Boss 429 mustang
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The Great BOSS 429 (Ford) Mustang
The BOSS 429 story is tied closely with NASCAR racing, because in the mid to late sixties NASCAR racing was dominated by Chrysler’s radical 426ci hemi powered racers. Ford was in need of a new weapon in the historic battle, and chose to take it to Chrysler. They built a big block hemi engine of their own. This motor was the Boss 429 and was designed and developed and built from the bottom up as a racing engine. However in order to get NASCAR to allow the use of the engine on the NASCAR tracks, Ford had to first homologate a minimum number of engines into regular production cars, and the most available choice was the Boss Mustang, so the hemi motor was christened the Blue Crescent, but as the intake and exhaust ports in the huge alloy heads were so large, it was eventually nick-named the "Shotgun".
The standard features the new motor included were very large alloy "hemi" heads,, high strength cast iron block with four bolt main bearings, massive ports with huge 2.3 inch inlet valves, (the biggest ever fitted by Ford into a production engine), and forged steel crank and conrods.
Because Ford was already committed to other work, and the time frame was very short, the production of the Boss 429 Mustang was farmed out in Sept 1968 to a company called Kar Kraft, which was currently developing the Ford Trans-Am Boss 302 race cars.
Kar Kraft faced considerable obstacles in the development of the Boss 429 Mustang, including the fact that the engine bay was over 2 inches too narrow for the motor! This was solved by moving the entire suspension out a full inch on each side. This required new reshaped shock towers, widened strut tower brace, redesigned top and bottom suspension arms, redesigned heavy duty uprights, and heavy duty springs. Also a smaller new power brake booster was needed to clear the big engine valve cover. The battery was placed in the trunk to improve the cars weight distribution; also the cars rear suspension was beefed up with staggered shocks, heavy duty springs, and a thick rear stabilizer bar. Thee car sat an inch lower overall than a stock Mustang did, so a special "short" front spoiler was designed to fit the clearance avaible.
The Boss 429 prototypes received all of Fords acceptance testing, and had to pass emission testing as well as hot and cold environment running tests, to test that both the chassis and the engine were suitably refined for all normal driving needs. What emerged from the development process was not a raw racer, but a prefected production vehicle. In fact the Boss 429 was seriously over-prefected, so in production the engine was choked down to only 375hp by a mild hydraulic cam, a tiny carb, and smog pump.
External Links
Boss 429 Mustang World Registry [1]
THE AMAZING BOSS 429 [[2]]
Boss Performance [[3]]
HowStuffWorks.com [4]
