1969-1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429. Dan Burrill
Suspension
Rear Suspension
Wheels
Engine Development
Total Performance
Drag Racing
Accessories and Options
Model Year Changes
To Pam Aldridge, for all her help and support in this year-long project. It would have been difficult to complete this project without you.
Writing a book of this nature is not something that can be done without the help of many people who are willing to share their stories, photos, recollections, and memorabilia. Only a few people have made it their business to become experts on the Boss 429; one of those is Denny Aldridge, owner of Aldridge Motorsports and Engineering. Currently, he has in his collection 1 1969 Boss 302 and 4 1969 Boss 429 Mustangs. Over the years, he has owned 37 Boss 302 Mustangs and 15 Boss 429 Mustangs. His company has been a Ford Racing dealer for the past 32 years and a Roush Racing dealer since 1972.
I was fortunate that Denny was willing to share his vast knowledge, expertise, and archives with me. Without his generous help, this book would not have been possible.
I am grateful to a very special and dedicated group of people for generously sharing their knowledge and photographs, as well as making available all of the unusual racing parts necessary to complete this book: Len Ewell, for his help in researching historical and technical information and for sharing his extensive library of reference materials; Randy Hernandez supplied his dad’s rare photos and memorabilia, which was a great help in filling in the blanks for the Kar-Kraft operation; and Sig Hustad, Dan Spiegel, and Richard Truesdell for supplying their excellent photos. Doing research for this book required the better part of a year. I used other sources, of course, and it would have been impossible to have an accurate project without their help. I also want to thank Joe Spinelli for reviewing the manuscript and offering his advice and expert knowledge of these very special cars.
Last, but absolutely not least, I wish to thank my editor, Paul Johnson, for giving me the opportunity, his insightful advice, and his hard work in turning the rough draft into a finished manuscript.
The 1970 Boss 429 Mustang featured new body styling. The front end had only two headlights and the front fenders had decorative air vents, whereas the older 1969 body style featured two additional headlights. Today, the 1969 cars are considered to be the more desirable of the two.
The seeds for creation of the Boss 429 were planted in 1964. That year, Chrysler brought the 426 Hemi to Daytona where it cleaned up in Daytona 500 qualifiers and the race. Ford realized that the race version of the FE 427, with its cam-in-block and pushrod setup, could not surpass Mopar’s elephant engine. The Blue Oval’s solution to the problem was to install the 427 SOHC (single overhead cam engine), otherwise known as the Cammer 427, in Ford and Mercury stock cars. In January 1964, Ford requested NASCAR’s approval to use the Cammer engine for competition, but Bill France turned them down.
Ford needed its own version of the Hemi. After NASCAR effectively rejected the Cammer, Ford began the design and development of the engine that became known as the Boss 429. After the long, anguishing saga of trying to homologate the FE 427 Cammer for NASCAR racing, Henry Ford II and Ford racing personnel were determined to build an engine that would fit into the NASCAR rulebooks. The goal was to beat the Hemi and all other big-block challengers in NASCAR competition, as well as at quarter-mile drag strips across the country. From the beginning, the Boss 429 was a limited-build race homologation street car, built to conform to NASCAR rules. It became one of the most valuable and rare Mustangs ever built.
Ford already had the very successful FE Series 427, followed by the 428 and 428 Cobra Jet, so why the Boss 429? It boiled down to Bill France Sr., the owner and general manager of NASCAR. He owned the tracks and he made the rules. Smokey Yunick once referred to him as a dictator and stated that he “made up the rules as he went along.” Keep in mind that in the 1960s, success in NASCAR was an important part of the racing program. The automobile manufacturers desperately wanted their cars on the tracks, exposed to the media and the public, especially the Daytona 500. This was the first race of the season and considered the crown jewel of NASCAR; Ford wanted to win it badly. The expression, “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” was the mantra in the corporate boardrooms.
Bill France was doing everything he could to fill the grandstands and, at the same time, pacify the major car manufacturers so they would race at his speedways and tracks. The rules were changing constantly, then as now. Of course, fudging and rule bending occurred; not all car manufacturers were totally satisfied, and rightly so. Moreover, when the manufacturers weren’t happy, they boycotted the races.
By 1964, Chrysler had 30 years of experience; 5 were at Daytona and they were making the most of it. At this time, the Chrysler Hemi-equipped cars were the ones to beat, and Ford really didn’t have a competitive powerplant in the lineup. This latest and fastest version of the Chrysler Hemi was introduced in Plymouth and Dodge stock cars just before the 1964 Daytona 500. Chrysler fitted its 426-ci big-block with well-designed, well-engineered hemispherical heads. Because this engine was not yet available in production cars, (technically, at least) it shouldn’t have met any NASCAR rule. However, according to Bill France, because the engine (or its parts, that is, heads) were available over the parts counter, the engine could run in the event. The people at Ford cried foul, to no avail. This new Chrysler engine was unveiled at the last minute. It produced far more horsepower than Ford’s 427-ci engine with the conventional wedge heads.
It wasn’t long before the crew in the Ford and Mercury camp realized that during practice sessions, the Plymouth and Dodge cars were running at least 5 mph faster than their best times. Once again, Ford met with Bill France, voicing a valid complaint that, unfortunately, fell on deaf ears. The entire race became a Mopar show with the Hemi 426–powered cars finishing 1, 2, 3, and 4. Needless to say, Ford felt robbed by a rule change.
Ford, after all, had been focusing on European racing for the past few years. Now it was back home and wanted to offer up some winning Fords on the NASCAR circuits. At first, Ford offered a high-rev kit for the 427-ci engines, hoping to be competitive with the Chrysler Hemi. That didn’t prove successful, so Ford went off the track and used political pressure to even the playing field.
At about that time in 1965, Chrysler produced the street Hemi, which was banned because of the incredible speeds it produced. This stock Hemi 426 was referred to as the