I just purchased a 460 that I was told, pulled from a '78 F150, but I am a little skeptical. I am just familiarizing myself with the 385 series of engines as all of my experience is in the small block world. First flag for me as to question the dating of the motor is the distributor. It is a flat grey top, looks to be TFI distributor with remote mounted coil. The distributor has the wires coming out of the front, not the slotted plug in type TFI distributors. Is this indeed a TFI distributor and do you know what year Ford swapped to TFI? All the castings support it possibly being a '78....as in the heads are D3VE and the Intake D6. Other thing that threw up a question flag is that I also picked up the C6 tranny with it and it has wire running from the gear selector up to a plug, similar to a MLPS. Not sure what it would have plugged into in '78. What are some other things to look for to identify what year motor I have?

Thanks in advance.

 

you can drop any year distributor in a 460 i guess as none came with a roller cam from factrory,so telling the year of the engine by distributor you cant, i think only from the casting numbers or piston skirt length as the efi blocks had longer skirts , you must be referring to the remote mounted igniton module not the coil, that started in 88 for the 460 with the efi

 

Thanks...any idea on the MLPS on the C6 tranny? It's got to be an mlps of sorts.

 

If it was as old as 1978 it would be internal balance.
Is there a counterweight behind the harmonic balancer?
Or is it a cylindrical spacer?

 

only the E4od trans has a MLPS that trans is garbage, c6 will waste gas a bit more but more reliable i prefer the c6 over any overdrive trans,sure you can beef up the e4od but still dont trust them, that plug on the c6 would be the neutral safety switch so it wont start in gear and backup light

 

thanks....didn't think of the nss. On my '73 that was on the column

 

Spacer behind the balancer...so?