Hello everyone, I decided to start a thread to document and discuss building a 351W for my soon to be daily driver, aptly named the farm truck.

The truck itself is a 1992 F250, 2wd, regular cab longbox, with a ZF5 and 3.55's in the 10.25. It will be lowered 3" eventually. The truck will serve as my daily driver of a 25 mile commute every day, occasional towing of a bumper hitch car trailer, mid duty hauling of misc things, and overall truck stuff, but i also do not want this to just be another dead stock windsor. If im gonna shuffle this thing to work, I at least want it to move out of it's own way on occasion.

here is the parts i currently have for this build.

F4TE short block. has approx 120,000 miles, i just tore it down last weekend, and it is due for a refreshening.




#4 main bearing

#3 rod bearing



A freshly rebuilt set of E7 heads, with some mild port work done by the machinist, as well and upgraded comp valve springs. They have been machined to a true 64cc chamber.

A 351W H.O. Roller cam, new in box, Ford # F4ZE-EA, with matching new in box roller lifters.
A spider and dogbone setup i plucked from a locked up 5.0 HO a year or so ago.
A Cloyes double roller timing chain # C-3057K

Right now, my primary concern is to get the short block rebuilt, and ready to start putting in the roller goods. As you can probably tell from the pictures, the ring ridge is pretty evident, and so i'm going to bet that it's going to need a .030 overbore. I'm wondering, should i consider bumping up compression, to something closer to 9:1 or 9.5:1, to help get this engine build on the right direction?

 

Yes raise compression, lose the dished pistons and use flattops with eyebrows.

 

Where would you suggest an ideal compression ratio would be? I have no problem running 91 octane fuel, but I would like to be able to run 89 in a pinch if I'm out in the middle of nowhere and cant find premium fuel.

 

What are the specs on that roller cam ? Never heard of an HO 351 roller cam. With the F4TE, you'd be hard pressed trying to run anything less than 93 octane and 10 to 1 compression. I've run a roller 5.0 with the F4TE cam and it would ping with 87 and 14* initial timing in summer.

 

I'll type out all the specs when I get home tonight. I believe it's the same cam they used in the Cobra R's back in the day...

 

I suspect that's the same cam used in the 5.0 Cobra's I've never seen another hyd roller listed for the pushrod Mustangs. It's actually a bit tamer then the HO 5.0 cam if that's what it is. If so, going with the stock 5.0 HO cam would yield a little bit more HP. The HP listed for the Cobra R motor was only 300 HP. There's probably not 10-15 HP difference between all three cams (F4TE, HO and Cobra roller) as the specs aren't all that different between all three.

 

Here are the cam specs for you all.

Lift: .278 intake, .278 exhaust with 1.6 rocker ratio
Duration: 276 intake, 266 exhaust
Overlap: 39 degrees, 19.51 factor
Lobe Center: 116 intake, 115 exhaust
Ford P/N: F1ZE-AA (91-94) F4ZE-EA (95)

the .050 duration numbers are 210 degrees on the intake and 211 degrees on the exhaust.

hope you cal all tell me what this cam is, exactly, but either way, i got it for damn cheap, still new, off NLOC, and it was worth it just for the newlifters.

 

Yea, that's the 5.0 Cobra cam . You can increase the valve lift with by .030 using 1.7 rockers. Only other application for that cam was the 93 or 94 T-Bird for one year only

 

Thanks for sharing your Adventure...I'm Excited to follow along

 

Still, at $100 for the stick and lifters, it's a decent enough cam, right?

As I stated before, this is gonna be my daily driver, so I dont want to get too crazy.

 

Yea, can't go wrong there. Ford was going to use the HO cam in the Cobra 5.0 but decided they wanted a cleaner idle, so this was the end result. The HO gave the most top end HP over all the production rollers, next up was this cam, then the F4TE cam. Run it with a set of full roller rockers and that'll free up some more power, Ford got 15 HP extra and cooler oil temps using the Cobra rockers over the stamped steel 1.6's. All this info came from Ford's Official 5.0 Mustang book put out by Ford Racing. I've run the F4 cam in both a 302 and 351, it's a good one too. Never got the chance to run the HO though. Not so sure I'd replace the stock pistons with flat tops with what your intentions for this truck are. I've got a GT40 headed roller 351 in my 96 E150 van with the F4 cam and Cobra rockers, shorty headers and the stock fuel system. It's got good power and is happy running 87 octane (85 too when we run up to Colorado) The short block is still as built from Ford with 140K miles on it.

 

I know the pistons will need to be replaced with the overbore, which is why I am contemplating it. I have no issues paying for 91 octane at the pump in town here, but I just dont want to get out in the middle of Nebraska or Oaklahoma or Georgia, and theres no premium fuel for 50 miles. that's kind of the line I'm walking, I can take more compression, but I dont want to end up with an 11:1 engine that wont run on anything less than premium.

 

My 331 is running 10.4 to 1 compression with Canfield heads with 57cc chambers and a Z303 roller (112*LSA) and it absolutely will not tolerate 87 octane. It had 87 in the tank of my 89 Ranger back when I first fired it up 15 years ago. Sounded like it was crushing gravel in the cylinders just going 2 blocks down the street. I promptly drove back home and siphoned nearly all the gas out and replaced it with 93 octane. Since then, it's been fed an alternating mix of straight 91 gas and E10 93 octane. I've never tried to feed it anything less so I don't know if 89 would even work. Only thing that scares me is the oil companies (or the government) suddenly deciding to stop making 91 octane fuel. I used to haul fuel and have seen times when they sold off premium fuel at regular fuel prices, just to get rid of excess inventory.

 

i really think something close to that 9:1 or 9.5:1 would be ideal. its better than stock, but not pushing into "needs premium" range. I'll chat with my machinist when i go visit with him this weekend as well.

 

I'd do the same. Just the overbore will add a quarter point, all things being equal same (piston top volume and pin height)