Hey guys I am new to FTE and to FE's in general so bear with me while I start from the beginning.

I inherited my uncles 1965 long bed that has a non original 390 in it. The last thing he ever did to it (eight years ago) was replace the head gasket and he could never get it to run right.

So After rebuilding the carb, changing the oil, putting new gas and new fuel lines, I got it to run. It runs and idles at 650 RPM but the engine is very shaky, even when raised to 2k RPM. It doesnt feel like an ignition miss and I checked for vacuum leaks. It feels like when the valves are too tight on a chevy. I pulled the valve covers and non of the rockers have any slack even after sitting over night.

When He had the heads off, he had a valve job done and the heads resurfaced. I think that this was probably not the first time this has been done to these cylinder heads and or block and now the tolerance in the lifters in all taken up.

My plan is to order new adjustable pushrods and see if that does the trick, but I wanted to check here first to see if I had any other options and what your opinions of this are.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for any and all help,

Will

 

Push Rods no go ??/ adjustable rocker 's if that's the problem ??/ Has he ever had it running smooth after the rebuild ??/ Ford FE are noted for balance problems if either the fly wheel (standard transmission ),flex-plate( Automatic transmission )or harmonic balance r have been changed out ( several different combination thru the years??/) or if it has external weights it could have thrown a weight off ??/ As that would cause something similar to what your describing ??/ It's been many moons ago that I rebuilt my Fe but if I remember right its either on the 429-460 or the FE that there's a crank weight that's either on the front of the engine under the timing chain cover or behind the fly wheel??/ What transmission are you running ??/
Here's a web for rocker arm affects??/ http://www.eatonbalancing.com/blog/tag/ford-fe/
Here's a web for Fly wheels ect. ??/ http://www.network54.com/Forum/74182...alance+Problem

 

The stock pushrods went right in but i think they are too long. I think adjustable pushrods would be cheaper than adjustable rockers. The engine ran smooth before the head rebuild so I dont think its a balance issue. Im running a c4 transmission.

thanks, will

 

390's are internally balanced. No counterweights on the flywheel/flexplate or the harmonic damper in the front. I would check for vacuuum leaks before doing anything else. Start it up, then while it's idling, take a can of spray carb cleaner and spray everywhere there could be a vacuum leak (gaskets and around the base of the carb) if the engine smooths out when the spray gets sucked into the leak, you've found your problem.

 

Baddad, that's exactly what I did I even took the valve covers off so I could spray the intake runners while it was running. I went ahead and ordered the adjustable pushrods. I won't get a chance to install them for a few weeks though, but i will let you know what happens.

Thanks again, Will