Engine Building - V-8 Power Trends And Best-Selling Engine Combos

CHI is an acronym for Cylinder Head Industries, the company that makes the "Australian" Cleveland heads.

Ford Cleveland 351
The 351C has developed a passionate following in spite of its short model run. We turned to Mark McKeown of McKeown Motorsport Engineering (MME) for some help in sorting out the mystique surrounding this engine. McKeown says that though Clevelands aren't popular, owners of cars originally equipped with them won't even think of touching a Windsor much less putting one in their car. For those guys, MME sells several Cleveland packages, ranging from a bone-stock rebuild to a stock-appearing but heavily worked-over 408-inch high-performance kit. But a much better seller is the 427-inch package using a Dart 9.20- or 9.50-inch deck, a 4.00-inch stroke crank, a Windsor block, and CHI 3V Cleveland cylinder heads and intake. Known in the business as a Clevor, MME can guarantee 690 hp all day long on 91 octane out of this hybrid combo. The cylinder heads are so efficient that they run best on 26 degrees of total timing. Through hours of dyno time and racing experience, MME has developed an effective and reliable combination that, in a 2,900-pound Fox Mustang, will run 9s at the track and get you to work and back during the week. Want a more "hands-on" experience than installing a crate motor? Ask MME about its Engine in a Box option. You supply the engine block, and they'll ship everything else you'll need to assemble and get it running yourself. You can save a little cash and brag to your buddies about how you built your own 700hp engine.

Did you know that there is a 410ci FE engine from the factory? It has a 390 block and a 428 crank from Ford. We saw an air-cleaner lid from one once.

Ford Fe 390 Ci
Suppose you have a 500hp goal, and suppose those 500 horses have to come from an FE. How would you do that? We didn't know either, so we called FE-specialist Barry Rabotnick of Survival Motorsports. We gave him a target of a 500hp and 500-lb-ft engine to drop into a 3,500-4,000-pound car that will see some dragstrip action. Oh, and we asked to spend less than eight grand. Two hours later, he e-mailed the details of his build, and it met all our goals. Rabotnick doesn't sell crate engines per se, but he will work with customers individually to build a combination suitable to their needs, and our combo is one of his more popular requests. He starts with a 390-inch block, which gets loaded up with a 4.25-inch stroker crank, Scat 6.700-inch rods, and Diamond Racing forged pistons that will work out to about a 9.8:1 compression ratio. Next, he added a custom-ground hydraulic flat-tappet cam, Edelbrock heads, a Blue Thunder intake manifold, and a Holley 750, though Rabotnick can give you a variety of cylinder-head and intake options to suit your budget. He can also include accessories like water pumps and ignition for your engine combination. Our $7,939 total was for a complete, ready-to-install-and-fire-up engine, which even included $10 for Ford Blue engine paint. Rabotnick says this combo will deliver peak power at about 5,500 rpm and will come really close to our 500hp target.