Thread: engine swap

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One of the biggest obsatles to certain engines is the direction of the exhaust----like for instance--a 392 hemi , altho it has big heads /valve covers, the exhaust pretty much goes down, which could take up less space than say a small block chev

While any engine can be put into any car, not all of them should be. Some swaps are smarter than others. If you are asking this question it sounds like you may be new to engine swapping, and iMO an engine the physical size and layout of a 390 is not the place to start. A seasoned swapper would have his work cut out for him on this one, and I don't know if the end result would be worth the effort. It will be nose heavy and crowded, to say the least, in the engine room.

You just can't pull one engine out of a 46 and plunk down another one, it pretty much entails changing the whole drivetrain, unless you do something like a sbc with an adapter plate to the stock transmission.

If you go the FE route you will be doing some extensive work to the center crossmember, at least splitting the wishbones, and cutting into the firewall to get that long motor in there. It is 30 inches long, compared to 28 for a sbc, and weighs 650 pounds, compared to 550 for the Chevy. The Ford will also require more cooling capacity, and as mentioned earlier, that front sump pan is not easy to deal with. You will also be locked in to transmissions that are considerably heavier and bulkier than a th350.

We've all done swaps that were "possible" to do, but sometimes we ended up with a car that would have been much better with a smarter choice. Just trying to present another viewpoint here.

Don