motor options for a 1970 f600

[td25c]

td25c If you do not mind me asking how much did parts plus labor cost. my motor is a 360 will the parts be about the same as a 361.

My labor cost on the engine would have been between 1500$ and 2000$ .Its hard to say exactly as the customer had us doing various other tasks on the truck as well,Rebuilt the dump hoist,fix parking brake,etc. I figure about 25 hours time on an "in frame" rebuild like I did on the ford C700. I remember telling the customer we would keep the overhaul simple and just re-ring and install new rod & main bearings then we found two bad pistons and had to bore the one cylinder.Nothing can be simple seems like:Banghead. Good luck with your ford project Tyler. Another website that has allot of information on the older fords is www.fordification.com

 

[intenseklr]

I just came across this thread, Tyler have a 391 completely rebuilt 5 years ago, with 0 miles on it since. I had your same issue, bought a 1970 F600 ran it for awhile, then bunt the motor. I was told it had the 361 in it, so I found a short block 391 supposedly rebuilt, to swap in. Come to find out somebody had put a 360 in it, so I had to source out all the FT parts from a local heavy truck wrecking yard. Once I had it in we fired it up, and proceeded to have some issues with it and spun a main bearing. Somebody messed up during the rebuild I guess :beatsme
Anyways I pulled it back out and sent to a good racing friend or ours with a machine shop and had him tear it down and make it right.
Got it back in a running, did the break in on the motor. Then proceeded to go through the brakes and such before loosing interest and a need for the dump truck.
It has sat until last week. I pulled the plugs, shot in a little lube, changed oil, pulled the Holley 4V carb cleaned it up, and she fired right up and purring like a kitten.
It has a rebuilt Holley 4V, new remamufatured govonor distributor, new water pump, fuel pump, all new internals.

I'm in the Pacific NW though. I've got it listed on CL for $750 in Portland, OR

 

[Tyler1022]

I just came across this thread, Tyler have a 391 completely rebuilt 5 years ago, with 0 miles on it since. I had your same issue, bought a 1970 F600 ran it for awhile, then bunt the motor. I was told it had the 361 in it, so I found a short block 391 supposedly rebuilt, to swap in. Come to find out somebody had put a 360 in it, so I had to source out all the FT parts from a local heavy truck wrecking yard. Once I had it in we fired it up, and proceeded to have some issues with it and spun a main bearing. Somebody messed up during the rebuild I guess :beatsme
Anyways I pulled it back out and sent to a good racing friend or ours with a machine shop and had him tear it down and make it right.
Got it back in a running, did the break in on the motor. Then proceeded to go through the brakes and such before loosing interest and a need for the dump truck.
It has sat until last week. I pulled the plugs, shot in a little lube, changed oil, pulled the Holley 4V carb cleaned it up, and she fired right up and purring like a kitten.
It has a rebuilt Holley 4V, new remamufatured govonor distributor, new water pump, fuel pump, all new internals.

I'm in the Pacific NW though. I've got it listed on CL for $750 in Portland, OR

That sounds like a really good deal. but I would hate to know the shipping bill from OR to NC.

 

[old1]

gr79

gr79,

Thank You for that information, about the Ford V-8 engines.

Never heard anything about the 428 having marine gaskets, great stuff.


Ok, Here is the question: In about 1967-1970, a few Ford or Mercury cars had the 427 engine. I know of a Cougar, not sure of the year but I would think 1967-1968. It has the 427 emblem on the fenders, and I believe the code is in the serial number.

How and where did the 427 come in, was it a special assembly line?

Of course the 427 could be ordered over the counter; but some say it came off the assembly line.

old1

 

[Birken Vogt]

I wish everyone who had these type of experiences would post them somewhere on the Internet for posterity to find.

That would solve a lot of the mystery of how these types of things are different and how they are similar and where to look for parts to keep them going, and why they worked and why they didn't.

Now if only we had someone like this from inside the Cat or Cummins plants that could explain why they did it that way, way back when.

As a Ford hourly employee, had the true honor to work on the truck engine assy. line.
Location was Dearborn Engine Plant, Rouge Area, Dearborn, MI. 1973-1974.

A Ford employee helping assemble 10's of thousands 330-360-361-390-391-428's.
My station installed intake gaskets prior to intake manifold installation.
Production line rate averaged 50-60 engines per hour. The line rarely stopped.
Had to learn a few additional jobs nearby my station (tag relief was my title).
Head bolts, oil pumps, 'dropping' (installing) intakes, intake bolts.

Toured the plant many times watching other jobs being done.
Hot test, piston fab, was pretty cool. Fond memories of it all.

QC was minimal compared to today's standards.

360-390 were standard pickup truck engines, the most common daily production runs.
Motorcraft/Autolite 2V. Seen some 4V 390's.
Yellow colored valve springs, regular car type timing chains, were a giveaway.

Much less common build 330-361-391 came in medium or heavy duty by changing the parts mix.
Real Holley 4V's, some 2V. We welcomed the change of pace these required.
Premium everything were used in them.
Gaskets, manifolds, heads, valves/springs, pistons, big cranks, double roller timing chains etc.
Some of the low production 330's had large dia but short bell housings (automatics?)

I remember the days when the rare and also low production 428 boat versions were scheduled.
A general foreman would lead the batch announcing: "The Marines are coming".. (marine gaskets and parts required).

 

[Birken Vogt]

How old is the boss in this shop? I would have thought the last shop that could in-frame bore a small gas engine quit doing that kind of work 20 years ago. That is amazing to me that somebody still does that.

We rebuilt a 361 engine for a customer about a month ago. It was in a 1967 ford C700 dump truck. He drove it over to the shop spitting & sputtering on 5 cylinders and informed me it also drank oil . The missing cylinders was due to oil fouled sparkplugs .Being the truck was a cabover I opted to "inframe" rebuild the engine. Heads were in good shape as far as valvetrain goes.Our problem was rings and found one piston with a broken skirt and another piston that the snap ring boss had broke allowing the wrist pin to put some grooves in the cylinder wall.I ended up boring the one cylinder .030 over taking care of the grooves that the wrist pin left.Could still see a little mark but felt ok.And replaced the piston that had a broken skirt.Ended up using the rest of the pistons as they looked fine.Rolled in new main & rod bearings ,rear seal and put it back in service.Standard pistons for the 361 are getting hard to find,.030 oversize no problem. My cost on parts was around 650$ just working on the bottom end. If you can get the parts reasonable then rebuilding is a good option in my opinion.

 

[Shenandoah]

Now if only we had someone like this from inside the Cat or Cummins plants that could explain why they did it that way, way back when.

Not referring to Cat or Cummins, but just a general observation on why things sometimes get done the way they get done...

Two of the main driving factors are 'technology lock-up' (Patents and Licenses), and 'momentum' (we're too far down this road to change things now).

The first one is fairly straight forward and the easiest to understand. If a company owns a technology and doesn't want competitors to use it they can keep it in house and refuse to license it thereby requiring the competitor to use or invent other ways of doing basically the same thing. This can apply to manufacturing processes as well as the products produced by such.

The second, momentum, is counter-intuitive and can lead to such things as dismal quality and unhappy customers. The way it starts out is simple. A task is assigned to a team of engineers/designers to create a new or next generation of product(s). Inherent in the assignment is a proposed deadline for bringing the product to market. Rarely in the budget is there room for "we'll take it to market when it's finally perfected". The days of corporate raw R&D driving things went the route of the Dodo bird. Bean counters can't sleep at night in that environment. It still happens, but that is the exception to the rule.

Getting back to momentum, once a foundation is laid down whereby the scope of the project takes on a concrete form such that the path is clear on how the departments will proceed, any changes to the overall plan create huge hurdles that are easier and more cost effective to simply postpone or kill off entirely. The flip side is 'good' momentum whereby a company has a tried and true process or product and builds iterations around the good core design.

I've sat in meetings where changes to a product line were simply killed because to postpone taking to market the 'as designed' product would substantially jeopardize an already massive capital expenditure and also jeopardize future funding for the project. And I'm talking about engineering changes that cropped up due to unforeseen design flaws built into the original design. In other words, to make the product live up to the advertising hype, and hence long term customer satisfaction, the product would need to be changed. Believe it or not, that is not one of the overriding concerns corporations care about. They care about the next quarter.

Ask anyone who has bought a Ford product where the spark plugs seized in the holes, or whose 6.0 didn't give them a trouble free service life if they thought something was wrong with the design. I'll bet they'll say, "Yea, how did that leave the factory?" The answer is simple...momentum.

Sometimes things are done that don't make sense to the end user but from a corporate standpoint they couldn't be done any other way. It's the nature of the beast.