Alright, so...we completed my 418 stroker tonite, it fired off after turning over just twice! I had the biggest smile on my face because it sounded like a beast! So i let it run at about 2000rpm for around 30min and than changed the oil and started it back up. (after we had it timed and idleing at 800rpm) so i start going down the road, and its got like twice as much power it seemed like compared to my 360, and than i shift into 4th and lost all power! it was steaming terribly so i drove back home and opened the hood...steam everywhere! the valve covers were boiling hot. I took off the radiator cap because it was cold and it was all gone. so i drained the oil, most of which was water, a creamy which mixture, so....what the **** is the problem haha, it ran sooooo perfect!!! and now there's water in the oil!!! What are some of your opinon's on whats wrong!?? PLEASE HELP!

 

If you got lucky it might just be an intake gasket. Pretty common on these.
Not so lucky a head gasket.
Really unlucky......

Once its cool refill the radiator and get one of those pressure testers on it. We already know its gonna leak. Pull the plugs and look for water. No water is good. Pull the distributor and valve covers & look under the intake with a dental mirror and a flashlight.... It takes a little practice but you can actually see the bottom of the intake gasket & look for leaks. I learned this the tough way - trust me....

Report back...

 

Run air to 1 cyl at a time and see if it pushes water out the radiator. PS. just fill the radiator with water untill you get this figured out.

 

You really made me nervous when you stated: "we also grinded some off the heads where the pistons go into the heads" and that you had used Keith Black dished pistons- because dished pistons are not supposed to "go into the heads". I had asked you if you might have used 390 pistons instead of 410 pistons, and you confirmed that you had, which explained the pistons hitting the heads, the incorrect 390 pistons stuck up above the decks quite a bit. I had asked how you laid out the area you "grinded some off", and what you used to make and how you measured the cuts, and you didn't respond. I'm just afraid that if you made heavy enough cuts in the head decks to clear the incorrect pistons, you may have weakened the head decks enough that one of more may have blown out into the water jacket, especially since it blew out that much water that fast- and I hope I'm wrong. Even if not, the correct thing to do would be to bite the bullet, get the right pistons, and start over with a fresh set of heads

 

Well they weren't dished, they had the step on them so that should go into the head right? if not than i do not know, and we also did not grind them down much, between 1/16in and 1/8in, and it was only on half of the bottom of the head, since i don't know all the technical terms, its hard to explain what we ground off, my father, who went to college for engines, said it was alright and he has built plenty of motors in his day and was alright with the build. He was sure it was something to do with the intake but hell, anything is a possibility at this moment. i just pray nothing is cracked, but this kind of sucks because i am on a deadline for around the first week in april haha, but thanks for the info so quick guys! i'll check it out tomorrow.

 

It was already to late tonite to check anything but hopefully tomorrow we will see what is going on, thanks for the info and i will get back as soon as possible.

 

This sounds really wrong. Can you scan a drawing or something...

 

Alright so here's a picture of another ford head we had lying around, we cut to about halfway or less through the white line. this was the best i could do to show you but this is not the head that is on my truck. Also we have taken out the spark plugs and........no water! so thats good, than we took off the rocker arms and pushrods and the 2 pushrods for the #6 cylinder were both bent, would you know why? the valve springs are not to hard but they could have been bad before we put them in. Also once we took off the intake, we found the gasket on the drivers side was blown out on at the back of the motor. we figured this happened because there was some slight pitting on the head so the gasket could not seal completely tight, so we will use form-a-gasket all around the entire gasket to make sure this cannot happen again! i hope this works and if you have a reason for me not to do this please let me know, thanks in advance

 

Doesn't look like you have a head issue, Kinda sounds like you have a intake gasket issue. If your pushrods were bent on #6 than the it is possible that water had gotten in that cylinder. Water does not compress!! Yeah I am not a big fan of grinding on the head but if it looks to work try it. While you have the intake off and the rocker arm off. All your valves should be closed I would try filling each cylinder up and doing a leak check on each cylinder just to verify that you do not have a blown head gasket or the pistons did not hit the head when you started bringing the RPMS up to drive it. With out any type of measurements on seeing how far your piston was from your head or do you have a measurement of how far the piston comes above the deck of the block? Its hard to say what happen. Just remember that as the engine turns more RPMS their is some stretching going on. Hope you find your problem. Really sucks that you had a issue. But when I broke in my engine I bent a valve cause I over reved the engine before I put the second springs on the heads.

 

Didn't follow your build, but did you have the heads reworked at all, new springs and seals?????

Or did they look pretty much like the one in the picture?

 

Polcat i will get back to you on that, but when we took out each spark plug, we shined a flashlight down in and there was no wetness what so ever so im pretty sure that wasn't the case...just too much hp haha just kidding, i hope it is nothing major but we had it up to around 3500rpm while we were breaking it in, i mean we had it running for 45min and we had already driven it around, than on the second drive this happened so i couldn't tell you what went wrong.

But for if these look like my heads, no they do not, this was just a junk one sitting around so i could show barry where we grinded my heads down at. we bought some redone 390 gt heads from a guy in california off of ebay. new valves and valve springs so that was all A+ but he is my build just so that you can see what i all have in it. some people dont have the best to say about it but while it ran for the first 45min, it sounded amazing!!!

390 fe block bored .40 over
Keith black performance step dish pistons - 20cc i do believe
Eagle connecting rods
.292duration comp cam hydraulic flat tappet
comp cam lifters
comp cam valve springs
comp cam timing chain
3.98 crank (428 crank)
390 gt heads
edlebrock performer intake
msd 6A
msd coil
accel spark plug wires
electronic ignition
electronic fuel pump
hedman headers
600cfm edlebrock carb-just to get it broke in, then going to a 750
compression around 9:5
cam at 050 lift is 244int/244exh, advertised is 292int/292exh
intake lift .560
lobe is 110

 

Do you have a compression tester? I have a sears one that I take out the little valve stem to run air to a cylinder to check for bad valves or bad head gasket. I use this for changing valve seals also. I hope this helps.

 

What was the pin height on the piston ? or what was the actual piston ID we can look it up. But a 410 piston should have a pin height .120"? closer to the top of the piston to offset the extra throw of the crank. 3.98"-3.75" = .23" the pin height is 1.76" IIRC for a 390 piston and 1.62" for a 410 piston IIRC and that is a big if LOL Grinding the heads was not what I would have chosen to do as it would be impossible to get similar CC results unless you bothered to CC them and work them until correct. Anyway you look at it that just is too much work for the result which is I assure you a CR way above 9.5 to 1

 

Well i couldn't tell you the piston ID, all i know is we got 390 keith black pistons, i know it probably wasn't the best idea but, it's what we did haha, a little home manufacturing never hurt anything...i hope, you just wait till i can get a compression tester and i'll let you know on that part, i dont mind a higher compression to bad because i was planning on running half E85 and regular gas in it? i've heard that's like a mild race fuel to get a little more horses out of it, maybe i'm wrong tho? but if i do get to high of compression, i'll have to buy race fuel and i dont want that haha

 

By doing a compression ck with the cam in to play you will get a dynamic compression ck. You really need to do the math to figure out what your static compression. I know mine is closet o 12 to 1 with the pistons I am running and they sit .004 over the deck. With C8AEH heads. You really need to get a casting number off your heads to help figure what you have. FE engines had many different chamber sizes. Sounds like your going in a good direction on figuring everything out. I did alot of measuring while building my engine before I completely finished. Another to think about is, is your intake mating up to your heads correctly?? You said you bought the heads off ebay if the heads or deck of the block have been machined it can really mess up how your intake will mate up?? Just another thought??