Quote:
Originally Posted by 427FE
When was the last time you saw a galaxie in s/ss?
|
Seems there would indeed be more of them.
Back in the day, the 427 HiRiser Gal won its share, until it got factored to 500hp and had to run against the Street Hemi cars from 1966-up, and then against some Race Hemi cars right at the top of the 7.00 weight break.
The 427 LowRiser won its share (mostly automatic classes even though you couldn't buy that combo!). Seems that combo would still run good under today's "Design your own heads" rules since the port VOLUME is pretty big but not the optimum shape. So you could legally make a much better head.
I try to hunt for combos that were UNDERRATED by the factory, and then respond well to legal mods. Most of the obvious combos were of course discovered back in the 1960s. If they were too obvious, they got factored by NHRA, and were still usually underrated but not near as much as before. Ford tried to push the 64 HiRiser Galaxie on NHRA at the same "425hp" rating carried by the LoRiser Gal so they could run the car in A/S=8.70 class. NHRA didn't fall for that at all.
One combo long overlooked was the 352/250hp Galaxie.
When picking out such "dusty corner" combos, I look for stuff that was underrated from the factory. A lot of low-perf vanilla engines were overrated, so even if they didn't get factored, you' re at a disadvantage right off. The big 430 inchers eg didn't make near their rated power, and didn't respond too well to legal mods, so not good combos.
The 352/300hp-4v Ford of 1958-60 was the same way - way overrated, bad place to start. But in 1964, the same combo (nearly identical) came back out and was rated much lower, at 352/250hp. Now it was UNDERRATED. Great place to start. And with a tiny cam, flat log exhausts, and boat anchor intake, you could add a batch of power in a hurry and still be stock or superstock legal. And yet, nobody seems to have run this combo back in the day. I think the trouble is, it was down there with all the Tri-5 Chevy combos which also had a batch of power added to them.