DBG: Darin Morgan; Ford Pro Stock Canted Valve Arrangement Head 1400+HP @10,200 rpm with 499.6 ci 

Mr DragBoss my name is Michael.Anthony.G. and I just discovered these amazing clips of you and fam and of course doggy Zuse beautiful family and God bless you all. I'm excited and thrilled to see your amazing Mercury Cougar. I was once a proud owner of a 1967 Mercury Cougar car of the year I might add. My father left it to me when he passed. . I loved the car I only wished I could of saved some pictures to share with you but they were lost in the fire. It was in show room condition. A off color silver and a burgundy interior just gorgeous. My pop dropped a little over 25 grand in motor. . Sadly I I was forced to sell for family reasons. I still cry today when remembering just sitting in or taking my small drives thinking of my father. But seeing your car brought back so many cherished memories for me (WoW) what a car you have!! Great job man two thumbs up. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for publishing your vehicle. Sincerely Michael Anthony Garza from C.C. TX.

Darin Morgan is the best guest you have had on your channel. Lake speed and Darin Morgan would be so awesome. That could go for 4 hrs easy 😂. Thanks guys love this stuff.

Really an incredible pushrod 500" engine design thanks to Cunningham Ford, Darrin and others. Its probably the most hp 500cu inch naturally aspirated engine today. 12,000 RPM with Pushrods and a dry sump is insane! They all should be proud. RIP Jim Cunningham.

Now I see why 4 valve heads run so well

Thanks Tim and Darin! It's always interesting when Darin is a guest. 3 hours went by like it was nothing.

Thank you both. I could listen all day.

I've been away from following racing for many many years. I just came across this. I knew Jim Cunningham just a little, by going into his sand and gravel business. I'm a Ford fan from way back when I was a kid in the 60s, but this is all news to me. I was stunned when I started watching this and saw Jim's photo, and learning that he had something to do with the Ford Pro-Stock program. And this guy Darin Morgan, wow. Lol, the last I followed drag racing was the Bob Glidden days. Thanks so much for this interview.

This is one of the best videos I've seen on heads thanks for posting this

As a guy who followed hotrods in the 60s and 70s this is rocket science and way cool.

The best part of this Video was watching how cool you are with your kids I’m proud of you and your friend from Mission BC

Brodix is a family owned business and will still build what you order

Good to hear discussions on valve train geometry, etc.

Darin's a class act. Thanks for having him on.

Fascinating stuff, really enjoyed this. Glad to hear the JC51 getting a shot.

,,,,,The most enlightening discussion I ever heard on engine tech,,,,,Thanks guys.....

If Mose Noland, the Father or the FE 427, is still with us, an interview like this would be great. I remember seeing Mose Noland talking about his FE 427 in the Lemans project and he was very proud of his accomplishments

Great stuff, Tim , and Darin! Really informative, and and eye opening, the thought process involved in developing an engine for a purpose ( drag racing). Thank you, I really enjoyed !

My head exploded when this guy was speaking! A master at head design and knowledge overall. Who else can go to Ford engineering and tell the engineers how to build a head and they do it. I would try a brain transplant but his brain would starve in my head.

Just happened on this. Great show with head/intake guru. You mentioned Steve Morris. Perfect example of guy that can make big power NA and monster power with boost. Will be back👍

What a wealth of knowledge The airflow along along with the intake manifold is incredible that nobody knows

Good lord this was GOLD!! Thanks guys!

In Pieces but I ve wat he'd this a few times. Tim you and Darin are amazing. Thanks

Tim, the is a GREAT online article on the Clint Neff Darin Morgan FORD powered A/ED on the Drag Illistrated website !!

All of us at where-ever appreciate the time gifted to us by you two gents. Now I want to see the Neff/Clack dragster go to the A/D class and whoop the now ancient 6.33@215.62mph record held by a GM DRCE since 2010. Crikey, the 215.35 mph is so close already, with just ONE carb !!

Thanks, Tim, for having Darin stop by again - an epic show! What a waste with that Ford Pro Stock engine. Must be a real disappointment for Darin to not have the potential realised for its initial purpose. Hope it gets out there is new ways like the econo-rail.

Thanks for taking as on this journey of knowledge. Awesome vid,caught last hour and a bit live just wacth frist half then. could listen to mr Morgan all day what a wealth of knowledge. It's about time you tim get a shout out thank tim.peace

Notice how Ford dominated Pro Stock for years with the "Blue Crescent" twisted Hemi design and how modern "Hemi" Pro Stockers have very side-by-side-ish valve arrangements? Could it be that swirl about the piston's axis of travel is far more valuable than straight-through flow of the directly-opposed-valve classic Hemi/Porsche 917/Gen III Hemi arrangement? Taking what I've seen by cylinder head design, I have to think so. Dodge could have put actual Hemis in Pro Stock lately, but, instead, they went with a VERY swirl-inducing cylinder head valve layout.

Great conversation and information! Thank you Tim and Darin. A couple of my Chevy buddies were listening in and report disappointment in Darin's take on the Cleveland cylinder head being "unlike" those found on a Mark-IV (Porcupine Rat) Chevrolet. Many current race-design heads of different manufacturers utilize Cleveland- style approaches. At the same time those same buddies expressed joy for Darin's admiration of Chevrolet's LS series engines. (Though they need to be reminded of design similarities that series of engines share with the SBF.) Kudos to Darin and all involved in the design and execution of the JC-50 engine. The melding of ideas and technologies is what makes this project exciting and notable. Darin mentioned the cooperation it took for all parties involved to make this a success. Jim Cunningham (primarily), Tom Sweeney, Alan Johnson (from his earlier Mopar efforts), Darin, Ford engineers, Mr. Neff for putting it to the pavement, etc. all play a role. Elements of the GM DRCE, the Chrysler Hemi, The Ford Cleveland and the 385 Boss 429 can be seen in conjunction with current enhancements lend to the potential for a winning piece. We Ford enthusiasts can only hope that it will be given a chance to shine in a popular racing series, (i.e. current N.H.R.A. 500" Pro-Stock.) Hope sponsors and Ford will get on board. The passion, enthusiasm involved and the fun of tinkering from our earliest automotive history is what makes the effort of working with engines so rewarding. Can and will the same be said for working with electric motors? (Sorry for the editorial.) As an aside, Cast Iron welding in my racing days, the '70's-80's, was called "Thermo-Kinetic Welding" by the experts and was performed in an oven using Nickle. We dealt with a guy near us that was a wiz at it. Don't know if that term and process remains. "Tim's traveling Cleveland Revival Show." The quest continues. B.T.W. Happy Birthday Izzy!

I have new appreciation for anything with the initials JC now! Oh for one to be a fly on the wall of all those trips to Michigan. More castings from manufacturers and using input from serious block and cylinder head racers need to find their way to the sportsman. Thank you DB & DM great video

I love it, and it is amazing how what was old and passed is rediscovered and new again. It’s so beautiful to get into the physics and process of making power.

AWSOME thanks guys from New Zealand

Just finished listening to this epic episode - just awesome info sharing/bench racing Tim & Darin, thanx for bringing it to us gearheads on the other side of the pond !! I'd love to see something similar with a MoPar flavour, that would be killer as well !!

Unreal amount of Information. Thank You!

Been her until now and beyond, Still cool and informative, Thanks!

Awesome video as usual!

Love this content, thank you!!!!

Great topics and subjects THANKS MEL

Wow.. the rise of the short side on that exhaust port.. 💪

Great show guys!

Thanks Darin and DBG.From KiwiLand---. 🥝✔️

The Ford FE was amazing in its day. People have said that the narrow main bearing was bad with the same diameter as the 351C . Their engineers were second to none in building a race engine in their day. I built and raced FE engine for 40 years and I am still amazed to see things in design of the engine being validated today. I ve never burned a Main bearing. Ray Paquet was running 8 seconds in the 1/4 with the FE wedge heads, Ford mains and BBC sized rod journals. Shifting at 9200 just as Darin said that the aWedge would. My street 4.07 bore 394 ci engine is doing 7000 rpm’s with iron crank and 5140 steel stock rods (stock 6.49, 3/8 ARP bolts) 30 years of street racing. 496 ft lbs , 503 hp. And you can hit it warmed up with the factory 427 410 hp solid cam ground on a 109 LSA. Thirty years and it has not broken anything. Canton C8AE- X clone deep sump 8qt pan and the 3/4 inch sump with the sump trap doors and hose barbs in the intake valley with a slot in the bottom near the valley to allow oil and the barbs to extract air. I love this old FE, it’s amazing how well the heads did with little love. Your flow path diagram shows the genius of the day in how they tricked the flow path to, if you know what you are doing to use an angle mill to 12 degrees from 13 to move the flow path to very close to a stock BBC. I have been accused of running a 427 ringer. It was just a small modification to the flow path and optimization of a Holley Street Dominator with a little welding in the right places. Lol.

Dean Stevenson pointing out the L31/Vortec head is awesome. It's much better than just a 2500 to 4000 rpm head.

Cat Mapleton is where WJ use to get his blocks poured. Just across the river from my hometown. I actually haul in and out of there occasionally. Lol. Just saw the part where it’s mentioned.

That is cool in the FE racing history that it was on the drawing board in 1938! Wow! I love them even more. Look at what they are still doing in Nostalgia SS. The 8s in the 1/4. Beating Ferrari in the 1960s with a Stoveboltesque V8! Being Fords SOHC base. Thank you!

Awesome stuff. I used to do R&D in the composites field. We had a saying: "You can't push on a rope." CF is great for tensile loads. Not for highly loaded compressive members.

499.6” for when you absolutely want people to know that your engine doesn’t break the 500” rule.

Awesome stuff thanks guys. Can't thank you enough Darin for your time and the information that you shared. Thank you Tim for hosting this and for getting Darin. Would love to see Darin put more stuff up on his channel, but I understand Darin that you are a very busy man. Regards Greg from Perth Western Australia

Always The Very Best . My Friend ! .

Wonderful content. Always much to learn from Darin. The guy that asked about resemblance to a Ford engine unfortunately did not receive a response. The first response was coyote and the second was godzilla. Never mind the fact that coyote is not clean sheet or that the godzilla is. These engines are based off of old push rod engines. Of coarse the result today seems like clean sheet however, the path to this point is not. Obviously the coyote is not clean sheet the 4.6 paved that path. The godzilla is clean sheet however sharing nothing with the push rod Fords of old which have inspired these engines we are talking about today. I look up to you tremendously though I find it appalling that your initial response to this question was coyote. Truly impressive to put it positively.

Thank you both for that cast. I have concluded the same thing. That is, a possible sinister plan by the gov and or epa. To start a shell company. Buy up all the hp parts companies. Then after they make their money back. Shut them all down and ban modified vehicles. I am scared thats coming?

It is possible to run a cant lifter. The problem is the cam lobe has to be ground on the that angle. In the V8 cam in block engines there wouldn't be engine space between lobes to allow for the angle. I'm sure it could be designed in on clean sheet deal. Lot of work though. Some F1 engines in the 90's ran canted 4 valve heads with angled lobes running direct to cam follower.

I like you guys a lot. keep the class room door open. Happy birthday to your little one 🎉

Great...just when I think I know something. lol. Good talk!

427 HR and TP heads are an excellent example of if you purchase them, you have know who did them and the preparation of the compromises that have adapted a Tunnel Port to make the pushrods invisible can be lost with a Serdi cut in the wrong direction. As you said you can take it out but retrieving that balance that made that pushrod disappear will have to be retrieved carefully from the previous preparation of the Tunnel. Air speed, so many factors. The High Riser is the same way. If the designer reworked the tall narrow port to an LS3 style wide port, the SSR is a bear trap. Your analogy of being booby trapped is quite astute. Thank you!

@1:41. Firing order clusters in the front are ideal with roots blown application. Having them in the back are ideal for screw blown application. In most forced induction engines you deal with manifold pressure divergence from front to back

Watching from Downunder

Billy is my brother in-law he is the best cam designer I've ever seen so smart .

Darin, a little off topic, is it possible to shift head bolt locations on a cast aluminum head.

This is awesome theory that was used to make a almost ultimate 🥏 racing engine.

I always thought everyone was hung up on the fact that were both the first heads with a canted and rotated valve design as opposed to a wedge style chamber.

I had 351c which was half filled and worked great never had another split bore, was on the street 450hp @7500. Found oil temp would increase water temp. Fitted engine oil cooler which lowered engine coolant temp.

4 valves per cylinder stuff. I would love to hear more stuff about that. How the airflow is split in one port from a wet flow standpoint. Mixture motion how it's delt with specifically and why.

Regarding 4-valve torque numbers. The 90’s BTCC where rpm limited to 8500rpm and made (allegedly) over 320hp on 122cui.

I am not understanding the oil pan bit, did he make it to where the main cap bolts went through the pan and each cap divided the pan?

I might have just missed it, but does the engine and head and valve train designs you guys were discussing have Ford patents ? Are they Ford owned? Also it would be so neat to see FO MO CO Back in pro stock. Do you think this will happen?

Hi, this was a great discussion. Juicy tech bits and high horsepower talk. I was curious about the 10,500 RPM limit. In some of my reading engines in this class used to spin to 12,000 RPM, which is completely possible with the "short" 3.6" or thereabouts of stroke. The reading indicated that a rpm limit of 10,500 RPM was imposed at some time. I was curious if anyone had more knowledge on this. I'm also curious did they have the heads and induction to make more power at 12,000 RPM back in that time? That would be 15%-20% more HP...

Wish I could’ve seen the live, I had question about the EFI on these PS motors, and how the performance would be effected if the NHRA ps motors were allowed to run stack injection efi

Dean Stevenson comment @2:05:22 L31 is an awesome head. Refers to Holden Australia's own V8 engine back in the 1970's.

Thanks again Tim and Darin for sharing more amazing information. I would like to see Darin start publishing an instructional series of books or DVDs! I would be a customer for sure! Thanks guys!

Because of the extremely low hysteresis of carbon fiber, and its lack of internal vibration damping due to that, the vibrations just keep building in them until they explode into powder. Aluminum or steel have more hysteresis, so the vibrations inside them do not build into dangerous levels of resonance, but are damped and turned into heat, which the oil/coolant gets rid of. What no one realizes in this type of experimentation is that aramid fiber has far more hysteresis and is far more forgiving than is the hyper-rigid carbon fiber. People just lump in all fibers in FRP into one group and condemn them all. You could use metal fiber mat, too. There are so many thing that can be done, but for the human-level budget, no one is bothering due to the lack of return on investment. Another issue is localized heating. Even if the FRP had good hysteresis, the resultant heat would be trapped in the middle of the hysteresis zone, unable to escape. What would happen would be what happens with too-thick concrete that gets too hot internally when setting: it fractures due to differences in expansion across the part. This is one reason aluminum is so good. It immediately transports hysteresis-produced heat in ALL directions. Carbon fiber is an insulator across the fibers, and an excellent conductor ALONG the fibers, which can still trap heat too much. Metals are omnidirectional heat conductors. However, people have to get more brake mean effective pressure and more cylinder-to-cylinder consistency, and doing those things yields more bang for the buck than pushing the boundaries of materials science.

May i ask darrin How much swirl is too much swirl in a sbc Mine are ebrk performers tidied up flow about 320 and swirl on my performance trends meter is 11 to 1200 Hot street car down under 355 holden

While us cripples are waiting on the surgery to get over with our little group is got a little crowd going in the waiting room. Priceless. 😉

What's the cost of taking a beer casting to usable cylinder head cuz I can get these pro stock heads and bear casting but I can't find anybody to do the work

Any idea what happened with Wescotts pro stock ford effort? I'm guessing they abandoned ship since I haven't heard anything about it in years.

I have done a bit of sniffing around on this stuff apparently the main head bolt pattern is different space to oem from exhaust side to inlet I'm not sure if the rcv-1 version from eliminator are any different but summit show the head studs drilled mbe have a version of these big port and small the most advertised flow Ive seen is 646cfm they are also said to be the same as the mopar prostock head so mbe says

Anyone have a CAD model of and A460 intake pan?

I have some questions for darin if i can give them to you for the next live cast or to send to them. Is there a email i can send to

Mat @ MBE swears by thos beryllium seats. Wonder what they are using now ?

The picture on the top left corner was taking in my dad’s assembly room at his engine shop

The "little things that add up": Kremer brothers, in 1980, with a production-based car (The Porsche 935) won the epic Le Mans race OVERALL FOR ALL CLASSES, even beating the factory exotic designed-specifically-for-racing-from-the-ground-up race cars. Their memorable quote: "We made about 100 improvements in the car, which resulted in a one percent better car, which is all you need to beat the competition!"

Could you make a V4 by pairing 2 adjacent cylinders firing together ? Custom crank , cam etc.

There's a guy (or was...) out north of Seattle (Everett? Marysville?) who still furnace welds cast iron... repaired a Model A Ford for me about thirteen years ago Anybody in the PNW might do well to look him up if they need iron welding

It’s like NPR for GEARHEADS. Minus the cheese Applicable engineering to flow. Brilliant. Canada.

Hey Tim what is the best way to get in touch with Darin ?

You got to get Lake Speed Jr. on!

Yes pontiac made tunnel port heads in 68-69. Was supposed to be the ram air V but was never totally built hower the parts did make out out over the counter. Buick also built experimental tunnel port heads and they still exist. Those never made it public.

I have a Rolls Royce Griffon v12 in a pulling tractor, It is a 6" bore x 6.6" stroke, It has a 4000 rpm limit. Do you Know someone that can help me with cam choice?

What would my 560 cubic inch bbf do with those heads

I'm suprised you didnt mention charlie wescott he bought cunninghams old prostock car and a bunch of ford blocks and heads a while back and built a prostock motor didnt run up at the top of the field what happened to him with that program?

always thought smokey was one of the first to realy understand the dynamics of the spark and flame path Inth chamber,

The valve orientation flow path changing the rpm range for the head is most likely due to the bottom end specs that are not changed. The higher the rpm the higher the piston velocity and the more messy the intake charge is. That's why F1 engines have very short strokes so they can still get good swirl at crazy high rpm's, having a straight flow path will kill most of the swirl. Having a big rod ratio too can make the intake charge more controllable, so even with a lot of swirl the flow doesnt go messy at the middle of the stroke.

No one can see the cursor on this end. Which engine is which?

Need to look at the ILmore 500 Penske engine and its valve train and super short pushrods, 1024 hp out of 3.4l in 1994

Is this engine too expensive to use in Nascar ? Broad range of rpm , long race at 8000 rpm ? Could you run a smaller cid and more rpm to save fuel when going slow ? What about plasma sprayed bored like the GT-R ?

I like having 2 4Vs and distribution in a way that is the Most Efficient.

How many years ahead was Ricky Smith, using the Boss429 back in IHRA , some over 700 cid ? That was when the Boss429 first came out. BTW Ricky Smith still races today ! His bio says he even did work for a Nascar crew.

happy birthday 🎂

Is this cyl head Similar to the small block ford hammer head.

How many bolts were one head.

I actually would love to have a medium Riser FE intake with 2 4Vs and a set of HR height heads with wide but a shorter height port. This would be the holy grail for a 4.125 bore 4.25 stroke 454 FE using a 70s well cast 360/390 block. I build one for a guy and he put it in a 68 Mustang with a Boss9 scoop and a 4 speed with a very good clutch and Comps custom solid flat tappet. He cleaned house with it. And I have to ask him how his 1938 engine is holding together!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣