DIRTY STUFF

SEVERAL centuries ago, I was working as an apprentice mechanic at a country Ford dealership. All right, I’m not really that old, but often with these frost-bitten, icy winter mornings, it sure feels that way! Anyhow, a bloke with deep pockets bought a brand-new 1957 Ford Customline, waited until the short factory warranty period had ended, then drove back into our workshop. He wanted the 272 Y-block engine reworked with whatever we had, so that he could exceed 100mph (162km/h) along the ‘mad mile’ straight just out of town. Back then, you could get away with stuff like that if you could prove you weren’t driving dangerously.

This bloke knew Ford’s engine assembly line had fitted decompression plates under both cylinder heads, as the engineers reckoned the 272 wouldn’t run proper on our single-grade, low-octane pump fuel, even if it was only three shillings per gallon. Go-faster guys bought BP Benzol and stuffed that in with each tank fill, with the high-octane result taming detonations. The Cusso bloke wanted these plates removed, along with an improvement to the stock exhaust system, which was pretty ordinary. And could we also fit twin carburettors onto the cast-iron inlet manifold? Sure, we said, excited by something different.

Okay. Ripping the heads off was no problem, and we gave them a valve grind at the same time. While the engine was apart, we worked out that two double-throat fuel dispensers would fit front and rear of the stock central carburettor mounting if we drilled two lots of double holes into the inlet passages, made up pipe and plate adapters and brazed these in place. Brazing steel to cast iron is tricky, but we had an expert welder in Dave, so we got right into the job. We didn’t even know if we could buy another new manifold if we stuffed up, but to hell with that. Fortunately, it didn’t warp or crack, the adapters sat there like Ford made them, and we cut and filed up another plate to blank off the original carb mounting holes. We then found another good used Chandler-groves carburettor, made up connecting linkages and dropped the lot back onto the Y-block.

After that, we got cunning with our planned rework of the exhaust system. The factory designers of that must have wanted to save US dollars, for they cast a conventional manifold for the right-hand side of the engine and added a fair-sized hole at the front of this manifold. They then connected thatwith a fat pipe that ran across the front to a similar hole in the left-hand exhaust manifold. So the burnt gas from the right bank of this V8 got out okay, but the gas from the left bank had to make a right turn at the front of its manifold, then go across the engine to the other side, before turning right again to enter that manifold and finally getting out into the exit pipe. Complicated? Sure, and it created much gas back-pressure contamination.

We knew Ford’s 292 truck-engine version of the Y-block had the same system, but for reasons unknown, it was the left-hand manifold that dumped into the pipe system, and the right bank fed into it. So if we got a new left manifold and threw the crossover pipe into the nearest bin, blanked off both front holes and made up new pipes and fitted another muffler, we would then have a dual exhaust system, which would make the 272 breathe much easier.

THAT ’57 CUSTOMLINE JUST KEPT ACCELERATING. ABOUT HALFWAY ALONG THE ROAD WE HIT AN INDICATED 110MPH AND IT WAS STILL GOING LIKE MAD

All this worked real good, and we then fired up the bent-eight. We knew nothing about re-jetting the carbs for the right fuel/air mix, but it ran really well.

We drew straws to see who would take the Cusso out to the ‘mad mile’ for a test run. Young Andy got the nod, and I sat in the spare suicide seat, as seatbelts just didn’t exist. We got to that long, straight two-lane road, and Andy said, “God help us,” before putting the boot hard down. The bloody car erupted! We had never been in anything with that much grunt, and Andy’s knuckles were white from fingers wrapped tightly around the narrow steering wheel rim as he shifted the threeon-the-tree gear lever. That Cusso just kept accelerating; about halfway along the road we hit an indicated 110mph and it was still going like mad. But Andy had had enough, and with me as a witness, he lifted off and turned around, all white and twitching, then drove very quietly back into town.