Researching Engine Firing Orders

world was ready for it. >> He's going to have himself a good starting position for Saturday's Brickyard 400. >> Was the sound anything you considered or were you just looking to optimize the performance of the engine? >> I was both. Let me go further back. I mean way back. In college um I was the president of the sports car club. Car guy forever for life. A friend comes to me and he says, "Do you know why Chevrolets sound so much better than a Ford?" And I went like, "I don't know. I can't I can't tell you." He said, "It's the firing order. The firing order is different." I didn't know if that was right or not. So, I went to the library and I got a Chilton's motor manual and a piece of paper and I wrote [snorts] down on this paper 1 2 3 4, you know, I wrote put four circles representing the the banks of cylinders on the engine and then I got the firing orders and I drew a line from whichever cylinder was was on the firing order. I did it for a Dodge, a a Chevy Chevy, Mercedes, anybody who made a V8 with a 90° throw crank. I looked at these patterns for Ford and a Dodge. And by the way, Ford had two firing orders. They had a 289 firing order and they had a 351 Windsor firing order, which I think the Cleveland also had as well. And the patterns were the same. They're exactly the same except one was flipped over. It was front to rear flipped over like this. And the Chevrolets were like this. By the way, answer to question about the the Ford and Chevy firing order. 350 firing order is exactly the same, period, as a 289. There is a universal pattern. Now, the pattern can be [clears throat] flipped over like this, side to side down down the center line. You can flip it over like that. Or you can flip it front to back. But, the pattern is always the same. What that means is regardless if you have a 90-degree total crankshaft, you have two cylinders