Really odd installation for a 348/409 existed in the St. Louis area back in the late '60s. Fellow with a '57 T' Bird w/'W' engine would show up at the Easter Sunday show in Forest Park by the Muny Opera. Bet he was the black sheep in the Thunderbird club.

The old 'Y' block Ford was weak in the knees so why not.

 

I have seen 2 Corvettes with the 348/409 and one was just in the last year. I should have taken pics but I didn't have the camera with me.

But here is one I found

http://books.google.com/books?id=2BR...tKww4#PPA34,M1

 

Anybody see any errors or ommissions in that horsepower chart besides me?

I saw several (five) 348/409 engine swaps in solid axle Vettes and '55 Chevys back then. For some reason, none of them ran as well in the new body as they did in the car they came out of. I don't know why. They'd spin the tires but they just didn't run.

 

Tire technology!!!! It is the same reason 427s in early vettes were slower than the small blocks. Back than there was no way to hook up that much power. That was then, now there is plenty of "Hook" out there.

 

Maybe. They just didn't seem to want to run once they got moving. That's not been so long ago that there wasn't sticky tires around. There were.

 

[QUOTE=MikeM;1563712579]Anybody see any errors or ommissions in that horsepower chart besides me?QUOTE]

Mike, I noticed several errors in the chart as well as in the text regarding the history of those engines. I'm not aware of the source of the original author of that, but I've noticed that most magazine article writers don't bother to do any in-depth research of their own; they just regurgitate what writers before them have written.

By the way, a few years ago a beautiful Saddle Tan '63 SWC was sold out of Florida with a '63 425hp 409 in it (a conversion of course). It was purchased by one of the Napp brothers who own Englishtown Raceway Park. It's interesting to note, and perhaps a coincidence, that the motor with stock exhaust manifolds was a bolt-in with no modifications necessary....

 

doesn't anyone remember Atlas 'Bucrons' (gas station brand by Exxon, Esso, etc..); they were really sticky for a street tire and Atlas made a mistake of putting a lonnnng tread life warranty on them. streetracers were burning them up by the truckload (for free...)
Bill

 

[QUOTE=wmf62;1563717978]doesn't anyone remember Atlas 'Bucrons' (gas station brand by Exxon, Esso, etc..); they were really sticky for a street tire



Yes.

 

Yup, used to buy a pair of them every Thursday night at the Standard station at Maple and Woodward in Birmingham ($18.00/pair) to last the weekend on Woodward; come Sunday night, they were bald and went in the trash. Those things stuck like they were made of gum rubber, made great smoke too.

 

Correct! Photos below are of the Z-11 owned by Jack Ray, driven by Larry Wilson, and tuned by Ronnie Sox. Now owned by a friend of mine (Hank Gabbert) who recently completed a 5-year restoration to exactly its original race configuration. Beautiful car (and VERY nasty)

 

OK, now for the hard part. Who got and ran the original Z-11'S ?

I can start it with the friend I know about - Billy Lagana from Eastchester, NY. Car's name was Locomotion. He sold it to a guy named Ed Robbins.

Also"

Malcolm Durham
Don Nicholson
Dave Strickler (I think)

who can add to the list

 

We did the same thing when Firestone came out with the wid ovels. I went through 3 sets & I was told not to come back to the Standerd station where I bought them. I had a 631/2 427/425 H Ford. I guess tire builders didn't see the big block hi horse cars comming.

 

Dave Strickler is correct. He ran the "Old Reliable" car that a guy in Pa. has in his private collection now.

 

By memory Ronnie Sox
Regards

 

Hank havin' fun......after some coaxing!

 

You may have had to be "somebody" to buy one. I don't know. I know the special Z-11 body parts stayed in the P&A catalogue for a long time. I don't remember about the engine parts. There were a number of roundy round and drag racers around here that ran the engine parts.

There were also the '62 cars that had OTC aluminum front ends and the Z-11 engine parts late in the year.

In the early spring of '63, a name that has been on my lips for years and now escapes me had one in Gary, Indiana. He used to drag it out to Sammy's Drive-in every night with an old Ford pickup truck. He drug it because there was no engine in it. Lettering all over the side of it. He'd sit there until closing time and then drag it home, only to return the next evening. That was the only street driven one I ever saw and it wasn't really driven.

Edit: The Z-11 owner's name was Karras.

Funny situation there. The Chevy's parked on one side of the drive-in. The MoPars on the other. On pavement. If you had one of the few Fords that showed up, you were expected to "park it in the rocks" (gravel).

 

It seemed 409's were dropped into about anything back then. I had a friend that put one into an early year Tempest and he was hard to beat on the track! That is until the flywheel exploded on one of his 6000 RPM, drop the clutch starts and mutilated his feet!

 

Wonder what some of those rich folks at BJ would be willing to pay for that beauty.

 

my 60 had either a 348 or 409 with dual quads when i bought it in the 70 it had an i beam spacer on the front suspension

 

I put a 409/425hp in a '27 T-bucket (steel body) back in the early 70's...Never finished it but it sounded "NASTY"

George