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RalphJr
Dan, How about some photos when you get this rare HiPo motor finished?
If you can call them (engines from late Cobras) rare it is because they seem to be at odds with most Ford products in a few ways. Whereas most Cobras received production five bolt engine that were just Fairlane HP289 assemblies with Cobra unique ancillaries added some of the engines installed late the game are hard to categorize because of oddities.
First off, cars with four speed manual transmissions got five bolt bell housing design engines while the thirty or so cars that received C4 design automatic transmissions had six bolt bell housing engines. I think the 1965 service parts book from Shelby American lists four or five different engine assemblies as possible.
Second, the engines with Shelby serial numbers spanned this five and six bolt variation. A serial number is no clue.
Finding distributors in these Shelby serialized engines, using five bolt and six bolt blocks, with the same date code for such a long time span of cars seems very un-Fordlike unless a tremendous number of them were manufactured in that one week. Maybe Shelby received a fairly larger order of them at one time? Who knows?
The toughest parts to deal with are the cylinder heads. All the late car five bolt engines (six bolt engines use something different) people have inspected for me have C4OE-B cylinder heads cast on one of two dates with the majority being cast on a single day. It is bad enough to hunt a particular engineering casting number but to narrow it down to a single day at the foundry is super tough. So far these Shelby numbered blocks using cylinder heads from two days of casting have been found scattered over roughly the last hundred chassis by serial number in cars finished almost a year apart. Note cars were not finished in sequential order and engines were not used in order. Some late cars have very late Ford numbered engine blocks. Contrast that to some early Cobras that were similar to other Fords in that engine build dates and the dates on their shipping invoices to dealers could span just a few days to a few weeks.
How about engine blocks? I haven’t begun to figure this one out as cast dates on few five bolt ones checked to date are in mid May through mid June 1964. The oddest part here is that most do not have “Ford” engine assembly dates. Have they all been milled? Who actually assembled them, Ford or Shelby (theory = use up left over five bolts parts left in inventory)? (Anybody know what to measure where to determine if deck faces have been milled?)
How about iron intakes? Good question as so few cars retain the one they left the factory with.
If you know somebody that owns a Cobra that was finished after about June 1964 that still has any parts of its original engine intact, I would like to document whatever details they might provide. I will never know what the missing pieces to engine 00026 really were but I would like to get replacements that represent “what could have been”.
Thank you in advance for any help you might provide.
Dan
