C9VE-B

C is for the decade of the '60's.

9 is for the particular year of that decade, 1969.

V is designated for Lincoln cars 1961 and up.

E indicates the part was released for production by the Engine Division. A is for chassis, B is for body and E is for engine.

B is the part level suffix, and tells you the change level of the particular part. "A" signifies a part as it was originally designed, B indicates it was changed once, C twice, and so on.

You can use the same information on your cylinder heads.

Some particulars about your engine for you to know,..

The dimensions for your engine are generally grouped for the years 68-70. It is the same for me, I have a DOVE-A 429 engine with DOVE-C heads from a 1970 Thunderbird that I held onto since the late 80's. I'm glad I did. The designation of "Lincoln" can be misleading here. The same style engine block was utilized in both divisions, it's just that the Thunderbird was a 4V 429 while supposedly the Lincoln Continental was a 4V 460. I haven't seen one personally, but there are websites that tend to point out these mechnical differences, and I have no reason to dispute them.

Your deck height will be 10.300 inches and your combustion chamber volume should be 75.8 cc. Your intake and exhaust valve sizes should be 2.08/1.66 inches respectively also. You will have positive-stop rocker-arms studs and rail-type rocker arms unless someone changed them.

With the 10.300 inch deck height and the 75.8 cc combustion chamber size, your cylinder compression should be 11.0:1 for a 4V head. For a 2V head, it should be 10.5:1, but these generally came in school buses or station wagons of these years, and it is probably not what you have. You should be cautious on the octane of gas you put in your engine though, no matter what.

Also, if the engine was just transplanted straight from the vehicle into your truck (which was probably the case), you should run a lead substitute in your gas. The old engines did not come with hardened valves and valve seats and our current non-leaded gas does not help lubricate the old valve set-ups. That's something to convert your heads to if/when you pull the heads off the old beast sometime here.

On the block, pull the oil pan and look at the crankshaft webs that extend from the block sides to form the main bearings. They should be thick main webs. The block webbing will stay the same width as it extends from the sides of the block towards the crankshaft main bearing caps. If your block looks like that, then you have one of the good blocks that people search for in higher horsepower applications. You can buy a set of 4-bolt main bearings caps and just have the holes drilled and caps fitted onto the block whereas the thin web design, there is not enough block material to do that. Both are good blocks by the way, it's just that the thick web design is the highly sought after version. This is information to help you be more aware before you up and just sell the thing on anyone's money bids.

Crankshaft,...

If your engine is a 429, it will have a 4U or 4UA crankshaft. If it is a 460, it will have a 2Y, 2YA, 2YAB, 2YABC crankshaft in it, or it could be converted by someone to an external balance crankshaft from 1979 onwards, and it would have a 3Y type crankshaft in it, with the accompanying external balance parts on the crankshaft; flywheel, flying weight behind the front dampner, etc.

A 429 stroke crankshaft is 3.59 inches whilst a 460 is 3.85. Installing a 460 crankshaft in this engine is a pretty easy way to pick up some ponies, just be sure that you install a set of flattop 460 pistons to go with the 460 crankshaft since the wrist pins on the 460 are positioned differently to agree with the larger stoke of the 460 crankshaft.

In comparison, a Ford 400 small block has a 4.00 inch crankshaft, and they are nice little torque engines for our trucks when they are tuned correctly, so installing the 460 crankshaft is not a bad idea.

Pick up the book "How to rebuild your Ford V-8 351C-351M-400-429-460." The engineer sourced much of the information directly from Ford, although he made his mistakes also, you will not find the information on the DOVE-A engines in there. I'm not sure if he ever revised his book, but for the most part, you would not be doing yourself an injustice reading it.