I walked through the National Street Rod Association Show here in L'ville. There was only 1 lonely Y block in residence that I found but there were 11,000 cars so I could easily have missed a couple more. Many of the cars were outright dazzling in paint, body work, chrome and polished metal. Very high buck stuff. I found 3 imposter motors, 2 with Lincoln Y rocker arm covers and one scrub with fake Ardun heads. There were probably lots of others.
I didn't find any Y block stuff in the swap meet either, usually you find a least 3/2 manifold or two. I did see some chrome rockerarm covers for Y's at one vendor stand in the new parts vendor show. This was a complete show in itself with all kinds of interesting vendors, including a company that stamps out original 32 and 33/34 Ford Chassis rails. They go to all the other vendors and the guy said they do 1200 pairs a year. He said they had been doing it since the mid 90's and they had made more frames that Ford itself !?
In the vendor show I ran across the Hilborn FI company. I spoke to one of their salesmen, Mr Andrew Starr, about Y's and he was surprisingly receptive. He said they had recently dug out their patterns for Y block FI and they were missing one or two pieces. If they can find the missing pieces of pattern they would consider making a modern EFI or original style system. They would not need more than a very few people to put an EFI setup together about 4 would do it. But they will not do it if they can not find the pattern pieces. He seemed genuinely interested to hear that their Y block systems commanded upwards of 3 grand on EBay. If you want to contact Hilborn directly Mr Starr's Email address is EFI@hilborninjection.com
While I was speaking to Mr Starr, I mentioned that we had our NMRA associated meet in Columbus and another guy standing nearby said he had seen us and how neat it was to see all the Y powered cars together.
Doug T
The Highlands, Louisville, Ky.
