Anybody know if Ford made a 429 marine block and if so is marine style better or worse than standard 429 block?
Thanks.

 

i don't know if they made a 429 marine engine, but they made lots of 460 marine engines which would be the same block as the 429 (only difference between a 429 and 460 is the crank and piston pin location, bores are the same).

as far as i know the 460 marine engine used the same block as the trucks, but probably have brass freeze plugs instead of steel. the marine engines usually got a better cam in them then the production vehicles got. other hten that no other major differences between a regular vehicle block and marine block.

Rgds
Mike

 

So are late 60 s early 70 s blocks any better due to differant metals used in block manufacturing?

Also I was told tat marine blocks were built with thicker material between cylinders due to boats running at high rpms more often than cars/trucks.

 

I have a 4 bolt main block and heavy compared to later D9 blocks. Some of the earlier block like dove blocks have machined mains all the way across to the oilpan rail. Easy to make a 4 bolt main block. the earlier blocks weigh more. have had some strange casting issues with the earlier blocks and have to look closely when building for serious performance. Some have different oil pan rails casting also. Some are casted around the oil pan holes and some are just a straight machined area around oil pan holes. Was told the blocks with casting around oilpan holes have heavier cylinder walls and can machine to bigger bores. have done to .100 overbore and sonic checked yrs ago with earlier blocks and not all blocks can do this. Just stuff I've done with certain 460 blocks.

 

Check out jon kaase performance site and blocks 460. stout blocks.

 

regarding the cam:
385 Series Engine Build Combos and Data: Factory and FRPP camshaft specs

in translation, the marine cam is the same as the police interceptor cam.
these cams have roughly 20 degrees more duration than the stock 460 cam.

 

its a standard 460 block like others. Didn't really see any difference. Still have this block sitting around. panther marine is probably gone these days was a drag boat engine i bought after it sunk during a situation. My 4 bolt main block is a 460 casting on front of block.

 

there really is no one production block that is better then the others.

some of the early blocks did have thicker main webs and pan rails and were used for the 4 bolt main CJ and SCJ blocks (not all CJ engines came with 4 bolt mains. the casting numbers are the same between the 2 bolt and 4 bolt blocks so you have to remove the pan to tell for sure. one drawback on early blocks is that they had shorter decks then the later blocks, so in stroker applications you can run into problems if you have to mill the deck any.

the block used in all 79 and newer 460 trucks, the D9TE block is actually the preferred one for stroker applications as it had longer cylinder walls then the early block.

all the production blocks had approx the same wall thickness. due to casting procedures and tolerances, some cylinders could be bored out more then others, even on the same block. only way to tell for sure is to sonic check the wall thickness. remember Ford cast 100's of thousands of these blocks and had multiple molds going, so there is going to be a lot of core shift and such even between the same block casting numbers that effect wall thickness.

just about all the production blocks are good to around 600 - 700hp easily and some guys are using them up to 1200hp with proper block prep and machine work (ie filling water pasages, 4 bolt mains and stud girdles, tight machining tolerances, etc).

i wouldn't be to worried about trying to find one block over another, they are all decent blocks depending on what you want to do with it.

rgds
Mike