429 for a '72 Mach 1
 

My dad is finally going to be dropping his 429 into his Mach 1. We will be removing the existing 351 Cleveland. Not sure what exactly we are going to do with the 351 but that is a decision for later. Right now he is wanting to throw a new cam in the 429 before we drop it into the Mach.

The engine specs are as follows:
429 ci
Bore: 4.36
Stroke: 3.59
CR: 10.5:1
Connecting Rod Length: 6.6050
Intake: Edelbrock Performer Dual Plane
Heads: stock 1970 Dove-C
Head Runner Volume: 71-75cc
Ported Heads (going to be)
Intake Valve: 2.075-2.090
Exhaust Valve: 1.646-1.661
Rocker Arm Type: Stock
Rocker Arm Ration: 1.75:1
Headers: Hooker Super Comp long tubes
RPM Range (Low): 650
RPM Range (High): 4600

Manual Trans in case that makes a difference with a rear end of 3.50
Tire height: about 30"

He is leaning towards either a hydraulic flat tappet or a solid lifter roller from Comp. Right now in talking with Comp they are recommending this kit. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

My dad still needs a Carb and distributor/coil so if you have any recommendations on those that would be great.

That cam is a great choice especially with a 3.50 rear gear.

My dad was thinking a 750CFM Carb would be good agree?

Yes, anything bigger will be too big.

He is thinking Edelbrock, Holly or Demon? Any recommendations?

Also for ignition I recommend Mallory. If it's more then he wants to spend then go with MSD. I'm running MSD stuff in both the Chevelle and the Cobra but only because the Mallory distributor I was running in the Chevelle before costs over $400 now. When the old one went out I couldn't afford to replace. It had been in the car for about 15 years.

Holley or Demon. I don't like the AFB style carbs. I've always run a Holley so I'm familiar with them. They're easy to work on and tune.

We are looking in the summit catalog and their Summit brand carbs are way cheap? I read some online that Holly at least used to make them. What do you think?

I do NOT know in this case, but it's not uncommon for off brand makes to be made by the same OEM. It's certainly plausible.

Trying to decide between these

Holly 770
Summit Racing

My advice is conditional. If the Summit brand is functionally equivalent and your dad has no real concern of reselling, or of showing, but just wants to enjoy it with an affordable build-out, the Summit brand would be fine. If however, resale, and perhaps showing, are any kind of goals, stick to big name name brands; that's part of the benefit (right or wrong) that comes with brand premium in carrying value forward. Probably stating the obvious here.

Yeah, my dad really does not care about brand names and the high air cleaner pretty much hides the carb anyway. Resale is not a concern because this car more than likely will be a family heirloom.

Well, then it's pure price:function and "off brands" may be just peachy.

The Summit carb was originally a Holley. I forget what model it was but it was something like a 4165 or something like that. Holley also makes a 4160 that's close in price if he preffers a Holley.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/hl...10sa/overview/

Had an additional Comp hydraulic flat tappet kit recommended to me. It is a Comp K-34-247-4 with the following specs:

Duration Int 274/ 286
Duration @ .050 lift Int 230/ 236
Valve lift Int .562/ .563
Rpm range 1800-6000

How does this compare to the first recommendation?

With regards to the carb question, I found some interesting info. As already mentioned, the Summit carbs were originally made by Holley. Fuzzy on who makes them now, but all Holley parts are interchangeable on the Summit carb.

Found some interesting articles in past issues of Mustang Monthly. They were really favorable in their comments about the Summit carbs. They felt that Summit combined the best of Holley and the 4100 Autolite series used during the muscle car era.

Will appreciate any feedback .

That's a good cam so far, whats that lobe center?

In my opinion you just can't beat a Holley. Parts are cheap, they're easy to rebuild when the time comes and they work great. As for those two cams, they are both Comp Extreme Energy cams and both are on a 110 LSA. Which one to run depends on what you want to use the car for.

The XE262H (smaller cam) will make peak horsepower at around 5000 and have a 5500 rpm shift point. Peak torque should be around 3500. It will have a better idle than the larger XE274H and make about 20 lb/ft more torque. If you just want a good street car and are keeping the 3.50 gear this is the cam I'd choose.

The XE274H will make about 20 hp more than the XE262H but it will be at a higher (5500) rpm. Peak torgue should be around 4000 and the shift point would be 6000. This cam will have a more aggresive idle if that's what you're after. If this is the cam you want to run I'd switch to a 3.73 gear and also go with a Performer RPM intake instead of the Performer.

A bit of good news for the old wallet. The Mallory unilite distributor I have in my 351C is also used of the 429. Won't have to buy a new ignition set up.

I wish I knew you already had the Mallory distributor because I knew you could use your current one. I just thought you had the stock points distributor in the 351C. What did you decide to do for a cam?

My error. I was thinking about leaving the 351C intact for possible sale. But I think I'll keep it , at least for now. This does free up some bucks. Looking more and more at the Holley carbs. I know that the 4150 is about a hundred buck more than the 4160. What's your opinion? Do you think its worth it? Also the 4150 is 770cfm vs 750cfm for the 4160. I think I'll just stick with the first recommended ca. I figure I'll be over 400hp vs about 200+ that I have now. No point in getting carried away. Thanks for the input.

The only difference between the 4150 and the 4160 is that the 4150 uses a metering block with jets which can be adjusted on the secondaries where the 4160 uses a non adjustable metering plate on the secondaries. I ran a 3310 4160 on the old 396 I had in the Chevelle for years and it worked great. I think it will be perfect for for the combo you are planning. Depending on how well the heads flow and what the true compression ratio are you should be right around 400 horsepower and 500 lb/ft torque with the XE262H cam.

Well looks like I may not be saving money on the ignition system after all. Since I don't know how old the current system is, I decided to go with a new distributor along with the other new stuff. My current distributor is the Mallory unilite so that's what I am going to stick with. I do however have a question. My current system utilizes a mechanical advance setup. Should I stick with this setup or go to a vacume advance setup since the car will be primarily a street vehicle? Thanks for any input.

Before you do that, you might want to hit up big2bird. He's not far from you, about 10 miles perhaps. He knows all about ignitions and actually has a couple old Sun machines in his garage for checking them and dialing in different curves etc. Tell'm Ben referred you. You can just PM him here. He should respond.

There's no reason to replace that Unilite distributor, it is great. Just add a Mallory HyFire VI A with it. I'd still have mine in the Chevelle if the advance stop hadn't broke. Mine was about 15 years old before it broke. They are also easy to adjust. You use springs to adjust the advance curve and the timing tab to adjust the amount of total advance. I'm not sure what works for a BBF but I would set initial timing at 14 degrees with a total advance between 34-36 degrees all in by 3000 rpms.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/maa-6852m/overview/

Update on the 429 conversion. I have been accumulating parts and now have the following:
1. Comp Cams K34-238-4 Extreme Energy Cam and Lifter Kit - Cam, Flat tappet lifters, Springs, seals, Locks, Etc with a 1300-5500 RPM Range
2. Edelbrock 2166 Performer Intake - Aluminum, Dual Plane Idle - 5500 RPM range
3. Summit 750 cfm 4bbl Square Bore Carb - Vac. secondaries, Electric choke
4. Hooker Super Comp Long Tube Headers - 35", 1 7/8" Primaries to a 3 1/2" collectors, Reducers from 3 1/2" to 2 1/2" exhaust and Stage 8 bolts. This was the only header I could find made for a 429/460 engine into a 71-73 Mustang. It was also recommended.
5. Mallory Hyfire 6A Controller.
6. Mallory 29216 Canister Style Coil - 51,000V
7. Holley 110GPH Mechanical Fuel Pump
8. Set of E3 Plugs
9. Water pump, Inlet housing, and Fail Safe thermostat
10. 100 Amp 1 wire alternator with 1 wire conversion kit.
11. Complete 429/460 Motor Mount Kit and hardware for 71-73 Mustang
12. Fel Pro 429/460 Gasket Set
13. All new hardware
14. Used Bellhousing, flywheel, clutch, bearing fork, and pressure plate for 429 Ford
a. Flywheel appears to need resurfacing
b. 11" Clutch & Pressure Plate are good - Look like McLeod or Zoom

I got a starter with the engine, but don't know if it will work because the engine was hooked to an automatic.

Need to get a fan, some brackets, and pulleys and other odd and end things.

Since the heads will need to be disassembled, I would like to port match the intake and exhaust openings.

Look forward to comments and input.

Porting the heads takes a lot of time and with the combo you are building won't make all that much more power. I can't remember off the top of my head but I think I spent about 20 hours porting the ones for my Explorer and twice that on the AFR's in the Cobra. Also, I don't have the tools to set the valve springs up so you'll need to have those installed by a machine shop before we put the engine together.

I have the valve spring tool.

I've never set up valve springs. I've always had them done when I have the heads machined.

I talked to my dad earlier and he is going to have a machine shop install the new valve springs as well as gasket match the heads. He thinks it is well worth the $300 they are charging for it. We will pull the heads this weekend and drop them off Monday. They said in 2 to 3 days we will have them back.

429 Head update
 

Good news. When we pulled the heads, we discovered that the ports had already been gasket matched. It just cost me $25 to have the valve springs swapped.

I think I found a use for my savings. Research and what I've seen on Horse Power on Power Block led me to look at rockers. I think I'll switch the stamped steel rockers for some aluminum roller rockers. I am looking at the following I found on Summit.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-17045-16/overview

Work on this starts Sunday. Hopefully the 429 gets dropped in next weekend!

So we pulled the 351C today, washed the engine bay and installed the new Comp cam in the 429. We also cc'd a combustion chamber and piston and checked the deck height. With the .041 compressed gasket thickness the 429 is going to be at 10.48:1 compression. I don't know if Adam or Andy took any pictures but if they did, hopefully they'll post them up.

Funny that Ron mentioned pictures. My dad and I were talking about it on the way home and realized neither of us took any pics. We will fro sure have the camera in hand for install of the 429 this weekend. Glad Ron did the compression calculation because I had no idea that we would be looking at about 10.5:1.

Nice! :popcorn:

Seems like Ron is always there to save the day with your big car projects/ disasters... thats a reeeal good friend.

Ron is awesome!

Thought I would update this thread with our progress. Sorry but this is kind of wordy.

4/13
We worked on the Mach last saturday and seemed to keep running into issues. We did get the motor dropped in but had to open up some of the holes on the motor mounts to get the driver side to fit. We realized that our rocker studs were smaller than we thought so we could not install the rockers. My dad was going to order larger studs from APR. Got the passenger side header on and room is a little tight.

429 has a new home


Intake


4/21
We met up again at Ron's to continue the work yesterday. We started with installing a new mini-starter to help with the tight fit of the exhaust. This sent my dad on his first trip to the auto parts store for some new cables. We then installed the new rocker studs and went to install the rockers and realized we did not have rocker guides so once again could not install the rockers. Finishing up the exhaust was next on the list. When installing the driver side header everything was going well until one of the tubed was cut short and would not completely sleeve into the tube attached to the collector. These headers are in 3 pieces for each side because of the space issue so the rear 2 pipes attach to the head and sleeve into the compete pipes from the front 2 cylinders. Moving on we hooked up Ron's old exhaust off the Chevelle. Had to of course do some fitting but this is just temporary to get my dad to an exhaust shop to get all new exhaust from the collectors back (going to Muffler Man in Placentia for exhaust). While Ron and I were doing the exhaust my dad made his second trip to the parts store for some U-clams and flexible pipe. Next we moved onto the fuel pump and this got my dad making his third trip to the part store for the correct fuel filter and fittings. After getting the fuel pump installed we realized that the new fuel filter that the parts store guys gave my dad was wrong again. Trip 4 to the auto parts store for my dad. While my dad was doing that we moved onto the new serp. belt set-up for the car and realized that the kit they sent has a crank pulley that bolts to a harmonic balancer but our stock set-up has a crank pulley that is also the harmonic balancer. Another roadblock and we ended the day there.

Starter


Exhaust






Side by side of exhaust: old was 2.25" pipe and the new is a huge 3"

Looks good so far.....of course I do not agree with everything...but that's jsut me...lol


Yes..Ron is awesome!

Elaborate.

Its Glenn! Everyone I had a Glenn sighting! Haha