Ford sold a LOT of 534's in the 60's for use as irrigation pump engines out West. They ran on natural gas 24/7 for long periods. Oil and filters were changed on the fly - 2 filters with a changeover valve, drain half the oil and refill on a schedule. I worked with them at Ford engineering back then. Great engines.
534's ... hadn't thought of that one for a while. Back in the early 70's I was driving tandem dumps for a couple different contractors. This was before diesels were really used in tandems and just about every medium duty truck was a gasser.
Left police work for the sanity and tranquility of a truck cab, not to mention the hours were easier to live with and it paid a LOT better. When I started they gave me a brand new Ford T-850 SuperDuty tandem with a 13 cu. yd. dump body, 534 with a 5 speed main and a 3 speed auxillary transmission. What a HOG that truck was! Slow and clumsy. Took forever to get up to speed ... just plain miserable! I managed to irritate management and to "punish me" they took my new SD away and gave me a 3-4 year old C-70 Chevy, also a 13 yd. tandem, but this one had a 427 with a 5 spd main, 4 speed auxillary ... now that baby ran!!
As previously stated, the 534 is an industrial grade, low rev, high torque engine. The only thing it has going for it is "cubes" and IMHO there were smaller displacement engines that did a much better job under the same conditions. I seriously can't see a use for something so big and heavy in anything smaller than a large truck or, as cited, in a stationary application.
We have a 534 SD in a 1982 L-900 Fire Truck at our Volunteer Fire dept.
It is our oldest truck, but probably my favorite! It is backed by an Automatic trans.
The acceleration is not good, but it is a heavy truck with a load of 1000 gallons of water. It also has a Ford industrial engine mounted mid-ship for the pumper. I am not sure on the cubic inches but it is a V-8 also.
The truck has a top speed of about 65, must be the governed deal or something.
The truck can't pass a gas station, especially if we run both engines for very long.
All & all it is reliable, and smooth, and it sits higher than any other truck we have!!
Greg58
i saw a 534 in a charter bus in the junkyard the other day, i think its a 72, it had a holley carb with all the govoner crap on it, it hasnt ran in a few years. but i remember when it did run, and it moved that bus pretty good with an auto tranny.
Are these engines in any way related to Ford's 383, 410 (not the FE), 430, and 462 V8's that were used in old '58 to '68 Lincolns, Mercury's and Edsel's? I read somewhere that these car engines were big, heavy, and have a Y-block design similar to the FE engines. Since Ford used the 385 series in medium and heavy trucks, I thought to myself, maybe that's what Ford did to these heavy car engines after the lighter 429 and 460 replaced them. I don't know. But I wish there was a book on these Super Duty V8's too. We ought to bugg the 4x4 truck magazine companies, and try to see if they would build a 534 and drop it into a 4x4 pickup. They do it with those 5-ton axles and such, why not the big truck engines too? They think that they can get power from anything, write or e-mail them, telling them "I bet you can't do it" or something. It may motivate them to have buildups other than Chevy's. But if you want a gas V8 engine bigger than the 534 Ford, there are some out there from other manufacturers. International Harvester made a series of V8 engines called the LV and they came in 401, 478, 537, 549, and 605 CI versions; not to mention the RD inline six cylinders that came in 372, 406, 450, and 501 CI. I'm a Ford freak who is a close ally of International.
The big 534 also had smaller members of the same family at 477, 401 and maybe other sizes as well. As a performance engine, these would be very disappointing.
I think that the potential is there for performance. Heck, if they can make a 5 horse Briggs and Stratton push 40 HP.....
The two main things you'll run into when building one of these engines is cost and the heads' inability to breathe.
First off, you'd have to have TONS of custom parts made:
1) You're not going to get compression from milling the head, and you're not going to find any forged pistons in a Jeg's catalog anytime soon. You may be able to get Ross or Wiseco to make you some and that ain't cheap.
2) Camshaft......another custom part. But not impossible to have made; just costly.
3) To the heads themselves. It's been pointed out that the valves aren't very large. That can be remedied, however, the ports are where this engine really suffers. Having rebuilt one of these engines a few years back for a farmer friend of mine for his 69 F800 tandem, I can tell you that the exhaust ports are the same size as a 302's. No joke...and the sad part about it is that a small block's exhaust ports are too small even for 351 cubes....let alone 534 of them (that's the trouble with EVERY FORD ENGINE!!!)
The intake is a whole other story. It's goofy. Not much room for improvement unless you have a really steady hand with a die-grinder flex-shaft extension.
4) Headers....I can't find a listing for them. Another custom part.
5) Adaptability. They have an SAE pattern for the bellhousing and a HUGE pilot in the crank. You may have trouble putting a ZF (or any other COMMON transmission) behind one.
We are planning on warming up our 534.. We have never had one of these apart but we understand it has the plank style head, small valves, etc. So here's a few questions for anyone who's had one apart. We have a new set of .030 pistons so we are thinking of getting compression by milling the deck of the block.
1. How thick is the deck of the block??? How much could be milled?
2. How far down in the hole is the piston on the 534?
3. Could the engine benefit from slightly larger valves or are the runners completely the limiting factor?
4. Could the cam be reground for more lift and duration.
We're not trying to go racing... just increase power for marine use. We'd like to change the engine from 277HP @3400rpm to maybe 350HP @ 4000
I've seen 534s as late as '82, a lot of small-town fire trucks using Ford cabovers have 534s. Bunch of them still around too.
My dad was looking at one last year for a dumptruck, it was a 69 w/ a 5spd single speed rear, 30,000 miles never been turned over, most of the mileage were pump miles because a fire pumper ticks off miles when its pumping. My dad drove it when he first went to work for the city of Toccoa, Georgia in the late 80's. The truck ran 70 wide open, up hill, downhill, with the fire bed and 1000 gals of water, 4.88 rearend. Could have bought the entire truck for 2k
I thought about building a tractor pull truck out of it. hehehe
The above post really hits it on the 'head'- the cylinder heads were a problem on the Super Duty V-8's. The ports are indeed very small, and the intake manifold setup is constrictive. Basically, there was an intake runner cast into each head that ran the length of the head connecting the ports, and they were joined by an intake manifold of sorts, that was not really much more than a bridge between the runners that the carburetor attached to. The incoming air/fuel had to make two 90 degree turns before it made it into the cylinder! No wonder they only came with small Holley 4bbls.. In all fairness, these engines were never intended to turn much faster than 3000 r.p.m.'s, so these shortcomings were not seen as much of an issue. The other large gasoline truck engines at the time were much the same, with the exception of the G.M.C. 'Magnum' 478 V-6 and 637 V-8. These had large ports, 2.25 intake valves, and good manifolds. Very strong running engines. I think by the mid-60's when the 'FT' 361XD and 391XD truck 'FE' engines came out, the Super Duty was probably obsolete. The 391XD was a great truck engine, had about as much useable power as the 477, used a lot less gas, and had a better power band so you didn't need to shift it so much. When emission controls were required on large trucks later in the 70's, the more modern big blocks like the Ford 429 Lima and Chevy 427 ran much better than the Super Duty and used a lot less fuel. I couldn't imagine trying to build a high performance Super Duty, though if someone did get one into an old F-350 it might make for an interesting truck. Slow, but interesting.
Took forever to get up to speed ... just plain miserable! I managed to irritate management and to "punish me" they took my new SD away and gave me a 3-4 year old C-70 Chevy, also a 13 yd. tandem, but this one had a 427 with a 5 spd main, 4 speed auxillary ... now that baby ran!! 
