Certaintly an engine phenonom, i have been interested in these Weslake y blocks for over 20 years and have added comments on here at times trying to give some insight to the mystery./history that i,m aware of.No one seems to know what actual race these were designed for but some type of road race would seem logical. It was long rumoured there were only 6 pair of these Weslake heads made? yes speedy Bill Smith has a nice example of one and that one pictured on this site in the sports car is another! I can add that after the race programm ended, the heads were recast in Cast iron and used on the 292 trucks there, they have offset shaft mounted rockers that are supported on each end by a mount that is bolted through each end of the head from the outside. A good friend has a set of these CI heads,cam etc,
Eventually all the leftover race parts were in the hands of old racing enthusiast and he eventually sold the lot off, there were parts from the race engines and the truck engines mixed together. In recent years the windsor style heads appeared as stated but had not heard the bolt pattern was wrong, i doubt that! Back in 1996 there was a magazine feature on a home built hot rod in Argentina that had the CI headed engine described casually as a 292 truck engine! i think at that time no one was the wiser they were rare and HP potentiaL would be significant!
While certaintly a curiosity i think its a waste of time going on about remaking these alum heads as occasionally suggested , there are just too many odd components, etc ( pipe dream)
This is my NOS unused head! and you will see the typical Weslake features of evenly spaced round ports like all their heads. The intake/exhaust ports are finely cast and so smooth, no edges. The intake side had small wedge shaped mounting plates that formed the base for downdraft carbs or injection, the CI heads ran a cast type single carb intake.
