Ford 460 Engine Build On A Budget Part 1 - Horsepower S13, E4

Hey guys, I don't need to tell you that

budget

s are tight these days, some of us don't have enough money to pay attention, so when we say we're

build

ing a big voting bloc on a

budget

today, we're talking about a Very cheap, but first we have the long-awaited power reward for our turbo Mustang. Here we will see how its power at the steering wheel compares to the power at the rear wheels. Weeks ago we immersed ourselves in a project we call turbo stay. 382 cubic, a small-block boosted with a Hellion turbo kit, made 1,100 flywheel

horsepower

on race gas, nearly a grand at a 93-octane premium; then we built a full roll cage and then followed with ten jobs to close.

In the cabin, we reinforced the subframe and replaced all four boards. We bolted a qa1 system up front that included K-member tubular control arms and carbon over a conversion kit. We gave it a Pro Street brake kit along with a front

engine

plate. that allowed us to put the

engine

directly on the secondary front last week we installed the fuel supply system from the tank to the fuel pump and the filters to the engine we installed a new trick - we loaded up with gauges and assembled the light steering setup which includes of course Then a new wheel was the radiator with a low profile fan, then we relocated the battery to the rear and installed a kill switch, the rest of the drivetrain including the driveshaft and driveshaft transmission and performance shifter, before it is first turned on inside the car.

Time to see what this thing has on the rear wheels. We really count because of parasitic losses in the drive train. The

horsepower

measured at the rear wheels is generally fifteen to twenty percent less than the horsepower measured at the flywheel now in our first run. We'll take it easy with a gentle pull of first gear and make sure we don't break anything. How hard it turned. I thought he was leaving for a second. Ha ha. That was fast. Here we go. We made one in a second. Do one in high gear, ever wonder what 24 pounds of boost looks like?

I want to see it again. This was a problem on the test bench. This thing generates so much momentum once you have everything installed, you can take them off. It was welded and installed and it only has one or two of its access points so you can separate it because the band clamps work great; well, after a quick fix our third run confirmed our suspicions, the low rear gear will not allow the power converter to spin fast enough to lock up, that's why they call it test and tune fine, there's no reason to Pushing this further today in a few weeks though, we'll be taking it out for final training at a local race track in the meantime a complete changeover is coming up.

While we

build

a blue oval big block without going red, here's the scrapyard starting point for building an economical engine. Now what is it? Well, it's a 385 series engine, which was Ford's last attempt at a production big block. There were three engines. In the 385 series, the 429 received the most attention and the most use in factory sports cars. This would be a nest where no one is home. Wow, four 60's were put into some performance cars, most of them found homes and heavier cars like t-birds, Mercury and Lincoln. and I'm quite surprised that there isn't much wear on the tops of the valves either due to their long production run, from 68 to 96.

Badly worn 460 engines are plentiful and quite cheap compared to the poor deaf ones. We found this one for $200 in a local graveyard from the '60s. They are well known for their sturdy bottoms,

part

s are plentiful, and despite that lackluster image, these engines are capable of huge torque and plenty of power. Here's a little-known fact: the legendary EFI engine can only be rated at 454 cubic inches. inches, while the 460 can be reached up to 550, everything that makes the 460 block the favorite base for drag racing, caused some bruises. I think the crank could be cleaned with just polish during an engine disassembly, you could learn a lot about how an engine works. worked and how well it was treated, for example hammered rod bearings are signs of heavy use and abuse, no matter what you were told when you bought your old engine, you will never know the real story until you get the size or even a motor economic.

It involves a trip to the machine shop and even good blocks will need a little work now. If you are reusing the crank like us, you will probably need to journal polish. Well, you can save money by doing some of the work yourself, such as reconditioning. reusable rods Our fuel in the machine shop, which included reconditioning these iron heads, cost about $500, about what we expected, so we're reusing everything here, including the rods we've pre-assembled, so everything here is a factory replacement or came from Comp. Cams for about eight hundred dollars, so with the block, machining and

part

s so far we're at fifteen hundred, not bad at all.

We also painted the block ourselves to save a few extra dollars. Now let's go ahead and install some freezing. plugs now here's a little tip. I see a lot of people just put them in place and press them down really well, which can cause water leaks, so we're going to use the little Loctite retaining compound that's going to take care of that leak now using the plug. slightly smaller than the freeze plug, tap it into place. It's also a good idea to tap the head bolt holes to make sure they are clean, otherwise machine material trapped inside could cause a problem when tightening the heads down like ours.

Here's how we can do a little detective work and tell us a little about when your engine was made and what it was made for all thanks to this casting number ours is a D 90 e - a B the D 9 which we learned means 1979 or later, the t means It was made for a truck and the e means Ford Engineering Group. The B just means there was a review at the foundry. Now we can attach the top half of the rear main seal. Now make sure the larger side of the seal. The lip is towards the front of the engine now, since we only had to polish the crank journals, we can get by with standard size bearings like these stock replacements we got off the street at O'Reilly, we have the usual touch of silicone on the ends of the seals and a little oil on the bearings we're ready for that crank now here's something for your Ford friends who are trivia fans the 385 series gets its name from the crank stroke of this very 3.85 engine OK, now the original main covers can continue with the arrows pointing toward the front of the engine, of course, and we'll hold them in place with factory replacement bolts that we torque to 90 foot-pounds in a criss-cross pattern from the center to the front. outside.

The factory replacement pistons that go in here are cast, of course. good for about 6,000 rpm and we'll have plenty of horsepower yeah now let's get ready to drop the rod and pee and I already greased the rings and put lube on the bottom of the bearing so I think we're ready to hit home . We now have a new 460 short block that is solid and also pretty cheap. Yes, it's nice. Hey, we'll show you how we finished the bottom end and the parts. We're going to use the top of our big budget block when we get back.

We're back with more budget buildup from our big block. Now our overhaul heads are almost ready to go back to the short block, but before we do I want to show them to you. Something now when you hear someone talk about valve lapping, this is what they mean when a valve is a lapping compound that is used between the face of the valve and the head and then turned. What this does is it gives you a perfectly consistent circle around the face of the valve. valve what this boils down to is a perfectly good seal when the valve is closed and no loss of compression here's a stock spring and here's one of the new ones we got from Comp Cams now it's a little higher and has a rate higher spring rate and get this, inside there is a shock absorber that prevents the spring from wobble at high revs now.

In case you're keeping score, the valve specs on these stock heads measure 206 on the intake, 165 on the exhaust side, we can also tell you that the combustion chambers measure 88 CCS and since they are cast iron, they are ridiculously heavy fel-pro gaskets on a budget bill, you can bet they'll cut corners here unless you want to blow a head gasket? You should always do it. Tighten your heads from the center out in three increments in our case from 80 to 142 foot-pounds. Whatever you do, don't forget to install the head dials on each end of the block, they are absolutely necessary to properly locate the heads. new cams, the offset hydraulic flat tappet with a gross valve lift of 494 on both intake and exhaust, now that it's a flat tappet, I have to lubricate each of these lobes, now this thing has a wide power band and For you, I would love to hear you dance.

We have a very noticeable idling in the distribution chains. Another thing you need to replace ours is an original point-to-point installed replacement. Oh, we're using the old cam boat, albeit with 245 pound-feet of torque and then the flat hydraulic tappet. The lifters can get in and need a lot of lube to help tame that cow, then our original replacement pushrods and finally the seal rockers. Okay, now for the adduction of our big block, this stock cast iron intake manifold is not only heavy. Very short in the full volume department, now our why and lightweight aluminum replacements, 37 pounds lighter and the extra volume will add to a wide power band from 1500 to 6000 rpm with the usual silicone layer placed on the ends of a block and new. together in place, we can put them in the intake and this you want to do right the first time.

Looks like we did, by the way, these boats have a torque spec of 25 foot-pounds. Our 460 big block came with an old point type distributor. replace it with a new high value part, but instead we are going to save about 130 dollars with a small upgrade from Tronics, first remove the condenser points and grommet, then clean any dirt or oil between the plate of the switch and camp, then we can install the ignition module and place the magnetic sleeve on the distributor shaft. Now we can insert the black and red cables with the new grommet through the housing.

Finally we set the air gap between the module and the magnetic sleeve using the 30,000 feeler gauge provided, now what that does. What I don't want to do is fire a distributor like this with a newer Hei coil because you would melt the module, but Ronix recommends something like this flamethrower that is rated at one and a half ohms at 40,000 volts, which is perfect for this. application again at the bottom we can bolt on the oil pump now we opt for a standard volume as we don't need the extra volume you need in a high performance application.

We got the pump, pickup and pan from O'Reilly Auto Now we can't put the parts on until the front timing cover is in place and that's part of this week's budget tip so stick around because we're going to have that advice and a trip to the engine test room right when we arrive. rebuilding on a horsepower budget projects that save you time and money horsepower delivery our low budget big BOTS build it all started with junkyard door 464 that we took apart to do some machining of the heads on the ones. blocks and crankshaft and then loaded it with factory replacement pistons hanging refurbished stock rods, replaced the springs with taller, stiffer ones from Cop and installed one of their flat-tappet hydraulic cams after a basic timing change setup, We put in the rest of our valvetrain components and fastened the top end with a new aluminum intake.

To save a few dollars, we upgraded the original distributor and assembled a replacement oil pump and pickup at a parts store to save you a few cents on a budget bill. You have to reuse as many original parts as possible and Russ, that means things like this layout even cover the water. neck and Oh, sincewe like the look of these old valve covers, they are on the list too, after we show you how to return them to almost new condition, starting by getting rid of this old gasket material, then we use solvent and a lot of elbow grease to remove the oil and the dirt built up after 30 minutes of this, your arm may be ready, but keep thinking about all the money, you're safe for a valve car this old, these things are still in pretty good shape.

They need a little work, although over the years they will most likely be used with just a quart gasket, what ends up happening is the area around the bolt hole gets knocked down and that adds to the a leaky joint around the rest of the rail, so I'm going to use this hammer and this dolly to get them back into shape with the dolly on top of the rail. I'll tap the underside to flatten them out while we're here, a little facelift won't hurt either. We're using dual color high temp ceramic paint with a more Ford blue aluminum finish for the timing cover, finally we put a new seal on and it's ready to go back into the engine, unlike aftermarket crankshafts which mostly They are internally balanced, our 460 crankshaft is externally balanced, so we have to run this counterweight on the front of the crankshaft.

Now when you disassemble, be sure to keep track of this part because they are very difficult to get. We are offloading our 60 depletion to some heads. I got from Flo Tech the pipes are one and 3/4 inch and feed into a three inch manifold to make it work. It just comes out with a new street carburetor which is perfect for this project. We got three versions. We got the 750 CFM version with a manual choke and mechanical secondaries and for $330 it sure fits our budget, yes, and they use a tumble polishing process which makes it look a lot more expensive than it actually is now, let's see it works.

I don't know about you guys. but there's nothing like the sound of a clock on a game of super 40 just for reference, the 60's factory after 79 like ours was rated at 215,447 lb-ft 348 bends, that's still 130 per above stock, now let's find the rest 472 foot-pounds 366 horsepower fall in love it's like the moment it isI love it, maeín, for the engine that was a dog in the past, this thing makes 493 foot-pounds at 3400, 378 horsepower at 4700 rpm, yeah I'm pretty happy and we only spent a little over $2,300, that's a pretty small budget, well we have to do it. come on but let's keep playing, see you next time with a special engine building challenge, we'll try to beat it, yes we tried.