While the original Chrysler Hemi is more known as the the muscle car engine of choice from the 60s, it is by no means necessarily the greatest, as Chrysler itself banned this competitor engine from stock car racing because of its awesome performance. The Ford 427 SOHC engine, more popularly known as the “Cammer” engine, was Ford’s answer to Chrysler’s Hemi. Ford’s philosophy in building this engine was not to do a ground up design but to instead use as many off-the-shelf parts as possible. So, the bottom end is a 427 block with an idler shaft where the cam would ordinarily be. The crank was the original 427 forged steel version that had its mains and conrods cross-drilled. Domed pistons for a hemi head configuration were utilized at the other end of the reciprocating assemply, which was targetted to have a redline of 7500 rpm. New heads with a hemispherical combustion chamber and single overhead cam valvetrain were used for this engine, and
oil pressure was increased and the water pump upgraded to keep up the the engine’s greater demands. A dual-point distributor and ignition amplifier were the advanced electronics utilized to ignite the air-fuel mixture, which was fed by dual Holley 4-barrel carbs. Stock output was around 657 horsepower, which even today, is pretty impressive. Around 10,000 of these were reportedly produced, but only 550 were built by Ford to racing specs (others say 1,500). Today, these engines can be found in various vintage Fords, such as Comets, Fairlanes, pickups and, of course, Mustangs.
The Mustang shown here is still campaigned in vintage events, where even now, it does 9-second times courtesy of its built-up 427 SOHC Cammer engine. Given that it weighs 3,150 pounds, performance calculations estimate its rear wheel horsepower at 900.
Today’s street cars match or easily surpass this figure with turbos or superchargers. But there’s nothing like hearing a big-displacement V8 with a huge cam idling, then launching off a start line.
Inspiration for this post here.
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