I think it's fair to say that the posters in this thread have adequately illustrated what the problem with the 400 was. Out of the box it was a crappy engine that sucked a lot of gasoline and didn't provide performance to match. The average person doesn't buy a vehicle to have to spend hundreds and thousdands of dollars waking the engine up.

 

I absolutely hate it when some little girl gets all jacked out of shape because they care too much about what other people say about their engine, so they feel the need to start a thread like this and then NEVER reply.

Trouble makers that start threads like this...

 

Sorry guy I also have a day job that some time puts me away from electronics for a month at a time

 

Are you a Navy SEAL?

 

No just the army

 

So... I take it with numbers like that that you've got the carburetor issues sorted out?
If you've got 575 horsepower and 600 lbs of torque, with 10'' of vacuum, then I doubt you have a towing cam like your other thread states.

 

Well I have owned 2 trucks with 400 engines and one with a 351 M and a Bronco with a 351 m had no major problems with any of them they all ran 200 thousand miles .I always ran 10 W 40 or 20 W 50 valvoline oil and changed it every 2500 to 3000 miles .These engines biggest problem was too much oil pressure they had a tendency to wear out rod and main bearings .All of mine I replaced the rod and main bearings and installed a high volume oil pump at around 120 thousand miles .I worked on hundreds of these engines in the late 70 s and 80 s mostly rod and main bearings Ford offered .001 .002 and.003 bearings for these motors along with 429s and 460 s .460 s and 429 s used the same main bearing and had a whole lot less problems.All in all I always thought they were a good motor if you took care of them.I have 2 460 s in trucks and will say they are better motor but the 400 ford in its day was a good pulling motor just did not wind up very fast.Most of the people that put them down did not use good oil or change the oil often enough as far as head problems I never seen any in the 20 yrs I worked at a Ford Dealer