Thread: 390 mild build project... Help

Tweet

[/B]Hi there. This is the first gas engine I'm doin a mild build on. I have a 69 360 fe motor. I'm planning on throwing a 600cfm card with an aftermarket intake manifold, some heads, reduce the electrical eventually. My main questions are tho dose this motor have 4 barre heads? And I wanna throw a cam kit in it with valves, rockers, springs... The works. How to I go about matching all the parts. And knowing how to choose the right lift and stuff for the cam. All the help will be much appresiated

i cant figure out how to change the title. i have a 360

Originally Posted by Redneckplas

Hi there. This is the first gas engine I'm doin a mild build on. I have a 69 360 fe motor. I'm planning on throwing a 600cfm card with an aftermarket intake manifold, some heads, reduce the electrical eventually. My main questions are tho dose this motor have 4 barre heads? And I wanna throw a cam kit in it with valves, rockers, springs... The works. How to I go about matching all the parts. And knowing how to choose the right lift and stuff for the cam. All the help will be much appresiated

Do you have a 360 or a 390 or a 360 that you want to make into a 390?
What fuel is available to you to operate this motor?
What duty will the motor be asked to do? Towing, cruising, long runs on the freeway?
What vehicle will the motor go into?
What's the curb weight of the vehicle?
What's your budget for this project?
What's the rear end gear ratio of the vehicle?
Will this be a daily driver or a drag vehicle or a little of both?
Loosen up dude and tell us what you want to do and all the details.

360, I guess you have a pickup? What are you expecting to do?
As noted above, first you have to identify what motor you want to end up with and what you are expecting it to do.

There is a big intake port difference between 2bl and 4bl standard heads for a 390, very easy to tell. old 428 heads are still around and were good on the street.

Old 3310, 780 cfm Holleys with vac secondaries covered a lot of sins and worked well, even in the pickups.

With a truck, you might want torque. Not hard to build a 410 Mercury motor.

As the well respected Tech Inspector said, set your goals and grab your pocketbook.

Sorry i missed typed title. i have a 69 f100 2wd. im goung to put 3.73 or something in rear end... i want it to be road worth but alsi mild drag truck

There's no replacement for displacement, this holds true on the old FE's, too... Barry at Survival Motorsports is an FE guru, you name the combination and the budget and he'll tell you what works and doesn't work!

From personal experience with the FE's, they need good breathing heads!!!! There are a lot of peculiarities on an FE, first concern is it an FE or an FT? If it's the original engine in the pickup it would be an FT. Scooting mentioned building a 410 ci version, had one in a '68 pickup with a set of out-of-the-box-stock Edelbrock Performer RPM heads, intake, cam, and lifters topped by a 750 Edelbrock carb..... It ran great by itself and was never low on power when it was used as a tow rig! If the occasion would arise again to build an FE, I'd go with one of Barry's stroker kits and whatever he recommended for heads, cam, and valve train.

Be realistic on your build, make sure your budget will cover your expectations!!!!

I had a 1970 with 360---it could barely get our top fueler lit on the push starts--

Got a 460 and c6 trans out of a wrecked lincoln and put in truck---what a differance--enough Ford engineers saw it at the races that they finally got some out in 1973/74

thks everyone. i would just like to spend say 2000 max cause i got a 2nd gen 12v cummins im going to drop in it next year. so i kinda was thinking about, carb intake manifold, headers and some electrical and see how it is

Buy this book and read it before doing anything.
Amazon.com: How to Build Max-Performance Ford FE Engines (Performance How to) (9781934709153): Barry Rabotnick: Books