Cleveland blocks

If my understanding is correct, as the U.S. had long ceased production of Clevelands and they were very keen to still use them in Nascar racing, they approached Ford Australia and asked them to cast up a series of blocks which had additional metal in them, which would allow some extra machining of the block, specifically some over-boring. In standard form the Cleveland was a thin wall casting which limited its over-bore capability. By casting in extra metal, there was a hope that some jiggery-pokery could be achieved. These blocks carried the casting number XE192540.



There appears to be little correlation between the XE in the cast number and the XE Falcon model except that the two appeared concurrently on the scene. Apart from thicker bore walls, the XE blocks had thicker pan rails. Unfortunately, there was a problem and the casts suffered from core shift, to such an extent that Ford U.S. rejected them as unsuitable and left Ford Australia with them. Now Ford Australia, never being ones to miss an opportunity simply used the blocks and stuck them into passenger cars and trucks where the core shift problem was not noticable under normal driving conditions. These blocks have acquired some mythical status, but some accounts show that, as proved by Ford U.S, while the extra metal may be handy, actually benefitting from its presence while building a hi-po engine can be problematic.