The Ford Y-Block was introduced in 1954 to replace the well-know flathead. Displacement was unchanged at 239 cu. in., but the new engine had five main bearings, five cam bearings and overhead valves. Bore was 3.500″ and stroke was 3.100″ with 6.324″ connecting rods. Model year 1954 Mercury vehicles had a 256 cu. in. version with 3.625″ bore and 3.100″ stroke. Displacement was increased in 1955 to 272 cu. in. for most Ford car production.
Today’s CAD programs offer definitive X-, Y- and Z-axis depictions of specific blocks, providing you have access to these programs.
While seasoned engine builders understand what the term “blueprinting” means, chances are most of their customers don’t. Too many neophytes think that balancing and blueprinting go hand-in-hand. They blindly assume that if the crank has been balanced, that must mean that the engine has been blueprinted.
all photos by author An investment of a few hours during tube bending will pay off in achieving a neat and coordinated plumbing appearance. The NOS nitrous pro fogger kit we installed features soft-plume-type fogger nozzles. In this view, the top inlet (in line with the discharge nozzle tube) is for extra fuel. The angled [...]
SOLENOID PLUMBING As mentioned, two individual solenoids are involved, one for nitrous and one for the extra fuel shot. Loosely install a 1/8″ x 1/8″ NPT male nipple into the outlet port of the nitrous solenoid. Loosely install a 1/4″ NPT x 6AN nitrous filter into the inlet port of the nitrous solenoid. Trail-fit the [...]
INSTALLING NITROUS Here we detail a nitrous setup on a specific application, using a Honda performance engine as our example. by Mike Mavrigian What is nitrous oxide? Nitrous oxide is a cryogenic gas composed of nitrogen and oxygen molecules, and is comprised of 36 percent oxygen by weight. Nitrous oxide alone is non-flammable and is [...]
MARINE PERFORMANCE PISTONS A look at how marine differs from automotive. Note the extra dome thickness of this marine piston example. It’s designed for long duration operation under load, especially with forced induction. (Illustration courtesy JE Pistons) Ever wonder if and how a marine-application piston differs from an automotive slug? Well, we did, so we [...]
SLEEVING TO SAVE OLD BLOCKS By John Catapang, Darton International Ductile iron is the primary material for cylinder sleeves. An option is cast iron. With a ductile iron sleeve in a cast iron block, the thinnest we recommend boring a sleeve is 0.060″. We have seen people go to 0.040″ sleeve wall thickness with success [...]
Thank you very much. The DOHC 2.4L head in this 2001 PT Cruiser spit the No. 1 spark plug without warning, taking the threads along for the ride. We suspect this resulted from poor thread quality coupled with a relatively low spark plug torque value. It appears that cylinder pressure worked its magic on the [...]
PRO-LEVEL SPARK PLUG THREAD REPAIR MADE EASY If you haven’t run into this problem yet, it’s very likely that you will in the near future. There seems to be a rash of spark plug thread failures in a variety of later-model aluminum heads. The most common is the 4.6L Ford head simply because some design [...]
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