well this morning at 10 i started to pull my motor out of my truck, i didnt know if the motor was a 360/390 or w/e it was when i started cuz i just got the truck, so i was excited while i was pulling the engine out of the truck, by the way i got the truck for free, 1975 f150 2wd, metallic blue, minimal rust, so anyways when i got the motor out at about 3:00, i put it on the engine stand and pulled the intake and then the heads, i pulled the passenger side head first as i knew, there was something wrong with it cuz it was knocking before i pulled it, so when i got the head off i about crapped because i saw it had aluminum pistons that said 0.60 on the tops, that has dished pistons with eye brows, so after that i turned the head over and i found the reason why it was knocking, the valve seet came off and was just sitting there ratteling around the valve, and then i checked the stroke and found it was a 390, 3.78 stroke, so i was very happy it wasnt a 360 and that it has been bored 0.60 over with them aluminum pistons so my next chore is, re-ring it and put all new bearings in it and a crane 901 cam, and have 1964 352 heads ported, with new valves and seets, and put a 4 barrell on it, so for a free truck, i have very happy what the motor turned out to be and will be happy when its running again.

 

Man that is great. You are lucky that valve didn't drop through the piston. Good find.

 

Be sure to check the gap between the cylinders. There are a couple of web sights that tell you how. Basically (from what I have read) you pull the freeze plugs and put either a drill bit or an allen wrench in between the cylinders to measure the gap. It just checks the consistancy of the castings. It is a cheap thing to do if you have your engine out and all you have in it is labor. Surew would suck to stick a lot of money and pain into your truck just to have a cylinder fail because of the .060 over bore. Good luck on you rebuild.

 

i will do that today thanks, i am going to pull the pistons today to see what they look like, i have a fried that went 0.80 over on a 65 thunderbird 390 engine but it was sonic checked to see how far it could go i guess the place said he could have gone 0.90 over but that sure is strtching it.

 

Awesome find... let us know how it goes!

 

Congrats on the motor/truck find
Im looking for some 390 .30 over pistons.. Anything higher than stock, and I wish I could have found some like that

 

well i had a 360 that was just rebuild gave to me its a 76 with a 2 barrell i will have to look i just got the heads off last night and dint get a measure to see if it was overbored when rebuild but if you need overed pistons ford a 390 the 360 should be the same ill have to look.

 

Yea, I need .30 over 390 pistons

 

swann79 where did you find your avatar, i noticed we had the same ones i found mine on the ford.com site.

 

haha... yeah mine too. Guess I'll start looking for something else cool...

 

yea me to about everytime i try posting a new pic it says its to large how can make it work right i have a cool pic i want to put on on the top it says suckin gas in the middle theres a ford oval and on the bottom it says hauling ***, but evrytime i try to upload it it says this item is to large.

 

umm... I can read it! what exactly are you trying to upload?

 

I am rebuilding a 390 as well. I would like to know what cam you are going to use and what types of pistons you will use and what kind of work you are having done to the heads.

The heads on mine are no doubt for leaded gasoline since this is a 1967 engine. I was wondering since yours had the hardened seats installed and one came loose if it was really not such a good idea to do that after all. What is the best way to prep these pre unleaded gasoline heads for use with unleaded fuel today? I already have a 428 with stainless valves and hardened seats installed in the (D2TE-AA) heads and so far no problems, but this 428 only has around 15K miles since it was rebuilt. I suppose I should start a thread on this subject alone. I think I will, but still wanted to get the info on how you are planning to rebuild your 390.

 

im going to go with the crane 901 cam, .60 aluminum dished eyebrow pistons, im just opening the intke and exhaust ports a little and do the same to the intake to match the heads, and the D3TE heads that the valve seet came loose, im sure that was a faulty one when the new ones were put in but that had been quite a few miles sense it was rebuilt. the C3 heads im going to use are getting new hardened seets and valves put in them, but it cost a lot of money about 3 bucks per seet plus installation, and valves are about 5 bucks and 7 bucks. so its quite spendy but i think it will be worth it, im also going with headers and 750 holley 4 barrell, good luck with your rebuild.

 

I am not familiar with a lot of cam specs that are good for mostly street driving without pulling loads in a truck. My truck will probably never pull anthing heavier than a small camper or a small boat, so low end torque isn't a priority. Have you used the 901 cam before?

What are you doing to the rocker shafts?

Are you using the intake and exhaust manifold gaskets in order to match up the heads, intake and exhaust?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I haven't built a performance engine for a truck before. I have built some 302s and 351 Clevelands in cars for performance. They are easy to get away with low end torque loss for better top end performance without it being too noticeable. My truck might not be so forgiving to a performance built engine. I know I am spoiled from having the low end torque of my 428, but I am willing to give some of that up for better top end performance. I know that some people will wonder why waste the time building another engine and just update the 428. Well, there is plenty of performance available in a 390 and I want to just shelf the 428 until I really have a better use for it. They are getting harder to find and I am sure that I can sell it later if I decided to.

You must have a 428 as well, hence your screen name?