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Old 6th September 2020, 14:44
Jolly Jack England Jolly Jack is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Shropshire
Posts: 181
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dartskipper View Post
Thanks John, I knew I wasn't cracking up! I can recall that Ford had some quality issues with their V8 motors in their passenger cars in the 1970's. I think they had tried to reduce wear in the bores by treating them with a chemical that would aid lubrication on first start in a winter morning. It wasn't successful and they had to honour an awful lot of warranty repairs due to the new idea actually increasing wear significantly. A friend had a Ford LTD station wagon that left a blue haze behind, even when up to temperature. It only had about 60,000 miles on the clock at the time. His later Torino wagon was ok though, as whatever the problem was, Ford had cured it.
I've never heard about that Roy but not the first time Ford dropped a proverbial!

A couple of anecdotes about Ford but in racing.

When Ford produced the 427 engine it was well over engineered, but expensive to manufacture. They needed more power to try and beat Chrysler's Hemi and Richard Petty in NASCAR; So, in conjunction with Holman & Moody, they developed an overhead cam version(SOHC) of that 427 dubbed "The Cammer". Ford had to produce 500 to get it accepted for racing which they did. On it's first outing in the first race of the season, they beat the Hemis and the rest of the field, hands-down.
After the race, NASCAR officials told H&M, "OK you've had your fun, don't bring it back" and banned it. So...there were now 500 Cammers of no use! The motors were eventually used in Drag Racing events and off-road rallying.
All this expense for Ford was Chicken-feed - Holman & Moody's money from Ford averaged $14m a year and that in the 1970s. This allowed H&M to charge race teams only $1 per complete car supplied, with the guarantee of the teams getting their $1 back on it's return to H&M, no matter the condition!!

JJ.
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