Our 351 Ford engine was no slouch to begin with, but we gained quite a punch with the addition of some great-looking Edelbrock components and some tuning expertise from the guys at Vrbancic Brothers Racing.
We STREET RODDER staffers are always looking to check out the best the street rod aftermarket has to offer-a monumental task in a world chock-full of awesome offerings for anything in the street rod realm. This time around, we set our sights on putting together a 351 Windsor crate engine for one of our many project vehicles. The engine assemblies from Ford Racing are pretty stout on their own, but like any self-respecting rodder, we guys can never leave well enough alone. That said, we talked the pros over at Vrbancic Brothers Racing into giving us a hand adding some bolt-on horsepower to our already respectable crate engine, because you can never have enough horses!
This particular SBF has been tweaked a bit already, and it had already measured in at a very respectable high of 281 hp @ 4,500 rpm with an aftermarket cam, intake, and carb upgrade. To see if we could improve on this, and to add to the engine's eye appeal, we hit the Edelbrock Web site and did a bit of shopping.
Good looks, affordability, and bolt-on horsepower have always been a hallmark of Edelbrock, and that's why we chose to update our latest STREET RODDER project engine with a few relatively easy bolt-on upgrades-specifically, a pair of #60259 Edelbrock Performer cylinder heads, a #75814 intake manifold, and a #18134 800-cfm carb-that would likely add some muscle as well as good looks, due to their highly polished finishes.
As we had hoped, the Edelbrock upgrade coupled with the Vrbancic Brothers expertise netted us even more power than we had hoped for. How's a gain of nearly 100 hp and 46 lb-ft of torque grab ya? It was a pleasant surprise that left us not only extremely pleased but with a powerplant that's destined to add a lot of enjoyment and reliability to this latest project vehicle. That said, take a look at the installation and testing that went on one afternoon at one of our favorite dyno facilities.
