Hey all you great ford enthusiasts. I want to buy all the parts to build a 360 to a 450+ hp. I don't know how to crunch the numbers, what cam to what heads to what crank. any help would be great. Thank you all.

 

You can build a 360 to those numbers, but it will cost you more than building a 390, 410 or 445.

Check this thread, especially post 9:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...ild-parts.html

 

Build a stroker...

Ford 390 FE - Hot Rod Network

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An old saying, "The only substitute for cubic inches is cubic dollars"

 

Many time when building an engine into a fire breathing monster takes the fun out of a daily driver when having to buy highest grade of gas you can buy with getting 6-8 mpg.

Then in the end you stop driving it as a daily driver but only a weekend cruiser as you can't afford the high consumption of gas an money for that once fun daily driver with the stock 360.

Now if your building a drag truck only disregard the above statement.
Orich

 

Just to put some numbers to what's been said...
You can do a basic "get back on the road" rebuild for between $2-3k. Or you build it to about 450hp with 360 cubes for roughly $8-10K. Or you can add a stroker kit and get 450hp fairly easily with 9.5 ish compression for a total of about $10-12K.

The differences in getting to 450hp is that the stroker will be very streetable and have it's power band in a nice driving range rpm-wise. To hit 450hp with 360 cubes will mean placing the power band at a higher rpm range and it will be more like a racing engine.

Believe it or not (at least with my experience) going with a stroker and improved heads barely hurts the fuel economy. So instead of 12 mpg highway I get just over 11 mpg highway...but with much more power and on 87 octane.

I'm not a builder so I can't spec all the components. I took the route of spending a lot of time finding a good builder experienced with the FE engine. The Scat stroker cranks are popular and working well, aftermarket aluminum heads are just about as affordably as re-doing iron heads, and hydraulic roller cams are a sweet upgrade.

 

Thanks for the great info. I will do a stroker build.

 

the other saying is, "The only substitute for cubic inches is forced induction"


I would consider blower/turbo or even nitrous depending on what your going to do with it. Don't need to spin high rpm or need expensive heads for high flow, but the bottom end still needs to handle 450hp and it will need good fuel (and hence be expensive)
A blower/turbo, EFI, E85 FE would be sweet!

 

Good point. And the 360 would be hair drier friendly since it is a low compression engine.

 

I believe the cast iron crank Scat stroker kits handle 600 hp and the steel crank Scat kits handle 1000 hp. Both cranks need Arp bolts/studs all around.

The after market aluminum heads in out of the box condition (e.g. Bear Block Motors or Survival) will beat most and probably all iron heads. A lot of porting work from a excellent porter will get some iron heads close to that of the out of the box BBM or Survival heads for about the same cost.

 

When I was in high school, the local speed shop had a sign you saw as you came in the door which said, "Speed costs money - how fast do you want to go?"

 

LOL, the plastic casing melts when attached to the exhaust manifold....I mean so I heard.....