The First Engine Build: A 'Bogus Boss' Ford

jack roush jack roush was just a young engineer working at ford and jack roush had taken a regular 302 ford and turned it into a 302 ford boss by using 351 cleveland heads so back in those days you waited to get hot rod magazine and car craft magazine in the mail and you were really excited and you wore out the pages looking at it well in 1977 in april there was this article about how to make this bogus boss ford engine i was 15 years old and i thought this seemed like a pretty good idea so i bought a used ford 302 engine out of newspaper and i found these cleveland heads this is the actual engine found the cleveland heads at a salvage yard about 30 miles away that my mom drove me to i got all this stuff bought took it to the machine shop gave him this magazine article and said i'm trying to build this engine so eventually we did get it built i put it in this 69 ford pickup with flames that i painted in my dad's barn and i got the engine back from the shop got it ready to assemble and i was missing this intake manifold so because it's kind of specific right the rest of the engine is a little bit of a hodgepodge of normal parts you can put together to make a 302 box but the intake has to be a 302 boss in the article roush said that there was an edelbrock manifold and there was a ford manifold and those were the only choices you had i couldn't afford the edelbrock manifold so i used information back in those days you would dial a number on your phone and you'd get a gal on information and you'd ask for a phone number and i'm 15 years old so i said i need the phone number for jack roush in livonia michigan i got the phone number i called him up i talked to him and i said i'm building this engine out of this magazine article and i need an intake manifold do you have one he said i have a manifold i'll sell you for 75 dollars so jack roush sent this intake manifold to my mom and dad's house ceod for 75 dollars and used that to finish this engine up put it in that pickup and that was the first engine i ever built and somehow we've managed to hold on to it and kind of had to rehab it a little bit to put it on display but it is all the original block and heads that i built way back in 1977 1978 that's really freaking cool i don't even like the fact that jack roush did that i mean how old was he at the time he wasn't that old yeah he would have been a younger guy you know i i've actually told that story to jack roush and jack and i are not personal friends but i do…