Is this it? It was supposed to have been scrapped. Someone must have saved it from the breakers. I wonder what road tax and insurance was on 6,500 cc's back then?
Considering a 170 was the big engine back then that's a pretty decent upgrade! I'm glad this was confirmed and that "Thunderbird motor" was an FE as i'd thought and not some 289.
There were seven or so vans sent to Europe. I notice some VIN's were E11TH, E14TH. The 390 van was an E14SH prefix. That makes it an S engine code. However, in this case that is a 144 1V engine. The T is a 170 1V.
The usage was listed as "Service Truck". The account it was budgeted to was Holman Moody - Services on Racing. Five others were budgeted to Monte Carlo, and one other to GT Service. Eventually, all these vans, less one, were supposedly in Alan Mann's possession.
Can one then assume H-M converted the 390 van? I wonder why they just didn't install a 427? Unless they wanted hydraulic tappets for ease of maintenance.
this thread to my oldest son do you? The first thing he asked when we bought him this (his first car), was "how does the engine come out?" It was an ex-phone co. and John Deere dealer service van with 104,000 miles and no rust.
