Vintage Engines - The Ford FE

FE Performance History
The '60s were a heady time for performance development from Detroit, with newer and more powerful packages coming out all the time. As NASCAR heated up, Ford was a definite player, coming out with the 390 engine in '61, the 406 in '62, and the fab 427 in '63. The 390 was (and is still) a great engine, with its hottest from-the-lot version being the 390 High-Performance, overshadowed though it was in racing by the "over-the-counter" 390 Super High Performance with 401 hp, cast-iron headers, and three deuces on top. Designed to counter the 409 Chevy, these cars put real drama into SuperStock drag racing. The fabled 406 (actually, a 0.080-inch overbore of the SHP 390) shared the stronger block of its smaller brother, but featured the first use of cross-bolted main bearing caps, later to be one of the great features of the mighty 427 in 1963, which swept the first five places at Daytona in those big-but-aero 63 1/2 Galaxie fastbacks.

One aspect of the FE design that held it back was the oiling system, on which a whole book could be written. Suffice it to say that the FE fed oil to the upper end and camshaft first and the crankshaft last, which proved a limiting factor in high-rpm racing. Thus, when building their new 427 engines for the 1965 season, Ford reversed the oiling by adding a new gallery down along the bottom of the block side, the notorious and much-coveted "side-oiler" block that could do the job at Indianapolis Raceway Park, Daytona, or LeMans. The 427 was the most powerful engine ever put into a production Ford at the time. Beyond the oiling redesign, the 427 featured a rugged block cast of high-strength alloy, the meaty web mass of the 390 hi-po, cross-bolted mains, muscular rods and rod bolts, forged crank, and heads designed for more flow.

To the uninitiated, Ford parts identification is like trying to decipher the spray-painted names of graffiti artists. Full entry into the secret society of Ford experts requires a blood ritual, secret handshakes and oaths, and a two-year apprenticeship on the understanding of Ford part and casting numbers. Nominally a 425hp engine with dual quads, the 427 had a number of variations, particularly with cylinder heads. The first were what we now call low-riser heads, referring to the height of the intake ports. The next year the high-rise 427 engines were introduced with raised ports, lighter valves, and special intake manifolds to match. These engines wouldn't fit under the hood of a stock Ford, so in 1965 the medium-riser heads/intakes were brought out. As if to further appease the power gluttony of FE racers, later 427s had two even more impressive versions. The across-the-board Ford emphasis on performance in 1965 was topped by the legendary SOHC 427. Essentially it was a 427 block with huge, aluminum hemi-chambered heads with an overhead cam for each head, driven by a 6-foot timing chain and assorted idlers. These were for all-out competition, and found their greatest achievements in drag racing, competing side by side with the new 426 Mopar Hemis. A number of famous top fuelers and funny cars (Art Malone, Mickey Thompson, Ed Pink, Connie Kalitta, Pete Robinson, and Tom Hoover) were SOHC-fired. Today, the SOHC motors (or parts) are as easy to find as well-loved telemarketers, and the regular 427s are also scarce. The only street rods we can remember seeing with a SOHC 427 (Ford fans just call it the "sock motor") were Mike Martin's all-bad Deuce three-window highboy coupe from California and the fabulous '34 phaeton built by former funny-car driver Jim Green of Washington (it even had a flip-up body). The last performance improvements to the FE line were the rare 427 tunnel-port heads given to selected NASCAR racers with huge, round intake and exhaust ports.