What made a car the 302 Boss or 351 Boss or 429 Boss? Was it just a name or was it a special engine? Does anyone have one?

Special engine, suspension, and the car. I've had two '70 Boss 302's, the only problem with them is I sold them before the market went through the roof.
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Joe

How much horsepower did your Boss 302 have?

The Boss 302 is the predecessor of the Cleveland engine design. It's basicaly a 302 with cleveland heads. As a result the intake manifolds are unique, they wont fit any other ford engines. The block has four bolt mains, a forged steel crank, forged rods and windage tray. The heads are cleveland style but the location of the water passages are different. Uses any small block cam but uses cleveland type valve train components. The '69 production engines came with 2.23 inch intake valves and huge intake ports and used a 780cfm holley. This engine really wasn't suited for the street because it needed to rev high. The boss 429 has most of the same differences. The heads are a hemi design, 4 bolt main block, different valve train, crank, rods etc...
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'68 Fairlane 500 sportroof, 428CJ, close ratio toploader, 9" detroit locker, 31 spline axles, 3.50 gears.

The boss 302 was rated at 290hp, the boss 429 was rated at 375hp , the boss 351 was rated at 330hp. I think when they built the boss they worked on the theory that if it added weight and didnt make the car go faster then you didnt need it.
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66 hardtop downunder

All of those hp ratings were way low!

That seemed to be fords policy at the time, underrating the hp on the top of the line musclecars. Look at the thunderbolt, ford only rated that at 425hp, but the hotrod mag at the time reckoned it was over 500 with the et's it was doing.
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66 hardtop downunder

I am sorry to drop in on this posting so late, I do not come here every day now.
Some of the features of the Boss 302 429 cars were unique unto them. Larger 15" heavyduty wheels and larger tires. Unique front fenders that had a larger wheel opening radius. Oil coolers, N case rear ends with 3:91-4:30 gears standard.
I never owned one of these engines but have built some for racing. Here are some things about the Boss 302. They would not fall out of a tree under 3500 rpm. What I mean is that they no low end toque for street driving. The large intake system with hugh valves produced slugish low rpm flow on the 69's. The open combustion chambers were changed to full quench type in 1970. Ford actually put in smaller valves for 1970 also. The compression was about 11.0 in stock form and required racing fuel to get it to perform up to it full potential. Head work and quench chambers would get you a very real 12.0 making much more power. The big Holley carb model 4500 was a good choice but the 4150-4160's were better for racing. Ford had some bad pistons in 1970 that had a problem with skirts cracking and putting chunks in the oil pan. The stock pistons are forged and clearly marked with "TRW" logo but they were junk. I had an occasion to ask a TRW rep about these failiers and was told that Ford had contracted TRW to make the pistons for many of their HiPo engines, I have had this problem with 429 CJ/Super CJ also, his responce was that they knew the pistons would not hold up but Ford told them how they wanted them made. The Boss 302 came stock with hardened push rods, windage tray in the oil pan, and dual point dist. All factory production B302s had big shaft top loader 4-speed transmissions with the Hurst handle, not the shifter just the handle. The engines came with a little piece of electronics on the firewall that would limit the rpm to 6200 and cut the ignition out above that. The first thing you would learn was that by unplugging that device there was nowlimit that the Boss could not go to, almost. It was not uncommon for the engine to pull 9500 as a norm. The only one we lost was pegging 11k when it dropped a valve. One other thing about the B302 was the loss of cam shaft lobes, these engines were solid lifter versions. In order to pull high revs the valve spring open pressure would be increased from about 95# to 155# and that could mean short life for the cam. One version of the B302 that seriously impressed me was a long block that I put a set of Gurney Westlake aluminum heads and Holley intake on. Every short coming that the stock induction had was thansformed into the neatest small block on the street. It pulled so hard from idle on up you thought you were in a big block car. Many a big block Chevell thought that it was a 427. The Boss 429 is a hole other story and I have said to much now, but it had many issues also.
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64 Sport Coupe 427 2x4 4speed
White knuckles ride for an old fart.