SAM Racing Builds 700 HP Engine For NASA Engineer’s Mustang

Engine Photos By Stephen Kim, Car Photos By Harold Robertson

When your daily job is working for NASA, and can include any number of exciting projects involving various types of aircraft your days are likely not filled with mundane office work. So what do you do to get some thrills away from an already exciting job? You build and drive a very hot Mustang, that’s what.

Around a decade ago Jeff Fox solicited the help of the School of Automotive Machinists (SAM) to build a powerful engine for his ’67 Mustang, a clone of the venerable Shelby GT500. SAM obliged, constructing a 510 hp 351 Windsor, which kept Fox happy for a lot of years as he reamed every last bit of usage out of it.

A decade ago 475 hp was a pretty respectable number on the street, but time and technology has changed that. The 351 was also getting a little tired after years of hard driving under the unrelenting demands of Fox’s right foot. Once again Fox went to SAM for a new engine, this time with the goal of building something really wild.

A plan was put together and this time the school built a 351 based engine displacing 427 cubic-inches engine that could make 700 hp on pump gas, lofty indeed but for the experts at SAM this seemed attainable. Starting with a Dart aluminum 9.5-inch deck block the block was bored to 4.130-inches.

A K1 forged crankshaft sits inside the Dart block’s main caps, cradled by Mahle Clevite bearings. The K1 crankshaft has a 4.0-inch stroke for the 6.20-inch K1 forged H-beam connecting rods. The big end of the rods are a 2.10-inch diameter, and the small end is 0.927. 7/16-inch ARP 2000 rod bolts keep the end caps in place.

Moving at the small end of the rods are Diamond pistons. A 34cc dish, coupled with the 1.295 compression height and the final block machining yields a compression ratio of 11.0:1. The entire rotating assembly was carefully balanced and the entire build is blueprinted with all tolerances closely monitored and documented for reference and accuracy.

Bolted atop the short block are a set of Edelbrock Victor cylinder heads, which have received a CNC porting treatment from SAM. At .500 lift these cylinder heads flow 306 cfm on the intake side and 223 cfm on the exhaust side, those numbers jump to 345 intake and 233 exhaust at .600, and 362 intake, 238 exhaust at .700.. Supplying the incoming air and fuel charge is an eight-stack Hillborn EFI system. The combination should have no trouble hitting it’s 700 hp goal at the flywheel and giving Fox more thrills behind the wheel of his GT500 clone.

The valve motion is controlled by a custom Comp Cams solid roller camshaft. The cam does well to take advantage of the high flowing heads and moderate compression with a gross lift of .670 intake and .675 exhaust. Duration is 253 intake, 268 exhaust at .050. The cam has a 112 degree lobe separation, and was installed at 110. Needless to say that aside from helping achieve the power goals this camshaft should let everyone know the Shelby clone is on it’s way via the earth shaking, well before anyone can see the car coming.

SAM is wrapping up the engine now for Fox to have Cappel’s Auto Restoration drop it in the car. Cappel’s will also be updating the fuel system, transmission, and cooling system to handle the new found power. As you can see from the photos this is an extremely clean car, setup for some hard driving on the track or the street. We only wish we could hear and see it run in person.

About the author

Don Creason

Don Creason is an automotive journalist with passions that lie from everything classic, all the way to modern muscle. Experienced tech writer, and all around car aficionado, Don's love for both cars and writing makes him the perfect addition to the Power Automedia team of experts.
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