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THE STARTING POINT
The foundation of the engine build is a vintage, cast-iron, and well-seasoned 428 Cobra Jet block. After magnafluxing the block during initial inspection, several cracks in the main bearing cap area were found — a common issue with these — so the block was sent out for repair.
The first thought was to re-hone the block and stuff the pistons back in with new rings, but the cylinders were so out of round that they actually locked up the honing machine. Broadway noted that it is not uncommon for block filler products to distort the cylinders if they are not fully cured before machining. That could be what happened to this block, as the block was previously filled, so Broadway went ahead and installed eight new cylinder sleeves that would bring the final bore size back to 4.160 inches. With the 3.98-inch stroke, this Cobra Jet would top out at 433 cubic inches of dinosaur muscle.
To increase the strength to the main caps, Gillis and Broadway opted to run a main cap girdle from Concept Design Engineering. Broadway machined the oil pan deck and main bearing caps for a precise fit. This particular girdle is fabricated from steel and secures all of the main caps to the bottom of the block skirt for the utmost in rigidity and stability. Once the main girdle was torqued, Broadway line-honed the block — final hone is done with a torque plate.
Many of the machining procedures used on this build are standard for all engine building. One thing that is not standard is the custom groove in the main journals and bearings. According to Gillis, this is something that famed engine builder Holman-Moody was doing back in the ’60s to supply more oil to the bearings and Clevite still offers these for this application.
Unique among Ford engines is the FE’s intake manifold/cylinder head arrangement, whereby the intake manifold forms a portion of the cylinder head under the valve cover. This design produces a smaller cylinder head and its diminutive size combined with a stout head-bolt torque specification can lead to distortion of the cylinder head once bolted down. Taking this into account, a torque plate is employed when machining the cylinder head valve seats and guides. Gillis has found on several occasions that problems with the valves sealing can occur on the end cylinders when the torque plate is not used.
The 428 CJ heads used in this build feature casting number C8OE-N, specified as 1968-’70 428 Cobra Jet. The NHRA does allow the use of aftermarket Edelbrock aluminum cylinder heads, but use comes with a 25-pound vehicle weight penalty for the perceived increase in horsepower that they may offer.
Like the cylinder heads, the factory intake manifold used in this build is made from cast iron. It’s a dual-plane design and must be used box stock — no porting is allowed to the heads or intake manifold. Recently, the NHRA has allowed the use of the rare aluminum “police interceptor” intake manifold, which is a copy of the cast-iron stocker, just in lightweight aluminum.
From here, the engine builder can make small changes for better performance. While the stock 428 CJ cam comes in at .481/.490 valve lift, racers have the option of running a slightly hotter camshaft with .527-inch valve lift. The cylinder head valves must be the stock-sized 2.08-intake, 1.65-exhaust pieces (+ .005 or - .015), but aftermarket units can be used. At the valve seat, Broadway puts a different throat angle and shallow top angle, which is allowed per NHRA rules. He does have to maintain the stock sealing angle of 30 degrees on the intake and 45 degrees on the exhaust, though.
The eight bores are filled with stock or stock-spec replacement pistons. The ones used in this build are Venolia pieces sized for a .030 overbore. They feature the stock 10.25cc dish and they have received a permitted skirt coating for friction-reducing purposes. The piston rings used for this build are from Total Seal and they are a middle-tension option. The NHRA rules require a stock 5/64, 5/64, 3/16-inch ring package, but few restrictions on the rings otherwise.
NHRA specifies the ring groove size, but not the rings themselves, so these use a thin, low-friction ring with a spacer pack that takes up the rest of the space in the groove. Additionally, there are some proprietary ring modifications done here that we can’t show you, but they reduce friction and thus use less power to turn the engine over.
The arms swinging these slugs are the stock 6.488-inch connecting rods. They have been blueprinted and shod with ARP fasteners. The whole rod/piston combination has a minimum weight per the NHRA, so no expensive lightweight pieces are allowed — only grinding of weight for balancing is permitted. Securing the pistons to the rods are stock-diameter, full-floating wrist pins. There’s nothing exciting with the crankshaft holding the rotating assembly together either. It’s a stock 428 CJ cast-iron piece that is externally balanced from the factory and it can be rebalanced as normally performed during a rebuild such as this, but externally so.
Once the engine was together, Broadway filled it with several quarts of Joe Gibbs Driven BR-30 oil. This is a 5W30 conventional break-in oil chock full of the extra slippery ZDDP additive. With the next oil change, he switches over to Driven’s XP3, a 10W30 full-synthetic oil. The break-in period consists of running the engine for 20 minutes between 1,900 to 2,200 rpm with no load, and then 3,000 to 4,000 rpm with a mild load. This is then followed by several mild pulls under full load before going all out. For this test, your regular run-of-the-mill 93-octane pump gas was used. This, of course, isn’t a legal fuel for NHRA competition use — there is a spec fuel that needs to be run and its higher octane rating should allow for slightly more timing advance for an increase in power.