Author Topic: A little taste of 1995 FE nostalgia....  (Read 2179 times)

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Falcon67

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Re: A little taste of 1995 FE nostalgia....
« Reply #15 on: August 24, 2022, 11:35:14 AM »
I've looked for one of those "small bell 400" blocks for years, never seen one.  A long while back I spent an entire Saturday in the big wrecking yard here, looked at 45 cars with 400s.  Not a single SBF style unit. Note that IIRC, 400 blocks in the years before 77 had a valley cracking problem.  So finding a SBF 400 may not be the holy grail you might think.  Easier to find a C4 (C5?) from a 78, 79 T-bird with a 351M that had the 341M/400/429/460 bell patterns to pan fill C4.  I think the door plate trans code is "X".  I have two of those.  Except for that oddball 400, all 351M/400s use the "460" bell pattern. Also - it's easy enough to buy a JW adapter bell to go from the 460 pattern to a C4 and such.

blykins

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Re: A little taste of 1995 FE nostalgia....
« Reply #16 on: August 26, 2022, 03:08:28 PM »
Well, got some follow-up news, but unfortunately not good news.

My buddy got new bearings rolled in the Tunnel Port, so I rolled down this morning to go help on the dyno. 

First lick out of the gate was 610 hp @ 6500.   We didn't know much about the combination since someone just brought the engine to my buddy's shop to dyno, so we started out conservatively at 38° timing.  It showed on the plug that it wanted a little more, so we gave it 41 (from my experience, the TP engines like 40-42°).  It dropped 10 hp and then when we put the timing back to where it was, it lost 10 more.  That's usually a tell-tale sign of bearing issues, so we shut it down before it did something bad.  Cut the filter open and there was copper all in it, so that's that.

Brent Lykins
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