Technical Traditional looking 426 hemi valve cover options?

Rod Action, 1973.

 

Wonder if the little RPU had trouble keeping up with traffic? Didn't someone on the Hamb acquire this truck but without the Hemi a while back?

 

https://www.ansenvalvecovers.com/products/mopar-426-hemi-logo-valve-covers-finned-bead-blast

https://www.manciniracing.com/426heblwrvac.html

 

Suttle would be plain cast uluminum. Bling chrome or polished aluminum. The only cast covers that I'm aware of from the 60s were M/T. They made them for k heads to. The milodon; stafe five etc came much later. Unlike the 392 covers I'm not aware of a mag 426 cover made in the 60s.
That all being said you can't go wrong with a M/T cover. The icing on the cake would be M/T finned breathers for the full effect.

 

From HAMB classifieds, not early but KB mag covers.

 

Here's my newer -retro aluminum Ansens. They told me I got the last pair of as-cast they had (2019). If you found a set, you could carve on them, they don't have any history yet and not high value-just food for thought. Would love a set of M/T's (non"K") myself, but they're scarce and old so valuable. There's that, and my Hemi budget is tapped out these days.

 

Those Ansens would definitely work for me. I'll have to do some searching

 

I found some new Ansens online, but they say HEMI on them in big block letters. I don't want that, because it is superfluous.

 

Well I found a set of those Ansen's, or something that looks just like them. There's no name on them anywhere, but it says made in California on the inside. I'm very happy with them, it is pretty much what I had in mind. Thanks for all of the replies on this.

 

They look good

 

Those are nice valve covers. That being said, i think the early Hemi is more suited to you coupe, even though the 426 should make it faster.

 

Slayer, you are dead on. But I'm not done with the 392 just yet.

 

There are engines that "say something" throughout our beloved auto history. The mighty 427s of GM and Ford, Nailheads with dual quads, the 426 Max Wedge, the inimitable SOHC 427, but somehow the 426 Hemi seems to speak just a little louder. I dunno if it's more like "your cousin from Boston" or owning the room like the late Frank Sinatra. What do these engines say? You'd have to ask the mostly silent casual observers since they seem to shut em up as soon as the hood is open. There's others to be sure but if I have to explain this further I'll need some crayons...

 

Excuse me while I raise my hand in disagreement

 

From a naturally aspirated performance standpoint, the 426 based hemi is immensely superior to the 392. Aluminum gen II Hemi after market blocks with a 4.6 bores and 6 bolt mains that will easily go over 600 cubes, and are designed to handle thousands of horsepower are just a phone call and a credit card away. And excellent heads. Vs the poor old 392 with a 4.060 bore limit on its 65 year old iron block.
But I love the nostalgia of the old stuff, especially my 8 carb Edelbrock X3 intake. That has been a signature of the car that I hate to give up. But since they changed the rules, now allowing the engines up to 1968, the 392 is a knife in a gunfight. The fastest car in the class is over a second quicker than my car. So the question is: do I want to have a shot at winning the class, or have the car looking like I want it to? Or can I achieve both?

 

That's the trouble with drag racing, the target keeps moving! I'd love to do drag week, but it takes me years to build a car, so by the time I'd get out there, it would be obsolete.

 

That's exactly what happened to me. I was too slow building the car. When I started building the car in 2013, 11's would win it. Now it is 9's 0r 8's

 

Totally agree with this. I'm a 70's kid, Garlits and Prudhomme were my heroes-those guys made a living with 426's. Any time I glued a model car together, I wanted it to have those big valve covers. Everyone I knew was into SBC/BBC stuff, but there was no denying, a 426 Hemi had this mystical quality about it. Despite all that, I wound up running a 454 Vega at Rock Falls Raceway in Wisconsin. Ran consistent mid 10's as a street car in the 90's. Pretty hot stuff for the time. There was this group of Early B-body Mopar guys that would show up with their Max Wedges and a couple cross ram Hemi cars. Those things were basically well dialed in stock type restorations, with sticky tires and open exhaust. Those damned Hemi cars were breaking into the 10's, and looked like taxi cabs! I could not figure them out, here I am, all Car Craft style Pro Street, and the little old lady from Pasadena is right on my ass. It was humiliating I tell ya! Anyhow, I decided I had to get one, some how, some way. Well, I did, and the thing made some stupid power. But in case anyone hasn't heard HEMI is an acronym. It stands for Has Enormous Money Invested. Believe it!

 

@Hemi Joel was prolly one of those guys. If I remember right Joel has a fairly original 63 dodge max wedge t-85 car I saw at rockfalls a time or 2 when I was a kid in the late 80s/ early 90s.

 

Copy That! When I spent a ton of dough going in the 9's, 7's came out the next day!

 

This is how stupid I can be: there was a grey '63 Dodge Max Wedge that was for sale for $13,000 at Rock Falls back then. The thing was cherry pie, but I think a clone or NOM or something. Anyway, I was thinking, "That's too much money". So 3 years later I bought a decent '64 Dodge body (318 car) with no motor, for $2,500. I then proceed to plow 2 years and $20,000 into it to get it looking as good as that '63. On top of that, I lost over 5K on it when I finally sold it. Brilliant eh?

 

I wanted to put a blown hemi in the coupe. The history of the car is that it ran one in the mid 60's, they were also playing with nitro. When it got to expensive to run the hemi they switched to a blown sbc. That of course is what I built and put in. I simply can't afford a blown hemi. Or nitro for that matter. I love it all the same, and it's stupid fast. Joel, those are some great looking valve covers.

 

No, that wasn't me in the Max wedge. I did race my stock appearing, Hemi 4-speed 67 GTX at Rock falls starting in 99. Prior to that I was running a 500" Cadillac powered El Camino.

 

I was on the other end of that scenario many times. When I had my '67 GTX, Hemi 4 speed all dialed in for the factory appearing stock tire class, I had it running low 11s / hi-10s looking 100% stock, showroom fresh, on G70-14 Coker red line bias supplies. (O.T., sorry) I remember bringing it down to cedar falls and I was pitted next to a shoebox Chevy that had big hood scoop, ladder bars, radiused wheel wells with huge slicks, fender well headers, etc, obviously a race car. I ended up next to him at the starting line and when he launched, he got way out on me, as was usual when I was running on stock tires. But by the thousand foot mark, I blew past him with a 15 mile an hour advantage. Back in the pits, they kept looking towards my car staring at it with puzzled looks on their faces. I went over there and started a conversation, then they came and started looking at my car, under the hood underneath the back end, and scratching their heads. They were dumbfounded. That sort of thing happened a lot and it was really fun.

 

Hemi Joel ,
What was your mph in the quarter ?
MPH is horsepower in the quarter,,,,or any straight line drag as far as that goes .

Tommy

 

Damn. I know it was a hamber

 

If you like a challenge just pour some aluminum or Magnesium M/T=Winner!

 

In the GTX, 130ish @ 3510#.
The coupe has gone 137 at #2750 in 3000 density altitude air.

 

130 at 3500 pounds is really good,,,that was a really strong engine !
That calculates about 600 HP with the formula .
That was one strong old GTX .

Tommy

 

More like RWHP, (rear wheel). The engine would likely make closer to 700 BHP, maybe a tic more. I was 30lbs heavier and similar MPH, and every calculation showed what I thought was unrealistic power levels over 700. I would always multiply by .95 to remove the "erection factor" from the final figures. It took 720BHP to move a 3545# racer to low-mid tens and 129 MPH, or just a bit south of 600 RWHP. Is that realistic? You bet your valve covers it is. Building an engine like that is as detailed as sanding and blocking a concours finish on a fine classic. You can't miss ANYTHING from A to Z. Awesome stuff Joel...