Ask any rock 'n' roller worth his ever-growing fan base and he'll tell you how he came to fame. He pumped up the volume. What works in the world of popular music also applies in high-performance engine building. Every Ford fan has dreamed of powering their vintage Ford hauler with a side-oiler 427ci FE big-block powerplant. Getting back to reality, how many of those original side-oiler FEs do you think are available for purchase, rebuildable, and affordable? Unless you have the bank account of Bruce Springsteen, not too many. Enter master engine builder Smeding Performance in Rancho Cordova, California, to the rescue.
Fresh from the machine shop centers and engine build room within the Smeding Performance showroom, both brand-new Chevy and Ford stroker engines are on display.
Owner Ben Smeding, Mr. Kim, Dan Moody, and Tony Bagatelos comprise the talented crew at Smeding Performance. They have many years of experience building engines for custom vintage trucks, street rods, muscle cars, dragsters, and their own race cars. Starting with a brand-new Chevy 350ci, Ford 302ci, or Ford 351ci Windsor small-blocks, the shop specializes in building stroker engines. By increasing the displacement of a high-revving small-block, significant gains are made in torque, along with impressive horsepower increases in the street-friendly rpm range. Engines that produce most of their torque at low rpms and maintain the torque and horsepower across a broad rpm range are ideal for the street. Having instant power beneath your right foot, regardless of whether you're cruising in fuel-saving Fifth-gear overdrive or automatic overdrive, is great to have in any custom classic pickup.
To create these potent powerplants, the shop inventories the best speed shop goodies in abundance. Combining that inventory with their years of experience and by using the same engine-building machines that Formula One, CART, and NASCAR teams use enables Smeding Performance to build fully balanced and blueprinted high-performance engines that provide awesome performance and bulletproof reliability.
Fittingly, a Ford engine from Smeding Performance will power the old Ford hauler that CCT's Feature Editor is building with his dad. Follow along as Smeding's crew makes a 351ci Windsor small-block Ford sing like a Ford 427ci bad boy by pumping up the volume to the tune of 427 stroked cubic inches!
