[A Snake]

Here's my fourbits worth.

When the 427 first came out (center oiler) it had a bad habit of spinning bearings and losing #7 rod through the side of the block. Not a good thing for NASCAR racing.

The side oiler, as stated above oils the crank first. A perfect fix? No, just a lot better. The crankshaft was redesigned also and used screw in plugs on the rod throws instead of soft plugs and snaprings.

The side oiler was a complete package, not just a different block. Medium riser heads, LeMans capscrew rods, sidewinder manifolds and better camshaft profiles were the main differences.

Ford still had a weakness for sodium-filled valves though and a good many engines were destroyed by the valves losing their heads. Notably, this happened when the engines had sat for extended periods.

Now with all of this blather, I would share that I've made use of both engines and can safely say, you won't be able to tell the difference in a street driven car, uless you insist on free winding the engine to 8 grand in your driveway.

Given today's technology for hard parts such as rod bolts, rocker arm geometry, cam profiles, stainless steel valves and particularly....today's engine lubricants, either of these engines will make a Cobra scoot quite nicely thank you very much!

I had a real Side Oiler in my car, but truthfully it had a lot more to do with braggin' rights than anything else. A little peace of mind didn't hurt either....I did some dumb stuff and abused the engine at times, but it never whimpered.

Al