...... The pet love I have is the foriegn factor. Ford USA used all its best Down home engineering sub contractors, and then sent there Jack Roush development engines over seas to be used in the grind of international Endurance racing. For most Americans, they see the Fox as a less than 65-67 Shelby Mustang, a less sucessfull kind of car to the verile 289 GT350 that ruled the US and International ciruit races as factory Mustangs. In actual fact, the Four Eyed Foxes were exceptionally cheap and strong long distance machines, that really upset a lot of Class Racing the world over. And IMHO, the nicest looking US cars of the 80's in race trim.
The Zakspeed Belga/Esso car
and the Belmondo Mustang in its two colorings
Both of these ended up in the Antipodes, doing hard core service in demanding track events against much more powerfull 304 Holdens and Turbo 242 GT Volvos and BMW 635's, M3's and V12 XJ-S Jaguras and 3500 Rovers.
The cars started of a woefully inadequate mild 260hp engines, which then rapidly grew in homolgated steps to progressively stronger to 320, 350 and finally, 390 hp engines with performance
and reliabilty in Group A (Fisa Group 2) 1983-85 spec Mustangs.
They started as Belgium owner/operator cars, then ended up being purchased my many campaigners down the bottom of der werlt in 390 hp form as very compentant 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 Endurance race cars. The story about how to go from the basic 1979 Indy Pace Car Roush engine (without the heavy duty cranks, Shelby intakes, and 351 heads but rather more stock 1983 GT parts) is very interesting, because 390 hp is what the old quad Weber 289 GT40 engines made in 1967 road GT40's, while the last campaigned Mustangs were right up to 2-1/4 times the power of the stock 83 engines with reworked stock intakes, 650 cfm 4150 carbs, and Motorsport ignition.
Those cars were
so strange with Mike Kranfaus's German Capri axles and Volvo rear disc brakes, and BMW Getrag gear boxes which were proof of concept for the disc rear brake SVO's and 5 speed roller cam 1985 GT's. The early non roller Jack Roush engines never met the 320 hp hp targets claimed, not even the 270 hp claimed for the 1979 Brickyard engines, but they were totally reliable!. They started off in 24 hour races in Spa and Lemans, and then got sent to Australia and New Zealand to further development on 400 to 600 plus mile endurance races. SVO subbed out there development work, and the result was a huge improvment of every aspect of braking, steering, and performance and drive train strength for all road going Four Eyes.
The information is kind of easy to get from old magazines, but the missing parts are the questions only Americans can get answers for...like what 303 letter cams were used, how were the intakes cut, gasflowed, and reglued, and why the foreign, German gearboxes when Ford already had 7.5" axles and T5 gearboxes? Why did they down grade to the Koln 7.5" Atlas Axle and BMW Getrag gearbox?........
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