A 1600GT was a OHC(T88) not a Kent.

Dear gordonbennet,

thanks for your thoughts. K&N says that it increases airflow so I tried running car with no filter on the 32/36 Weber.. Not much improvement or that pleasing either. Perhaps the K&N improvement is in the casing geometry as well?

Must admit I hadn't considered a 2litre box......

Thanks again, Vinnie

Hmm this takes me back to my misspent youth!!

The problem is the 1600GT OHV has limited standard gas flow although it's a generally a good sturdy engine it's still a pushrod engine at the end of the day.. If you just stick a big exhaust on it you can loose power - you need better gas flow from carb all the way through to exhaust

Much can be done though with ported / polished head(convert to unleaded), high(ish) lift cam, decent Weber carb, 4 into 2 into 1 exhaust manifold

Engine needs to be in good condition though and oil pump checked (external if I remember)

If you get toooo high lift a camshaft then all the action is higher up in the rev range with not a lot happening bellow 2000rpm.

I thought the GT version of Fords from that era got an equal-length 4-2-1 fabricated exhaust manifold as standard - to replace the unequal-length cast manifold used on non-GT versions.

With OE camshafts, the differential twin-choke Weber was more than adequate - it was on an equal-length cast manifold which helped.

While porting helps, the head itself is flat as the engine is "bowl-in-piston" design.

Depends on the version. The first Pinto OHC GT got a 4 into 2 into 1 but I've seen some OHV GT Essex engines without although it was always difficult to work out what was original back in the pre classic days where many of these were run as bangers..

One surprising engine was the port-side(pre crossflow) 1500gt in a MK I Cortina that seemed to go way better than I would have expected - I let one of these go for buttons - wish I'd got it now!!!

The progressive (differential) Weber was a great carb in it's day giving great economy but with performance/sound! when needed

What would be of interest is what is fitted to the original posters car? The 1.6 Essex Crossflow is one of the original tuneable engine - was the standard engine in formula Ford

Kent was OHV not OHC!The Essex was a 1.7 V4 and 2.5 and 3.0 V6.The FOG V4/V6 came in a range from 1.2 to 2.9 litres.The smallest V6 being a 1.8(not a very common engine).Canadian engines were never used in Europe.Then there were the Mazda V6-2.0/2.5 used in Probe and in 2.5 form in early Cougar/Mondeo-later replaced by a Fog V6.

A typo on my part - I know full well that the Kent was OHV - I fettled enough of them!

Like wise, brain fade on my part. Back in the 70's / 80's I fettled with various versions of the smaller Ford engines both "port side (exhaust in inlet on same side) " and the "cross flow" Kent engines.

>The port side was the first Ford OHV engine as fitted first to the Anglia etc although the best version was fitted to the early MK2 Cortinas which was stronger with a 5 bearing crank. This engine had flat pistons and a combustion chamber in the head

> The crossflow appeared in the Cortina MK2 from about 67 and was produced for decades with a version still being used in the KA many years later (Ford KA now has Fiat oily bits!)

>I became very experienced with the er "Essex" V6 in 2.5 and 3.0 forms although they had a couple of weak spots (oil pump drive shaft going round and fibre cam wheel failing). I used to always strip and replace many of these components before I did anything with them. Centre V Inlet manifold was a PIA to seal as well

I> even had a few cars fitted with the later 2.0 Pinto which also had an oil pump drive shaft made out of butter and a horrible cam lubrication setup (clean oil really really important)

Happy memories but I'd say the crossflow was the most reliable

Indeed the 1500 crossflow, as per Consul Classics and Corsairs IIRC from banger racing a few (if only we knew then) was a good engine by any standards and an easy slip into a 1200 Anglia shell.

I think the 1500 Corsair/Classic was the pre-crossflow engine - but it would have been an easy swap in the Anglia.

The Kent engine was always five bearing-the three bearing engine was the HCS!The original Anglia//Classic/Cortina engines were three bearing in 997/1198/1340 capacities.The 1498 was five bearing.All the following versions were five bearing until introduction of the HCS.