This sweet street engine destined for the engine bay of a cool ‘63.5 Ford Falcon Sprint took the dyno recently at Quarter Mile Performance in Chatsworth, California. The engine’s owner, Dave Bragg of The Tire Store in Lancaster, CA, and QMP engine builder Mike Consolo hit it off right away with a similar taste and vision for the final results both in performance and styling.

Owners have a lot of ways to express themselves; sometimes it’s a sensory overload of flash and color, but the simplicity of this build is what stands out. From the Borla intake that’s powdercoated black down to the typically red distributor cap that was painted black to match, this engine pulls your eyes to the brushed aluminum velocity stacks as the centerpiece. Dave and Mike went after the look of a mechanical injection system, but with the docile street manners of modern electronic fuel injection using FAST EZ-EFI to control how much and when the air and fuel is metered.

According to Consolo, “The EZ-EFI was plug and play. You set the AFR and once the motor gets to temperature it corrects and learns what the motor wants.”

QMP stayed ‘old-school’ and chose to use an MSD 6AL ignition box to control the timing events of the COMP Cams valvetrain, which features a hydraulic roller cam and short travel lifters. The lifters have been very reliable for QMP and feature an anti-friction coating. The short travel provides more RPMs in performance applications.

They chose AFR 185 CNC-ported cylinder heads to sit under the intake. As good as these heads are out of the box, QMP still does a thorough blueprinting including vacuum testing, a cleanup of the runners to take off any remaining casting flash or burrs, checking the valve guide clearances and checking the springs. The springs are checked using a computerized tester that actually simulates the camshaft’s movements and puts the spring through its paces to test it in every position. Every camshaft that goes into a build is also put onto the Cam Doctor to ensure it’s going to do what it is supposed to do.

A Dart SHP block was selected to contain the 363 cubic inches of combustion. Nothing is left to chance at Quarter Mile Performance and it shows as this project puts out close to 1.52 horsepower per cubic inch for a total of 551 horsepower and 477 lb-ft of torque – on pump gas – of reliable and drivable horsepower. The cool thing is it all fits under the sloping hood of the Falcon. If the engine looks this cool the car is sure to be the same. This one isn’t even on the motor mounts yet but Mike tells us that he and Dave are already conspiring on the next project featuring Bowtie LSX power. Stay tuned!