Just out of curiousity what can I expect to get for miles out of my 351W before a rebuild is required? I have 110,000 miles and drive about 50% city/offroad/moderate towing and remainder is highway. I keep up with all the regular preventative maintenance stuff too. Burns a quart every 1500 miles. I read in the past about guys with the inlines getting 200,000 + miles easy - is it unreasonable to expect the same out of a 351? Thanks!

 

i have 160,000 miles on my 88 351w. runs smooth and pretty strong but i believe it to be tired and would like to rebuild it. leaks at the rear main and burns very little oil. it was a farm truck before i bought it and we work it on our farm and haul horses all the time so it has seen a reasonably hard life. good engine. i would say you have a few years left in her yet!

cheers,

Rusty.

 

I did my rebuild on my 1986 351w at 165,000 miles mainly because i had a cracked head and the holley carb ran poorly. You will probably have an incident that will give you the option to rebuild. Hope its a ways off for you, but done in that 150,000 area means reuse of standard crank,rods/heads etc etc if you want. Wait too long and it could get spendy. Alan

 

 

If the timing gear and chain have never been replaced, you're "past due"! 100,000 is about the point at which the nylon teeth begin breaking off the crankshaft timing gear. If you still have good oil pressure when hot and you're burning a qt. every 1,500 miles, you should have lots of miles left in this engine. I drove a '73 Torino w/351W 186,000 miles. Engine was still good except I burned up an exhaust valve. I changed the timing chain/gears at about 129,000 miles; the nylon teeth on the drive gear were all cracked but none had broken off yet; I was way past due! I've always been partial to the 351Cs, but the Ws are excellent engines and were made for a lot more years than the Cs so are much more plentiful.