Necessity is the mother of all invention, and after a number of years working with engine combinations that continued to fail, EngineLabs reader Ron Bell put his mind to work to develop an engine combination he feels will put down 620 horsepower at the wheels and run bottom 9s in the quarter-mile.

Using an engine block from RDI, Bell has assembled and scienced out an electronic fuel injected small block Ford using a variety of modified and repurposed factory and aftermarket parts to create the best combination for his purposes. Ported Trick Flow Twisted Wedge cylinder heads sit on top.

“I bought it with a 4.130-inch bore. The block has roller cam bearings in it for 2.051-inch cam bearing journals.The machinist I bought it from honed the block for me, then ordered some custom JE flat top pistons. I bought a Eagle internally balanced forged steel 3.4 stroke crank and RPM H-beam rods. It has 1.7:1 ratio Jesel rocker arms and used Jesel solid roller link bar lifters I got from my machinist buddy. The heads were put together with .100-inch longer titanium intake valves and .100-inch longer stainless exhaust valves, COMP Cams titanium retainers, then Comp Cams springs and Comp Cams .080″ wall pushrods,” says Bell.

One of the interesting items Bell has used in this combination is an older BXR intake manifold, which were only produced in a short run before the company building them went out of business. “During my searching, I discovered the BXR, I found it had properly designed runners, to produce optimum ram effect, along with having equal flow between all eight runners. After thinking about it for a while, I made the decision to buy a BXR. When I called, the price had dropped to $1000, then lastly they were only doing COD transactions. I knew they were going out of business and just selling off the remaining intakes. So I bought one fast,” he says.

Ignition Issues Present Themselves

Initially the combination was put together with a C4 transmission and a number of stock Ford EFI parts, like an A9P computer and 60 lb./hr. fuel injectors, but he was unable to get the combination to rev past 7,000 RPM.

“I was finally told after a year of fighting with it that I needed to replace the 15 MHZ crystal on the board in the computer to an 18 MHZ crystal. That increased the speed of the computer; it was then able to rev to 8000 rpm with ease. It would rev higher, but that was as high as I wanted to rev the engine. The first time I put the car on the dyno with the 364 and C4 combo, it put down 377 wheel horsepower,” he explains.

At the time, the engine was using a belt-driven distributor, which he later found to be the source of major engine timing issues. Sorting out the belt-drive distributor and adding timing eventually netted him 469 wheel horsepower, but it blew a head gasket in this trim, so he pulled it back apart and made the decision to switch to a multi-layer steel head gasket from the previously-installed copper gaskets.

He decided to cure the ignition woes once and for all by switching to a crank trigger and coil-on-plug style ignition system.

“I modified a ’99 Cobra engine wiring harness to fit my engine, then modified the 99 Cobra computer harness to fit my car. I made some brackets to mount the 2V COPs, I made a bracket to mount a 4.6 crank trigger. Then I made a housing out of a distributor to mount a 4.6 cam sensor into. I also machined a Fox underdrive crank pulley so I could mount a crank trigger on it. I then machined out the center of a 4.6 crank trigger wheel to fit on the crank pulley,” explains Bell.

The 2003-04 computer uses a 27 MHz crystal inside, which makes them the fastest of the EEC-V computers. Bell plans to use Binary Editor to tune the engine, and will turn off everything in the calibration that’s not needed for the engine to operate – the EGR, Canister Purge, transmission controls, self-diagnostics, fuel pump controller, and A/C functions will all be disabled in an attempt to speed up the processor as much as possible.

Doing It Himself

In addition, he’s put his craftsman skills to the test by constructing his very own fiberglass ram air system. As with the rest of his project, he’s done quite a bit of research on how ram air operates to construct the best possible system – function over form.

“The ram air housing was my first attempt at making a part out of fiberglass. I first made the mold out of Styrofoam, then coated that with clay, then started wrapping it with fiberglass and resin. I fiberglassed a MAF flange in the top of the housing, close to where it attaches to the throttle body. I have done a good bit of studying ram air, air ducting and air flow, so I have some knowledge of how to make a ram air system that should work,” he says.

The finished ram air housing.

When the car gets back to the track, it will have a new rear axle housing stuffed with 4.56 gears to take advantage of the engine’s high-RPM capabilities.

“I think I have done a pretty good job of making respectable power from a EFI NA small block Ford and it should just get better with time. There should be more power left in the engine and car that should be easier to find with more accurate ignition timing, cam timing and the other problems fixed,” he says.

The C4 transmission was sold off to another friend, and a Doug Nash 5-speed transmission with McLeod Long-style adjustable clutch has been installed. The plan is to have the car back on track early next year to determine whether his latest round of modifications were successful. Once the combo is back on the track and sorted out, he plans to pull it apart yet again to perform tricks like lightening the transmission gears, gun-drilling the shafts, and REM-coating the gears to decrease friction and increase horsepower. One thing’s for sure – this enthusiast won’t stop until he’s satisfied with the results of his work.

Thanks for sharing your build with us, Ron!

If you’re interested in submitting your garage-built engine to Homegrown Horsepower, send a few quality photos and brief writeup of the details to enginelabs@powerautomedia.com.