Ford vs Chev ?

[speed220mph]

Let's settle this here and now. You want a street car that'll whup all the others, get a Ford . . . yes, a Ford GT aka GT40. That's better than getting the automotive equivalent of a rectum, like in everyone has one--read Chevrolet.

[TheSaint71]

That really sucks!! I'll be honest I live in Oregon and this is one liberal POS! However Im not worried at all about state law,s infact I don't even give a rip!! lol Hope this isnt too controversal! Kit cobras are few and far in between go after all those 30ft boat bean mobiles here that smoke all day long! I feel bad for those ausie guys like Mike etc...

I aint attaching no birdcage and other BS on my beautiful car when I get it, I'd move before I do that! lol I must admit I like both ford and chevy but wow I love what chevy is doing.... there are so many parts interchangeable with like any chevy making parts really cheap, they got the cheapest horsepwer period, my neighbor has come GIAGANTIC monster engine with likw 1000hp he onece tried to sup up some cadalac or buik and it cost a million dollars to friggin add 40hp anyway chevy has some nice stuff

I hope that Hawaii bill for kits cars passes for you, that'd rock!

[Excaliber]

Hey Saint! Spoken like a true free spirted Oregonian. Brings a tear to my eye I tell you!

Several miles out of Cottage Grove Oregon up on a mountain, my home town! We didn't give a S--t about "laws" when I was growing up! You just did what ya had to do to survive, screw 'em! Build it and drive it, whatever it was.

Now I in the "big city", life sucks, gotta get "political" to drive my dam car here. I should just bail and get back to my mountain top!

....except,,,,,well,,,,,it rains a lot there and I don't miss that part.

Ernie

[Rebel1]

Mike...spoken like the honorary Queenslander you are.

Why don't ya move up here......brekky unda an umbrella cuz the sun's a lil warm, nubile young ladies looking at the cars.. you'd like it

[cob460]

hi, the saint71 , just a garden variety small block , iron block alloy heads ,which are coming off because they don`t work as well as the iron heads that were on the engine before ,all to do with the combination ....... now if someone wants to donate a rodeck ???

[badrich]

My heart goes out to you mates down under. What a nasty bunch of rules and regulations to deal with. I can understand some of that stuff, but it sounds like some bureaucrats have run amok. Some California rules suck as well, but SB100 is very civilized and transferring my machine from Nevada to CA was a breeze. A Chevvie engine was never an option for me, as I wanted my Cobra close to the original, and if I were building a Corvette, you'd never see an FE in there either. But we have so much equipment available, we are really spoiled. And we even get Ahnold as our Governator. How sweet it is. I hope to get Down Under for *next* year's Melbourne Grand Prix; perhaps I'll bump into one of you guys. I'll look for Mad Max in a Cobra! By the way, my Dad was born in Albany, a beautiful little town on the S/W corner of your lovely country. G'Day, Rich.

[Excaliber]

,,boy would I love to see ONE Vette, just ONE with a Ford engine!!!!

Think about it!

Ernie

[ledge]

I can understand why you wouldnt put a ford motor in a corvette but i dont think putting a chev into a cobra is the same , its not like your putting a chev motor into a mustang is it .

[cob460]

sorry guys but its been done. the guy that owns the 9 sec cobra i`m baby sitting used to work as a mechanic with his father at "Armstrong auto repairs " redcliffe queensland australia and he fitted a 460 ford to a 80`s ?? corvette , i remember laughing my guts out when he took the job on . Well he got it up and running but wasn`t happy with the work done else where to fabricate the new drag link so he wouldn`t road test it and the guy just took it away. And ain`t it a small world , i now have that same engine in my back shed stripped down for a rebuild after pulling it out of a 1977 ford .

[speed220mph]

Wish I had gotten a picture of it, but an acquaintenance ran a flathead Ford topped with a Scott blower on his 1976 Camaro Bonneville Salt Flats car. The old flathead was the SB Chevy in its day and then some, but in a Camaro!

About a Chevy in a Cobra, keep in mind the first guy to try it was Carol Shelby himself, but the GM corporate office told him to take a hike. So, it was Ford that made the Cobra go. And now that all original small blocks are long in the tooth, you can put a serious and competitive SB Ford together from aftermarket parts on the same budget as a SB Chevy. Guess the diehard Chevy guys are afflicted with the same condition as the Flatheads Forever crowd. Guess it keeps the old stuff going, but a Chevy in a Cobra?

[scottj]

Speed,

Yes the SBC is a 50-year-old design. Yes, with all the Chinese parts available for the SBF you can build one on the same budget as a SBC. Yes, recent SBF cylinder head development has resulted in equal or better street performance than the SBC, despite other architectural deficiencies of the stock block. But, the closer you get the SBF to “serious and competitive” the more it looks like a SBC.

It is no secret that the SBC, which is still based on its original 50-year-old architecture, is the stronger engine in Cup racing. To try and close the gap NASCAR approved a new head for ’04. It is also no secret that Ford cloned the SBC in every way they could to make the SBF competitive with the SBC. It is to the point were dimensions for bore, stroke, block deck height, journal diameters, rods, pistons, etc are nearly identical and in the case of some components they’re interchangeable. The SBF is still handicapped be its bore spacing though.

So, if SBC guys “suffer from “flatheads forever condition”, what do SBF guys suffer from? Copycat syndrome maybe? For sure lack of market share in short track racing.

I have nothing against Fords anymore and I have my favorite SBF combination. It’s just that internally it looks an awful lot like a SBC. For my purposes the std 351W isn’t anywhere near competitive no matter what it’s stuffed with or what heads are on it.

Scott

[speed220mph]

Scott:
"Copy cat syndrome"; that's good. In the real world, there's a lot of cross breeding that goes on. I can detail a lot of SBF design features that have been incorporated into the SBC. As for Chinese parts, we seem to be inflicted with them no matter what we buy, but the parts are designed here at home. As for the SBF getting closer to the SBC the more competitive it gets, seems like the scenario is they get closer to each other. Air is no respecter of engines. And don't ignore the GenFord Chevy.

Short track racing! Great, that's what I cut my teeth on; super modifieds and sprint cars. I went from flatheads to Ford's original boat anchor, the 292, and won. Our 292 won many races while the SBC's were chucking rods out the sides of the blocks. But things turned around when the Chevy guys got the handle on reliability. The SBC became the engine of choice. It gave you what was needed: power and reliability at a reasonable cost.

Ran a lot of Chevys in late models, too. Also set a Salt Flats record in a SBC powered Monza. But the most fun was in '69 and '70 T/A series with the Boss Mustangs when I was at KarKraft. Nothing resembling Chevy here. Too bad we were forced to use expermental batteries, which lost us the series championship. Bub Moore was livid because Parnelli and George in their Mustangs could do the job on Mark in his Camaro.

You can go back and forth on the Ford vs. Chevy thing, but while we're at it watch out for the Japanese. Regardless, the arguments and healthy. Help to keep the marques alive. Just hope Ford and GM survive.

[flipper35]

At least he didn't ask about putting a Mopar (but maybe the new Hemi isn't available there) engine in it.