Author: Jim Smart

More Than a Grocery Getter: Trans Am Racing Builds a 582 Horsepower Stroker Ford FE

Ford’s FE Series big block engine family has been popular for nearly seven decades. What started as mild-mannered 332ci and 352ci family sedan engines became fire-breathing street performance and race […]

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The Three Rs: Ron and Cindy Bramlett’s Mustang Cobra R Collection

Some of you folks who went to school during the Pleistocene Age might remember the Three Rs. For those that are a touch younger, this was shorthand for reading, writing, […]

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Built in Dearborn: 40 Years of Mustang Production at Ford’s Dearborn Plant 1964-2004

It’s been 20-plus years, but my memories of the final day of Mustang production at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan, assembly plant in 2004 are still clear. For 40 years, Dearborn Assembly […]

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Cooking with Gas: A Recipe for An Affordable 500 Horsepower LS1

When Chevrolet introduced the Gen III LS1 engine in the late 1990s, it couldn’t have envisioned how popular it and its successors, including the Gen IV and Gen V engines, […]

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Trans Am Tribute Engines: Building a Maximum Chevy DZ302

I’ll tell you right up front—I’m a diehard Ford enthusiast and have been for more than 50 years. That was pretty challenging in high school back in Maryland with a […]

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Build a Killer Small Block Ford with a Ford Performance Parts BOSS Short Block Assembly

Back in the olden times, we built engines from used stuff. We searched for good used blocks and heads, dropped them off at the machine shop, and waited weeks or […]

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The First Holley Four-Barrel: The 4000/2140 Series “Teapot” Carburetor

Story Overview *** The Holley 4150 and 4160 series four-barrel carburetors came out in the 1950s. The 4150 was introduced on the 312 CID V8 in the 1957 Ford Thunderbird, […]

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How to Build a 357 CID Small Block Chevy Road Race Screamer!

Back in the Before Times, Jeff Latimer of JGM Engineering in Southern California wanted to do some road racing and built a 357 cubic inch small block Chevy for a […]

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Ford’s Game-Changing Post-War Engines: The 144-170-200-250 Inline Sixes

At the beginning of the 1960s every Detroit automaker was a player in the compact car game. That meant smaller, more economical engines, usually of the six-cylinder variety. Chrysler had […]

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How to Fix the Cam Timing System in Ford’s Troublesome Modular 3-Valve V8

My wife and I have a 2011 Ford Expedition with the 5.4L 3V engine. At 165,000 miles, it was beginning to show signs of trouble (valvetrain noise), which prompted me […]

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