Greetings all,

New here and new to Ford Big Blocks. My girlfriend just bought a 66 F250. I think she did pretty darn good for 3800.00 Bucks.









The engine smokes, leaks and spits oil. I was told it is a 390. It has C8AE-H heads on it. The engine is covered in oil and gunk 1/2" thick so I can't easily find the casting on the engine. So my first question is do I need to remove the Starter to find the casting number? I was told the number is on the engine near the starter and I'd prefer not to have to clean the entire engine just yet

My second question is more of an open comment/question. I'd like to freshen up the engine for her and the purchase price basically wiped her out dollar wise. So I'm looking to do this on the cheap to give her something reliable for a couple years when she's got more money to put into it. I have every tool I think I'll need as I have successfully rebuilt the engine on my Ford 8N tractor. But I have never rebuilt or freshened up the engine on anything that revs higher than 2600 RPM. Actually, that's not true I rebuilt the Th400 tranny in my suburban about 40,000 miles ago by only reading books and it's still running strong. My problem is (this is were you guys come in hopefully) that I can't seem to find books specifically geared to stock rebuilding of Ford Big Blocks. Every thing seems to about performance increases and modifications. So any advice would be appreciated at all as to where to start. I'm sure I'll have lots and lots of dumb questions in the future.

TIA

Dusty