THE BDA ENGINE
Ten facts you didn’t know about Ford and Cosworth’s legendary 16-valve engine. BDA ORIGINS
Walter Hayes, Ford’s dynamic PR chief, was so enthused by the success of the Ford-based FVA F2 engine, that he asked Cosworth to provide a 16-valve/DOHC road car engine too. The result, the BDA, was totally different to the FVA, and not based on it. It was, most emphatically not, a detuned version of the FVA — for the cylinder block, cylinder head, bore, stroke, capacity and camshaft drives were all new.
THE BLOCK
Developed around Ford’s cast-iron Kent Crossflow cylinder block, the original BDA’s bore and stroke dimensions were 80.96x77.62 mm, which gave a capacity of 1599cc. When Ford came to use it in the Escort RS1600 road car, for homologation purposes…