1996 F250 460 baseline dyno results and head porting-RESULTS ARE IN!
 

Hi, I'm new to the site and thought I'd introduce myself and share some baseline dyno results with you guys. My name is Bo and I recently purchased a 1996 F250 crew cab 4X4 and love the truck! Used to have a powerstroke (which I understand is a bad word around here) and miss the mileage but there's something about this gasser truck I just love. Plans are to use the truck to tow a race car and boat around. I was pretty impressed with the stock power of this big block, truck seems to move out pretty well. But with anything, more power couldn't hurt especially being the majority of this truck's use will be towing. After some searching I discovered the factory air box noise reducer/restrictor and made quick removal of them with the band saw. Also installed a K&N element in the factory air box, removed the cat and installed a 2 chamber flowmaster muffler. With these quick and dirty mods completed, I'm amazed how much better the truck runs and how much more enjoyable it is to drive. I could really notice a difference with each mod. Now that the easy mods are done with though, it's time for some more!

I run a cylinder head porting shop that specializes mainly in the 2.3 ford 4 cylinders. I'm not here to promote my business or step on any toes, I just didn't see much (or any) before and after head porting results for these trucks and thought I would share what we find with others. I plan to remove the heads and freshen them up with a performance multi-angle valve job and perform some mild porting to the intake bowls and the exhaust ports. I don't have the heads off yet, but from what I have found searching these are the main areas of improvement on these stock castings. I plan to do a before and after flow test, along with a before and after dyno test to show any gains we have made (hope so at least!) I will also post pictures of the work on the heads we do for anyone curious or to help the DIY guys get an idea of what to do. I realize without larger injectors, headers, or other supporting mods the head flow improvements may not be all that great but we are going to do what we can and give it a shot. The engine has 140,000 on it and a good rebuild on the heads cant hurt anything even if we don't pick up the big power.

We dyno tested the truck today on the 'ol trusty dynojet chassis dyno down the street from us we use regularly for dyno work on the 4 bangers. Made 2 pulls that were within 1 hp and had identical torque so we stopped there. Peak power was 207@ 3850rpm, and peak torque was 319@3000rpm.

Mods again if you didn't read above are:

Stock 140,000 1996 Ford F250 460
Intake silencer/restrictor removed
K&N air filter element in stock air box
Cat replaced with straight test pipe
3" flowmaster 2 chamber muffler dumped at axle

Here is the baseline dyno sheet (sorry torque line is hard to see-it's a crappy scan):

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...dyno7-7-10.jpg

And here is the dyno mule!

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...rt1/0022-2.jpg

huh....only 207 whp...im kinda disappointed for it being a 460...i was hoping to see that it made more than that..but thats a good foundation to build on...also i dont know if u planned to or not but try doing a radius cut valve seat....that really helps with flow...also what bench are you using???

Those are good results for a big 4x4 on a chassis dyno. Roughly a 15% (factory rated @245HP) drive train loss is pretty good considering the transfer case and huge differential. I look forward to seeing how your project works out. Welcome to FTE!!

We will be performing a radius cut seat on the exhaust side, but multi-angle on the intake seat. Radius cut intake seats may flow a little better air (not always), but do not generally work well when flowing a fuel mixture. The angles help keep the fuel atomized and in suspension.

We use a 600cfm bench similar to a superflow 600, made by Saenz. It is calibrated to SF600 flow standards.

I couldn't find any stock or mildly modified EFI 460 dyno results on the net, so I don't have much to compare to. I did find a much more modified setup with a chip, headers and porting that only made another 15 or 20 better horsepower and torque though, and considering the drivetrain losses I think the numbers are about what should be expected. I'd be interested in hearing about others results myself.

Forgot to add we are running 87 octane fuel and will be for the after tests.

Thanks for the replies!

There was a series of articles (Project MPG) in Four Wheeler Magazine several years ago. The test mule was a 1988 Ford Centurion conversion C-350 4X4 w/7.5L engine and C6 transmission. The details are available online here: FOUR WHEELER Magazine's Project M.P.G.

They list the baseline HP/TQ in the article. It looks similar to yours. Some very good reading if you can follow along through all the links. There is a link to download all the articles in one large PDF file.

I have a 95 F350 dually with a 7.5 FI @ 135 k miles. Just bought it and it seems to run very strong. Does not smoke upon startup nor does it have any engine noise. Seems to me that the Ford 460 is a little long on the run as far as production but seems to be a solid engine. With the Multi Port FI the 460 has matured into a real puller. My 95 F350 has the cats removed and a flowmaster series 40 muffler installed. Still retains the stock airbox and everything else stock. My truck still pulls hard as if it was new. Haven't had it long enough to check the gas milelage but I'm sure it sucks. I didn't buy it for gas milelage, bought it to pull my 38' 5th wheel. I paid $3500.00 for the truck which seems to me to be totally justified considering that the new 2010 F350 Super Duties cost 50k or more! I know that the 460 is a little dated but it pulls great and I'm not making truck payments. By the way, I heard that the 4spd. auto transmissions in the 90's F350s were kind of weak, (especially with the 7.3 diesels) however my transmission shifts smoothly. Any info on the transmissions behind the 7.5 would be greatly appreciated......det45

By '95 the E4OD had a lot of internal improvements. As long the fluid/filter have been changed regularly and the transmission temperature has been kept under control it should last for many more miles.

Got the heads off, taken apart and washed today and also managed to get some baseline flow testing done. We tested the heads as is, right off the truck (aside from basic cleaning). Here are the specs and the numbers:

Stock F3TE casting (EFI)
28" H2O depression
1/2" clay radius on intake, no pipe on exhaust
4.25" test bore
SF600 flow bench calibration

Valve Lift---IN Flow---EX Flow
.100"--------58.2------44.7
.200"--------122.3-----85.8
.300"--------176.4-----109.9
.400"--------214.7-----124.4
.500"--------240.6-----133.4
.600"--------249.7-----141.8

You guys were not kidding about the poor exhaust flow, WOW. I put a test pipe on at .600" lift to see if the port really needed a pipe extension to work well and flow only jumped up another 7cfm to 148.8 I then began probing the port with a pitot tube to see what the velocity was doing and found a couple areas that could use some reshaping. I will give the heads a mild port job and see how the numbers respond. If that exhaust flow doesn't pick up to at least 70% of the intake flow after porting I am going to consider going to an oversized exhaust valve. I normally like around 80% intake:exhaust ratio and anything below 70 is really hurting power. Should have some initial results tomorrow evening and some pics. One neat feature Ford did was put a factory back-cut angle on the intake valve, looks about 30*. Good for the joe blow stock set-up, bad for guys like me looking for quick tricks for increased flow :) Stay tuned, and enjoy the pics.

Bo

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...%20460/001.jpg
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...%20460/003.jpg
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...%20460/004.jpg

Lookin good man, cant wait to see how this turns out.

X2 Great writeup and pics. I have always been told the EFI 7.5L heads were slugs, your work proves that.

I have the same engine/mileage in my 95 E350. Going to watch things and try them out on my engine.

I have been reading about changing out the timing set with a older "stright up" cam timing set. Might look into that and dyno it.

There is lots of potential in the EFI heads, the F3's actually have bigger valves stock than any other 385 series head.
There are porting guides with flow results online, and what can be done with the stock casting is mighty impressive.

From the two I've had apart, I'm reasonably certain the EFI engines already have a straight up timing set.

The valves that came out of these heads were 2.09 and 1.65. Did they ever come smaller than that?

Welcome Bo.. I think you're going to make friends quickly around here.:-X04 Compared to the small blocks there isn't much available in EFI friendly upgrades for the big motor so you may just secure some new customers with this thread alone. I'm definitely going to be watching it to see what improvements can be made to these heads.

The 87-92 E7TE EFI heads came with a 1.98 intake valve... Exhaust should have been 1.65 in any of those heads though.
My statement was a little flawed... half asleep when I posted They have the biggest valves of the EFI stuff, and it's standard carbed size stuff. But, the ports are much better...