10 WEIRD Facts About AMC High Performance 401 V8 Engine Secrets
10K views · Feb 22, 2026 · People & Blogs
Comments · 10
@phantomblott1 · 3 months ago
The AMC 401 was never designed nor intended to be as a high performance engine, they left it to the costumer to go to the Group 19 parts bin to build a performance engine. The larger AMC cars of the Ambassador and Rebel, Matador line needed an engine to pull R.V. trailers with their station wagons along with their heaver weights. The enlargement from the 390 to the 401 was an emission move to help meet the government standards soon to arrive. The AMC white stripe cam came with just a little more lift than the Rebel Machine's type 2 cam of September 1969. The combination of the white stripe cam, the dog leg heads higher compression, along with the free flow exhaust manifolds gave the impression of a performance engine. Barely into the 1st quarter of 1971 AMC had to lower the compression already and with a change to the 360's small port intake manifold to help meet the government standards flooding the other car makers as well. AMC really did what they could with so very little money they had to spend.
3
@BrandonLeeBrown · 7 months ago
The early 1971 401 has a higher compression ratio than the later 1971 401.
5
@Steve-s2q · 1 month ago
One of the king's of the road .
@rogerbennett2025 · 1 month ago
Go look into what kaffmaun engineering did to the amc engines with pretty much junkyard parts and your local box part stores
@daleshotrodshop · 3 months ago
This video is 90 percent wrong about everything on the 401.
3
@HardVG · 3 months ago
So much utter BS in this video.
5
@TimKline-o7z · 2 weeks ago
Impressive how much incorrect information is in this.
@Javelin3o4 · 3 months ago
the vocal fry of whoever is speaking is too much. Just speak normal.
1
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