Hey guys,
A guy I know named Dan has a 66 Comet Cyclone. I have been trying to convince him to go to the Ford show in Carlisle for a while. He finally said he'd go this year. The Cyclone has a 2v 289. It is pretty worn out. Have to find some sand in the road to spin the tire. He said before he goes to Carlisle he wants to rebuild the engine. He wants more pep. We talked about stroking the 289 to a 331. Then talked about a 408 Windsor. He didn't seem to interested in either. Then he comes to me and says he wants a big block. I said awesome, a 460? No, I want a 390. Cool. We kicked around the idea on what to do. Basically, we are going with a 445 kit, probably the E-brock heads, E-brock Performer RPM dual quad and FPA headers. Trying to decide on a cam. Probably a hydraulic roller. either 236 or 242 @ .050 on the intake side. Will probably flip a coin on which cam.
Now, we need to find a 390, FE bell C-6 and a 9' rear. Plus all the little odds and ends that connect everything---like mounts, linkages and radiator. We looked at a junk 66 390 Fairlane. Boy, it was junk, was only worth scrap and a ton of aggravation since it was buried up to the rockers for 20 years. The guy wouldn't budge off of $3000. HA! Good luck. There were a few other 390's around on Craigslist, but not inspiring cause we still need all the stuff to fit the engine in the car. Then Dan found a 67 Ranchero at a junkyard and bought the whole car. Was an H code car. 390, C-6 and 9" rear with 3.25 gears. Also a nice bonus is the Ranchero has power steering---which Dan's Comet did not have. The shameful thing is the Ranchero is actually restorable, but it would take a lot of work.
We put the Ranchero on the lift at the transmission shop and pulled the pan on the trans. Strawberry milkshake. Got some water out of it. Then pulled the drain plug on the engine and looked like coffee with a lot of creamer. Water in there too. I pulled out the trans and as I was taking out the convertor nuts I couldn't turn the engine over by hand. I hooked up a jump pack to the starter an was able to bump it over---which was a good sign. I had already removed the exhaust and as I bumped over the engine water shot out of the drivers side exhaust manifold----not so good. We removed everything else off the engine to get it ready to lift out. It was getting late by that time so we decided to continue the next day.
Come Friday, I was able to find some time between transmission jobs to get the engine hoist running and moved over. We put a chain on the engine and got lined up. You might be thinking, what kind of engine hoist needs to get running? Well, this one has two engines. An upper and a lower. I finally found a good purpose for my Grove TM155 truck crane. We parked the crane outside and telescoped the boom right into the bay, over the car and lined up with the engine. The 18 ton capacity crane had no problems lifting the FE---even with the cast iron intake in place.
We pulled apart the 390 to find that it was already bored 60 over. That wasn't so bad as it didn't look like there were many miles on the rebuild as there was no ridge on top. Perhaps we could just hone and deck the block. As we got further taking the engine apart I found cylinder 8 has either a really heavy rust streak or a crack. Well, sure enough, it was a crack. Water got between the piston and cylinder wall and just pressed it in until the wall cracked. Not a big deal, but now we needed another block. Besides I wasn't sure if the 60 over block would have been sturdy enough for the stroker kit. And, if the 60 overbore was machined properly to begin with.
Today we found another block, drove 2 1/2 hours to pick it up. The heads were off and the seller gave me a dial caliper to measure the bore which came out right near 4.05 and there were no signs of rust. So far, it looks pretty good---we'll find out for sure when it comes apart.
More to come...
