The Misunderstood BOSS 429

[Music] today on unity motorsports garage we're going to dive into the boss 429 the most misunderstood ford engine of all time so stay tuned but in order to do this we got to go back to 1964 for some nascar history mopar had been competing with the 426 wedge to no avail against the ford 427 so chrysler set out to put hemi style cylinder heads on the raised block 426 to create the 426 hemi and that got things going at a fast rate behind the pace car gold smith number 26 plymouth and petty number 43 plymouth first row junior johnson number three dodge and pardo number 54 plymouth second rope the white flag one more lap to go and richard petty is still moving along easy and strong richard has one last lead over second two laps over third and fourth the crowd cheers as richard petty in his number 43 takes the checkered flag going away richard petty rose into the winner's circle as his father did five years ago [Music] the jubilant petty crew runs to greet him this is their victory too they who have worked so long and so hard for the big one this has been a great show for plymouth who ran one two three hardy was second and goldsmith third [Music] ford didn't take this lightly they knew that if you won on sunday you sold cars on monday so that led to the development of the 90-day wonder the 427 sohc great engine developed a ton of horsepower but bill france of nascar realized what was coming down the pipe and he decided to ban these new exotic engines for 1965 which left the hemi and the 427 sohc without a place to race the 1965 racing season was pretty much a runaway season for ford and mercury as chrysler was out of the picture they focused their efforts on drag racing so therefore ford went back to the 427 fe engine and did really well with it in fact they stayed with that power plant all the way up until 1969 in different configurations but it set things in motion for what was to come by the late 1960s it was apparent ford was going to need a new engine to remain competitive against the hemi in the era wars of nascar bunkie nudeson had just came over in 1968 from gm and gave the mandate to build an engine that could go dominate nascar which led to the boss 429 but in order to be legal for competition they had to install that engine into 500 cars which led to the boss 429 mustang the problem was they didn't get it installed into the cars soon enough so they went halfway through the 1969 season running the 427 tunnel port when you want to be the best you go get the best and that's exactly what ford did in 1969 they went and lured richard petty away from the chrysler camp and for the first time petty blue was now ford blue this led to an all-star cast in 1969 you had richard petty kell yarborough david pearson donnie allison and leroy yarborough this led to total dominance in 1969 one of the small details that gets left out about the boss 429 is the fact that ford contracted holley carburetors to develop a specialty carburetor just for that engine hence the dominator was born and in fact it powered them to their first win in atlanta with cale yarborough which you're about to see kell you're here at atlanta with a new mercury the first time it's raced this year and with a new engine and i'm sure some problems have cropped up well uh they have for us chris this new mercury spoiler too is looks like it's going to be a real fine race car and of course we have the new 429 boss engine which uh it looks like it's gonna do a real good job for us but having lost the car at daytona which was a total loss we had to build a new car we were about three days late uh getting to the racetrack but we sure looks like that the wood brothers are are catching us up quick so the car today is running real well and uh we're tickled to death with it round the final turn down the home stretch the checkered flag is up for kale yarborough everybody standing he receives the checkered and here comes david pearson around and he gets the checkered also he finishes hello again last year this year makes a three straight what kind of a race was it this it was a hard race so i was for me it seemed like the longest race i've ever run i'd get out in the lead and even one time we had two laps but uh and i just tried to play it cool but everything went good the good crew the wheelchairs did a fantastic job and this new mercury cyclone with the hemi engine did a great job and everything concerned you would think with all of the success that came from the nascar super speedways that that would transfer over to the street well it didn't happen that way the boss 429 mustangs could barely get into the 13 second range in the quarter mile and there's a lot that causes this but it also leads to another issue many other professional drag racers try to use this engine and they didn't have much luck either and so that's where the story is going to go from here you're going to find out what made it great and what did [Music] i want to give a huge shout out to sam oxier jr for drag racing legend he took time to talk with me about the shortcomings of the boss 429 in both the street application and in drag racing you see he drag raced everything from 427 tunnel ports to 427 sohcs and the boss 429 and with his experience he was able to tell me why he thought it failed the ford engineers tried their best to tame this nascar race engine well enough to be able to put into the mustang they put a 735 cfm holly on it with a hydraulic cam and small other changes but people complained about this as the engine was sluggish in performance and was actually slower than the cobra jet cars the first engine was designated as the s code then the engineers came out with a mechanical cam and made changes to the rotating assembly to try to lighten it up and that engine is called the t-code you would think with those massive hemi heads that that would be one of its strongest attributes when in fact on the street and on the drag strip it proved to be one of its biggest hindrances the ports were too large to be able to fill the cylinders with the air charge needed to make good torque when discussing with sam about the boss 429 he informed me about the company politics that was involved in it you see ford was no longer manufacturing the camera they wanted everyone to go to the latest and greatest the boss 429 and what always looks good on paper doesn't mean that it will equal gains at the track and that's the prime case for this engine the engine didn't respond to typical modifications like you would think the rotating assembly was entirely too heavy it didn't respond to induction changes or cam changes and that's because the cylinder heads were designed to run wide open on super speedways many racers just gave up and went back to the camera because they knew that it worked it wasn't for a few years that racers figured out how to make this engine run ohio george montgomery had huge success with the camera in the mr gasket gasser with the 427 camera with the 671 supercharger he won the 1969 nationals at indy but when he was forced to run the boss 429 he decided to go a completely different route twin turbos in fact it was so impressive that nhra actually outlawed him in 1975 because he won the 73 and 74 gator nationals with the boss 429 turbocharged boss development in the mid-1970s kind of took a backseat this is for the reason of nhra pro stock highly favoring small block combinations in small chassis and nascar going from the big blocks to the small blocks in 1975. this created no home for the boss engine and all of that changed up in 1982 when nhra mandated a 500 cubic inch rule and that brought the boss 429 back out into the limelight and it was going to be better than ever the boss made its comeback in 1981 when none other than ronnie sox driving the ford mustang in ihra pro stock won the championship so that was the first championship that was won with the boss 429 going into the 1982 season bob glidden was building a ford exp car it was originally meant to run the 351 cleveland-based engine but when the rules changes come out he found out that he was going to have to build a 500 cubic inch engine from scratch and put it in this car which created all kinds of handling problems having 500 cubic inches underneath these cylinder heads made a huge difference and with bob and edna glidden's tuning they took this thing to the next level when the t-bird chassis came out they won every championship from 1985 until 1989. if that's not something to be proud of i don't know what is while the boss 429 may have had a misunderstanding in its history it is also arguably one of the best looking engines of all time and history has been really kind to this engine and is it now a ford legend so i hope you like this video and until next time this is andy from unity motorsports catch you later [Music]

Channel: Unity MotorSports Garage

Views: 520,987

Rating: 4.8986449 out of 5

Keywords: BOSS 429, Sam Auxier Jr, Nascar history, Drag racing, 427 SOHC, BOSS NINE, BOSS 429 Mustang

Id: eT2J20enm-c

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021