4.0L SOHC Special

Many moons ago the old man used to watch Holden six powered 'Specials' around Bathurst.
(A Special is usually a home made open wheeler of any design)
He is now approaching 70 and has finished most of his projects, so we decided to build a Ford six powered Special.
Started with an EL 4.0L and T5, AU IRS, AUII front end (now using Hilux uprights) back in June last year.

Clayton

And this is what it looks like today.

Clayton

Wow lookin good

Yah wow looks awesome.

Impressive.

Hi Clayton.Welcome aboard.Nice build.Keep us posted on progress.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

Cheers Guys
At the moment we're making the inlet manifold. Finished welding it up today.
As this is going to be a low budget build, the bottom end will be stock and will limit it to 6000 rpm for gear changes.
We wanted to hi port the inlet as much as possible without welding the head. Went for 5 degs as this would make the whole track straight. Pressed in some 3mm wall tubes and filled the voids from the old port.

Clayton

The manifold is made from exhaust tubing, pressed to form a cone (38mm to 48mm to suit the 48 DCO's)

Clayton

The ram tubes are also pressed from 2" S/S tubing and are quite long as we're going for the 2nd harmonic. They will be annealed and pressed a bit more for a better bell.

Clayton

Again impressive.

Thanks mate

The ram tubes will be silver soldered into the original weber bases after they are bored in by 1/4" and the tubes pressed in.

Clayton

New thermostat housing, swirl pot, header tank and overflow tank.
There will be air bleeds from the swirl pot, top of radiator and back of head.
Hopefully we wont have any cooling issues.....

Darwin's a hot and humid place, today was 38 deg C and high humidity

Clayton

Again the headers were designed around the 6000rpm, but went up a bit in the dia (1 3/4" OD) to accommodate a better bottom end, more revs in the future. That's if the old man wants it of course
Ended up with the lengths within 1/2" of each other, don't think it really matters that much, but its nice to try and get it right.

Clayton

Your fabrication work is very impressive.

Thanks mate,

Finished machining the manifold and got it bolted back up. Left a little bit of material in the port sleeves so the whole lot can be port matched latter on with the rest of the porting.
Everything seems to clear
Fiddled around with linkages today, ended up with links between the carby's instead of a lay shaft and drop links.

Clayton

Keeping with the old school theme, we fitted a crossflow dissy (points and mechanical advance)
Only had to turn the gear upside down to engage with the counter shaft.
We cheated a bit and replaced the points with a Pertronix ignitor kit.

Progress will slow down for the next month or so, but hope to get cracking early in the new year.

Has anyone tried decking these heads as much possible, how much did you get off ??
Only appears you could get 0.050"-0.070" max as it would hit the inlet seat.

Trying to get the most compression out of it. (block will be decked for min squelch)

Clayton

This looks fantastic. I cant wait to see the photos of the finished car. Plese keep posting photos

Cheers mate, will do.

Again keeping with the old look, used the centres from std BA Falcon rims (16 x 6.5") and added 8" and 10" outers. Kept the backspace the same as std and ended up with some real nice deep dish steelies
Will be using the Hoosier R6 tyres, 225/50/16's and 275/45/16's. Couldn't find any bigger ones :roll:

Clayton

Here's a few of the chassis being welded prior to paint.
And yep, we build Mack trucks and not race cars.......


Clayton

Made a little progress over the Christmas break.
Painted the rims and started panelling the chassis.
Seat is only a template, will sheet one in later.

Clayton