,
not 360hp. The 64 hp the Muscle Parts says
you add seems very real indeed – my N-code “Impressor” turned 101mph in an
optioned out car, well over 4000 lb, while most stock N-codes were in the
low-90s. So I figure I made about 385hp,
which the Gonkulator figured out some years later. The 429TJ, rated at 360hp,
Gonkulates to 320-330hp. The 429 Impressor Kit Gonkulates
to 385-390hp- almost a CJ, which makes sense. And it runs like it. The 429CJ, rated at 370hp, Gonkulates
at about 395-400hp. The 429 Controller Kit Gonkulates
at 420-425hp, essentially a CJ with a Holley & headers. The 429SCJ, rated at 375hp, Gonkulates
at about 400-405hp. The 429 Dominator Kits go up from
there, starting at about 435hp on up. Well maybe that’s a good enough
introduction. Like most I’ve sold a lot of cars I should have kept, but haven’t
we all! |
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72 RS 351
Senior Member Joined: 04-September-2014 Location: Knoxville TN Status: Offline Points: 2767 |
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Welcome WerbyFord. I love old Ford specs etc, I lived through daydreams I got from the old yellow Ford Performance book, $9.95 cover priced. I learned all of the engine specs for the major families it detailed. I loved reading that the 429/460 blocks could be bored .080 without sonic checking, and .160 if they tested as perfect. Back then we had to live with mostly stock parts, and now we can't keep up with all the aftermarket choices.
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Don
73 Ranchero "Sport 72 front end", floor shift/console, planning EFI 7000+ rpm 351-4V &4R70W 73 Ranchero GT 351C-4V &4R70W for sale later. 92 Lincoln Mark VII SE GTC, OBDII 347/4R70W |
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72FordGTS
Admin Group GTS.org Admin Joined: 06-September-2005 Location: Ontario, Canada Status: Offline Points: 5846 |
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Welcome to the forum. It sounds like you bring a wealth of knowledge and experience. I have upgraded you to a new member so you have full forum privilege's.
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Vince
1972 Ford GTS Sportsroof - Survivor, One Family car GTS.org Admin |
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californiajohnny
Moderator Group Joined: 05-October-2013 Location: winlock, wa Status: Offline Points: 14609 |
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welcome! never heard of the controler and others you mentioned but interesting none the least
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JOHN
74 GRAN TORINO S&H CLONE 74 VETTE CUSTOM 90 S10 BLAZER 4X4 LIFTED 77 CELICA CUSTOM 75 V8 MONZA SUPERCHARGED 79 COURIER VERT. SLAMMED 75 VEGA V6 5 SPD 70 CHEV C10 P/U 68 MUSTANG FB CONVERSION |
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WerbyFord
New Member Joined: 15-November-2020 Location: Northern CA Status: Offline Points: 12 |
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Oh these were classics back in the day! Impressor Controller Dominator With all kinds of groovy color drawings. The 1969 main edition had 289-302 351w 390 428 Supplement 2 1970 had 302boss 351c 429 Most of the parts are still competitive today (Ford really made some good intakes) but the heads are pretty much obsolete now. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-1970-Ford-Muscle-Parts-Catalogue-Book-Mustang-Torino-Boss-Mach-1-/142843924431 https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ford-muscle-parts-catalog-plus-1856849395 https://streettechmag.com/2014/10/14/new-from-ford-muscle-part-staged-performance-kits/ |
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72 RS 351
Senior Member Joined: 04-September-2014 Location: Knoxville TN Status: Offline Points: 2767 |
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Those were early high performance wish books, before I was a teenager. Back then the 427 SOHC was the king of drag strips after it was outlawed to get into NASCAR. I bought the shop manual for a SOHC just to see more of it in print, after I'd seen one head in my machine shop here in about 1980.
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Don
73 Ranchero "Sport 72 front end", floor shift/console, planning EFI 7000+ rpm 351-4V &4R70W 73 Ranchero GT 351C-4V &4R70W for sale later. 92 Lincoln Mark VII SE GTC, OBDII 347/4R70W |
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dan0R30
Senior Member Joined: 30-June-2020 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 637 |
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Welcome to the forum! Sounds like some great stuff
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Dan
1970 Ford Torino hardtop - 351C 4V - FMX - 9" 3.89 TrueTrac |
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J Moore
New Member Joined: 18-October-2020 Location: Washington NC Status: Offline Points: 36 |
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Welcome to the forum. Have you ever Gonkulated the 68 thru 71 High Compression 460 engines? The ones that Ford rated at 365 H.P. which is 5 additional H.P. than the 68 thru 71 11:1 compression 429 Thunderjet ? The Urban Legends on the 460 was that it was 400 or more hosses, and the 429 at 390 or better. Again, welcome. J.
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WerbyFord
New Member Joined: 15-November-2020 Location: Northern CA Status: Offline Points: 12 |
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I dont think I ever measured compression but the highest I've heard is 10.5 to 1, which makes sense, since the 429 TJ and 460 TJ were in big Ford / Merc and Lincoln, so you wouldnt want those owners to be stopping for Sunoco 260 gas, which is what we ran in our 427 Galaxie and the 429 SCJ cars at over 11-to-1. That said, the Gonkulator says 320ghp for 429/360 TJ 325ghp for 460/365 TJ You'd think you'd gain more than 5hp from 31 cubic inches, but, not the case. The engine as set up just runs out of air. If it's hard to believe that 5hp difference: The Muscle Parts Books noted already in this thread build a 429 Dominator * Base heads ported with big valves (30hp better than CJ heads) * SCJ iron intake * 850 Holley * SCJ cam, retarded from factory * Headers About as far as you could take a 429 with the Ford parts bin. They then stroke this decent breathing engine to 460, and pick up 10 hp from 31 inches. Almost all cylinder heads sucked back then (pun intended) so best case was to pick up about 1 hp per 2 CID increase. That was BEST case. The 429 TJ had almost no exhaust port and almost no cam, so picking up 5 hp from 31 inches made sense. TORQUE went up almost inch for inch in the midrange, but not peak HP. ******************************************* (Long answer backstory continued here) ******************************************* Now, that’s not as dismal as it sounds. Almost all vanilla / grocery getter engines were overrated back then, because table-cloth-dinner and hors-d’oeuvres bragging rights mattered more to those buyers than timeslips. Most muscle car engines by 1970 had learned to do the opposite – UNDER-estimate power, which was an edge both with insurance companies, and NHRA if you could get away with it until they “Factored” your engine. The 429-TJ and 460-TJ Lima Engines
made about the same power as their predecessors, the MEL 430 and 462 engines.
The biggest difference is that the new Lima (I just cant call it the “385
Series”, how boring) ran a lot cleaner, and more important to us, would rev
much higher without destroying itself. Potential, as we know today, was pretty much
unlimited eg with today’s heads on top. 320hp from the 1968-71 429-TJ was
still about 15hp more than the 428 7-Litter FE engine it replaced (no, the
7-Litter did not make its 345hp rating either). Ford’s overrating dilemma began, I
think, in 1957. The excellent F-code 312/300 Paxton (so good, Robert Mitchum
ran it in Thunder Road) was replaced in 1958 by the 352 FE. Ford didn’t want to
downgrade their power I guess, so they rated the 352-4v at “300 hp”. The
early-spec 352/300 actually Gonkulates to 300hp (big VACUUM secondary AFB,
better intake, machined chamber 10.0 heads, solid cam close to the 390-PI cam),
but most production 352/300 engines were more like 270hp. So when 1961 brought the 390-4v,
it was rated at – 300hp. Still didn’t make that. More like 280-285hp. The redesign of the FE in 1966 brought
the rating up to 390/315hp. Well you had to rate the new 410 higher than that,
so came the 410/330hp which made about 300hp on a good day. And of course the
428 7-Litter had to make even more, so came the 428/345hp which made about
305hp. Ironically, the 7-Litre rating was cut to 340hp in 1968, even though the
real engine Gonkulates about 5hp HIGHER than the 300hp 428/345 of 1967. So when 1968 brought the 429-4v TJ
to replace the 428-7-Litre, you had to beat its (now 340hp) rating. So the 429 TJ got rated at 360hp.
The 460 TJ got (rather correctly) rated at only 5 hp more. Take further comfort – it wasn’t just
FoMoCo playing the “Vanilla Engine Ratings Game” – a lot of the GM and Mopar
grocery-getters were overrated too, for similar reasons. I remember when we found my first car
– an N-code 429 TJ. My dad said “you know, that’s just the regular 429, not the
Cobra Jet?” I was only 16 then, so I still knew EVERYTHING. Those were the
days. So I just said “no big deal, it’s only 10 hp” (429-TJ at 360hp vs 429-CJ
at 370hp). That’s how the Gonkulator got
started – I was determined to sort out how a 10 hp difference translated to
about 8 mph on the timeslip (429-TJ cars turned about 92 mph, while 429-CJ cars
turned about 100mph). Sure enough, using the old rule-of-thumb (1 mph = 10 ponies),
that’s an 80 hp difference, which is about the difference in the REAL hp of the
429-TJ at 320hp and the 429-CJ at almost 400hp. The 429-TJ, even with stock heads,
isn’t a bad engine. It’s a great tire-burner and was perfect for its intended
role in big Mercs and T-Birds. But to be the base COBRA and CYCLONE engine, it
needed some help to live up to the 428CJ of the previous year. That Impressor
Kit was just the recipe. I “get” why FoMoCo did it – smog was closing in, and
they didn’t want a Holley or an air pump on the base engine. So they just
dropped in a tire burner (and it would fry the tires even better than the
429CJ) and let it go. They were just stuck with that way-too-high 360hp rating.
Should’ve just rated the same engine lower, like GM did to get around their own
corporate edicts. Well, long answer to a short
question, hope you enjoyed it. Edited by WerbyFord - 18-November-2020 at 7:16AM |
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J Moore
New Member Joined: 18-October-2020 Location: Washington NC Status: Offline Points: 36 |
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Interesting info. The base 429 Thunderjet as installed in Thunderbird and Big Fords was listed by Ford as being 11:1 compression. 68-70. 71 was actually lower because the deck height was increased by .010. We all know what 72 brought. A trick back in the day was said that installing a 429CJ/SCJ intake on the C8SE, C8VE, C9VE, or D0VE heads would give you 15 H.P. due to the port mismatch that created turbulence. I've never tried it tho. I seem to remember that Ford Motorsports in the mid/late 80s brought the SCJ manifold back for that purpose. FWIW. J.
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WerbyFord
New Member Joined: 15-November-2020 Location: Northern CA Status: Offline Points: 12 |
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Yes, Muscle Parts claimed 12hp IIRC for swapping on the SCJ intake. I never heard a claim that the mismatch HELPED, but in Muscle Parts they did to a port match to show that the mismatch wasnt HURTING anything.
I think the 429 TJ intake was one of many parts just too small to make power, so the extra size and height (about 1" taller) of the SCJ intake made it work. I was sure that CR was 10.5 for both 429-2v and 429-4v. So I went and looked in our 1969 and 1970 Shop Manuals we've had for 50 years. Sure enough, it SAYS 10.5 for 2v, 11.0 for 4v. Decided to check Muscle Parts. Same data. OK so I must have ignored that 11.0 all these years. Why? Probably didnt believe it. Could be the Ford gurus of the day said it wasnt true, but I forgot who if so. So I looked in the Ford Parts Books - 1965-72 MPC and 1970 Parts. Heads, Pistons, Gaskets, all same for 429-2v and 429-4v. So unless there were special spark plugs LOL, I dont see how compression gets different. The AMA Spec and NHRA Blueprint files both say 10.5 CR for both 429-2v and 429-4v. Of course, they're not infallible either. I did "cc" a standard bore 429SCJ block that I was running BASE TJ heads & cam on to save gas for college: 77cc heads (Muscle Parts says 74.2 - 77.2, NHRA says 71.5 min spec) .010 deck .035 gasket 4.2cc piston (a SCJ piston) 10.49 CR So if that' typical, and IF the base piston valve reliefs are also about 4-5cc, I'd bet on 10.5 CR as a typical production build. I havent measured that many Lima heads, but all the FE heads I've cc'd (lots of em) tend toward the high end of the range Ford gives. Not always, but usually. I also went to the NHRA Blueprint Files from 1968-1971 for 429 TJ and 429 CJ/SCJ. For the 429 TJ, using NHRA min volumes, I get 10.11 < CR < 11.41. Using the 74.2-77.2 Ford CC spec, I get 9.86 < CR < 10.75. Not very definitive. Doing the same for the 429CJ/SCJ, NHRA min volumes give 11.40 < CR < 11.75 Fords 71.5-75.5 CC range gives 10.81 < CR < 11.30 I guess the only way to know for sure is if folks on here have measured all their numbers! But FIRST - hey, look at my 1970-71 Post about "Was there a 429 SCJ C-Code Cyclone" !!! Cant find an answer to that one!
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