Top of Engine Stuff

427 Cobra CSX3282 Engine RightThe Air cleaner is not the factory unit.  It turns out that in order for the engine to breath it needs an air cleaner that has a flow rate that is equal or greater than the engine flow rate, 780 CFM in this case.  This unit is about 2 or three times as high as the stock filter.  I got this filter from Goodie's Speed Shop in Sunnyvale. I needed to machine off the lip on the top cover to get it to fit and allow the hood to close.

Goodies also worked on the distributor.  The points were floating at around 5,000 RPM and this was limiting the engine RPM.  By using a racing point set with a stronger spring and doing some work on the advance curve the engine can now easily get to 5,500 RPM.  The distributor is located under the tongue on the front of the cold air box, so to work on the distributor the carb and cold air box need to be removed.

The carb is an Holly rated at 780 Cubic Feet per Minute.  I ordered it as an option because I wanted the center pivot floats.  You can see them  on the left and right ends of the carb.  At the front you can see a fuel filter going into the float chamber and at the rear you can see a fuel line going into the rear float chamber.  Center pivot floats do not cause the mixture to lean out or get rich during high-G turns.

The carb was bolted directly to the block.  Since the block slopes down to the rear of the car this caused the carb to be out of level.  This was fixed by using a standard wedge like is used for inboard boat engines.  I found one with the correct angle.

The cold air and hood scoop were made by Arnie Roberts in San Jose.  He did all the aluminum work with an acetylene torch.  This takes a lot of skill.  The pattern for the cold air box was based on a photograph of a 427 Cobra that was at a car show in San Francisco.  The pattern for the hood scoop was a real fiberglass hood scoop that I still have as an original Cobra part.  The fiberglass hood scoop should be pop riveted to the hood after the hole was cut.  I thought this looked too crude, so had a duplicate made of Aluminum.  You can see the hood scoop in the photograph of the front of the car.

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