Conny's ~ raggarn61 '58 430 Convertible!

[KULTULZ]

Hi Gary, Thanks for you post!

Can you email me that picture so I can post it for others to see?

Thanks.

Ray,

I have constant trouble finding your E-MAIL addy. Can you post it?

[YellowRose]

Conny's ~ raggarn61 '58 430 Convertible!

Gary, my email address is ALWAYS a part of my signature element! If you look at it, you will see that my email address is:
rayclark07@att.net

[KULTULZ]

Gary, my email address is ALWAYS a part of my signature element! If you look at it, you will see that my email address is:

rayclark07@att.net

You seem to overlook the fact that I am suffering from advanced CRS. I bet you have told me this ten times...

Photo on the way.

[YellowRose]

Conny's ~ raggarn61 '58 430 Convertible!

Hi Gary, I received the picture and will post it below this. Yessss, I seem to forget that you do have CRS! I must have it also!

[GTE427]

Great vintage picture. Notice the heater hose routing circa 1958 and the surge tank orientation. My guess is the car would have had a electric fuel pump since the mechanical pump location is obstructed by the surge tank. Not to mention the Holley, I often wondered why the Holley is frequently listed for the 430.

Thanks for posting.

[KULTULZ]

Great vintage picture. Notice the heater hose routing circa 1958 and the surge tank orientation. My guess is the car would have had a electric fuel pump since the mechanical pump location is obstructed by the surge tank. Not to mention the Holley, I often wondered why the Holley is frequently listed for the 430.

Thanks for posting.

The fuel pump was mechanical and mounted in the same location as the FE. This in return did not require the surge tank to be turned.

My guess is that engineering went with the LINC-MERC positioning of the fuel pump which made no sense as it put the pump right behind radiator heat/prop wash which led to many vapor lock problems.

FORD DIV seemed to favor the HOLLEY/AUTOLITE while LINC-MERC went with the CARTER (although HOLLEY was used on the 58 LINC).

[KULTULZ]

Notice the heater hose routing circa 1958

Good Catch! First time I have noticed that.

[KULTULZ]

Good Catch! First time I have noticed that.

...sheesh...

The heater hose routing shown is correct for the 58/60 MEL. The pressure side (heater core feed) was moved to the rear of the intake in the 1961 LINC 430 redesign.

I'll be OK... Now where is that GERITOL mama?

[dgs]

I'm amused that the 352 hits 60 in 10.1 seconds and the reviewer comments on a possible higher HP engine saying "... Not that they need it! The present job has plenty ..."

In reviewing modern cars, magazine writers now are disappointed if any car can't hit 60 in 7 seconds or less. My Mazda3 will do it in about 7.5, my 5,000 lb Saturn Outlook SUV will do it in close to the same.

Times change I guess.

[simplyconnected]

...Times change I guess.

Modern cars shut off everything that taxes HP, and direct all the torque to the drive wheels. As soon as your foot lifts off that Wide Open Throttle Switch, things go back to normal.

Back in the day that was impossible, so we ran bigger engines. Bigger engines were heavier and all cast iron, which caused 'diminshing returns'.

[dgs]

Not to mention the move from 3 & 4 speed transmissions to 5, 6, 7 and even 8 in some cars now and the addition of lock up torque converters. I have to believe that the COM torque converter is fairly inefficient compared to modern designs.

Still, with 300 HP & about 4K lbs to move, 10.1 seems slow, inefficiencies or not. I wonder if that was done with the transmission in 'D' and not D1 and therefore without the benefit of first gear? That would have a serious impact on acceleration.

[Joe Johnston]

These vintage pictues are a wealth of info and good to see it shared with everyone!

[GTE427]

The fuel pump was mechanical and mounted in the same location as the FE. This in return did not require the surge tank to be turned.

My guess is that engineering went with the LINC-MERC positioning of the fuel pump which made no sense as it put the pump right behind radiator heat/prop wash which led to many vapor lock problems.

Gary,
Can you expand on this? Was the 430 MEL with a lower fuel pump mounting location a one-off casting or a regular production casting? Would Ford and Linc have had two different blocks? Would like to know whats in Conny's 58 convt MEL.

My earlier remark regarding heater hose routing was about the routing on the inner fender in 58 vs. on the intake manifold in 59. All good anyway, now know something additional about the 61 and up MEL.

[YellowRose]

Conny's ~ raggarn61 '58 430 Convertible!

I just received this information regarding the 1958 Squarebird and the 430MEL engine from Bill Van Ess, through Alan Tast. Thank you Alan for forwarding this information. Here is what is said.

"Bill Van Ess, who maintains the 1958 Thunderbird Convertible Registry, has provided some additional informaton regarding it and the road test articles from the period. This response should put to rest some of the questions about the car and debunk some of the myths that have been circulating about '58s with 430s.
Alan H. Tast AIA, LEED AP BD+C
Technical Director, Vintage Thunderbird Club Int'l.

http://www.vintagethunderbirdclub.net

Author, "Thunderbird 1955-1966" & "Thunderbird 50 Years"

From: Bill Van Ess

Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2013 4:56:12 PM
Subject: Re: 1958 T-bird Convertible Question

Hello all,

Let me try to answer some of your questions. The car that Motor Trend tested in the May '58 issue is not the same car your friend now owns. Your friends car wasn't even built yet when the Motor Trend May '58 issue came out. The car your friend now owns (H8YJ129793) was built in August '58. The car that they used for the article was probably built before March of '58. It took roughly 2-3 months between the time that they wrote the articles for publication before the actual magazine article would come out.

This car, H8YJ129793 was at the VTCA national meet in '72 and had a 430 engine installed in it then. It was found in a junkyard before that and was restored. Without knowing any information prior to that, nobody can say with any authority that it was a prototype. Without factory paperwork, it is anybodies guess if it was one of the prototypes built by Ford. And even if it was, it would have been a car that Ford had taken after it left the production line and had the 430 installed in the engineering department. It wouldn't have been done on the production line because Ford wasn't set up to install the 430 in the '58 model yet. The whole assembly line would have been shut down while the workers would have to figure out what wiring harness to use, different exhaust system, carb linkage, different front springs, what goes where, etc. As I stated in my '58 convertible registry, this car COULD of been one of the prototypes, but without factory paperwork it could never be proven. Someone could have installed a 430 in that car sometime between 1958 and 1972. A lot can happen to a car over 14 years. The data plate would have been put on the car while it was on the assembly line, not after the car had left. Production for the '58 model was much slower than by the time they were building the '60 model. I read that when Ford shut down the '58 model year production line, that they still had orders for over 8,000 units which were built as '59 models. They couldn't build the cars fast enough to keep up with the orders that were coming in.

Motor Trend published TWO articles on the '58 Thunderbird, first one February '58 and the second one in May '58. Neither of these articles say ANYTHING that they drove a prototype with a 430 engine in it. In the February '58 issue they tested a car with Michigan license plates EN7497 and the May '58 issue the car tested had Michigan plates AV6264, two different cars. They did mention the possibility that the 430 was going to become available but they never drove one. You are probably confused with the article in the March '58 issue of Motor Life in which they did say they had driven a 430 prototype but the weather prevented them from making any accurate acceleration tests. They had seen Fords own results and simply published those. And the times published were much faster than what was found in actual tests later once the production 430 powered cars were built. This prototype had to be a hardtop as a convertible hadn't even been built yet. To the best of my knowledge, there was never a magazine test of a '58 with a 430 engine in it, hardtop or convertible. Hot Rod magazine tested a '59 HT with a 430 in their July '59 issue. That was the first magazine article I've ever seen that tested a Squarebird with the 430 engine in it.

Some other things you mentioned about your friends '58 convertible, the J in the serial number is not for a 430, it is for the car being a convertible. The first letter of the VIN is an H, which stands for 352. The next digit is an 8 which stands for a 1958 model, Y is the assembly plant Wixom and as stated, the J is for convertible. Ford did use an S code for the pilot plant. This is a short assembly line where they would have built pre-production cars to see how the line flowed with respect to the cars going down a production line. They didn't have a separate plant to build just prototypes. Quite often a car that came from the pilot plant would be used as a prototype later on, or used as a barrier crash test car, emissions testing, etc. The pilot plant would reveal where problems might arise once the actual production assembly line would start up. There was no prototype plant. That sort of stuff was done in engineering. Also it was quite common for a magazine writer to mistranslate information for an article. They tested lots of different makes of cars and would often just take the information provided to them from the manufacturer as to what rear end ratios, transmissions, options, etc were available. And that is where a lot of mis-information could be found about the 430 engine being available, performance times, etc. And the manufacturers would often quote faster acceleration times than stock to make their products seem faster than what they actually were. Remember, they were in the business to sell cars and make a profit. And if the magazine published faster 0-60 times for one car vs another, a reader could be swayed one way or the other.

Ford would usually loan a car to a magazine for a road test and it would be returned back to Ford (usually within a couple of days) after they were finished testing it. Ford would then check everything out and go over the car to make sure everything was OK on it and then lend it to another magazine to use as a test car. These cars were carefully prepared for the magazines so as to not have any problems with them and, quite often had been carefully "massaged" in order to get the best performance times, etc. When I talked with some of the old Shelby engineers about those "test" cars they told me that they had the tire manufacturers mold up a few sets of tires out of softer, drag racing rubber so they would hook up good at the drag strip, the distributor would have different advance built in, the vacuum hoses would be all hooked up but were not functional, carbs would have different size jets, sometimes different rear end gear ratios, etc. Everything would look stock on the outside, but they were much different than what you would buy at the dealership. What happened w/ these cars when Ford was finished with them is anybodies guess, and it is quite possible that some of these were used by some Ford executives for a while or until they got something else to drive. Some of those Ford executive cars would then be wholesaled off as used cars to dealers. It is very rare that any prototypes are sold to the public, but yes, some did get out.

Hope this answers your questions.
Sincerely,
Bill Van Ess
1958 Thunderbird Convertible Registry"

So there you have Bill's comments. We have William Wonder's account that... "However, one convertible, #H8YJ129793, is reported to have been equipped with the 430. This engineering prototype had the engine installed in the car after leaving the assembly line" and Conny now owns that Tbird.

[KULTULZ]

Sorry. I did not notice this post until now...

Gary,

Can you expand on this? Was the 430 MEL with a lower fuel pump mounting location a one-off casting or a regular production casting? Would Ford and Linc have had two different blocks? Would like to know whats in Conny's 58 convt MEL.

My earlier remark regarding heater hose routing was about the routing on the inner fender in 58 vs. on the intake manifold in 59. All good anyway, now know something additional about the 61 and up MEL.

It (front cover) must have been a unique casting or modification. See the photo caption under the photo in POST #11.

I am thinking they went with the original MEL positioning of the fuel pump to cut cost (although the positioning led to much vapor lock and hard starting problems). The LINC and J-BIRD were assembled on the same line in WIXOM. The BIRD 430 was just a re-calibrated MEL 430 (LINC) (LINC went to 2V in 1960 whereas the BIRD retained the 59 4V).

The 58 LINC also used the unique engine frame mounts as were used on the 59/60 J-BIRD. LINC-MERC went to a FE style mount in 1959 while the BIRD retained the more complicated earlier mount system.