So I’m getting a 351W in a trade deal for an old gas air compressor. Has brand new pistons and block was bored 0.30 over, also comes with crankshaft, heads, EFI intake manifolds. My
problem is I’m going to put the engine is some car (no clue yet what) but I don’t want to mess with the EFI I want to carb swap it to make it easier to tune etc. I’m planning on getting a junkyard engine or at least robbing a decent amount of parts to keep the build “cheaper”. Question being can I just grab myself a 600-650cfm carb and the carb intake manifold or is there some other modification/parts I’d need to buy to get the carb to work on it. Main concern is vacuum for the carb. But would like to
see what others did. Here’s a pic of what I’m getting.

 

351w carb manifold. Probably 600 CFM carb.

Make sure the bores are the right size and clearance for the pistons.....

 

ok that’s what I was thinking from my research with the manifold and carb. And yes the blocks already been bored out the .30. Planning on polishing heads since I’ll have plenty of time building it. And recommendations on cheaper valve terrain? I would like a little chop with the cam, but figured probably best to get new valve terrain instead of using old ones off some other engine.

 

Post up the casting numbers for the block and heads.

 

Engines - and the entire vehicle are a package deal. By that, I mean that you should consider the entire package when building a motor.

First, is your budget. Build costs can get out of hand real quick!

Second, The parts used in your build should be determined by the intended use of the vehicle it is in. Vehicle weight? What fuel do you intend to run? Around here, 87 octane pump unleaded is about $1/gal cheaper than 92 octane Premium unleaded. Race gas is $8gal! If this is just a weekend cruiser, maybe you can justify the $$$ spent on feeding a Premium- or race gas motor, but for a 15k-mile/year daily driver that gets expensive real quick!

Cams with 'chop' are also not the best choice for a daily, since those generally are long-duration grinds (or lots of overlap) that are not the most efficient at lower RPMs. Speaking of lower RPMs, transmission choice and rear end gearing also come into play. A motor that is 'soggy' or weak at lower RPMs will need help to get the vehicle moving - either a high-stall converter or a rear end ratio that will help spin the engine up quicker...

If you're going to stick with stock iron Windsor cylinder heads, that will put a limit on how the motor is built since they really don't flow that much air. A comparison of factory and aftermarket SBF cylinder head can be viewed here: https://www.carbdford.com/tech/flowdata.htm But again, the head flow should match the rest of the motor for best results. Shop around for deals on used cylinder heads. Those 5.0 Mustang guys are always 'upgrading' to the latest/greatest thing and selling off good parts.

Exhaust - again it must match the intended use of the vehicle and engine build. Choking down a motor with the stock cast iron exhaust manifolds is wasting any potential performance gains...

 

no clue on the head casting numbers. But it’s a 79 block

 

Going to be totally honest here. Not a clue what car it’s going to go in. It’ll definitely be something that’s just a fun wanna be “race car” lol. Not a daily, for gas type probably 89 so it’s still a decent price for the gas but not the worst one out there. And exhaust is going to be about as least restrictive as possible. Long tube headers for sure. And again it’s just going to be a fun car to drive so even if the bigger cams going to be bad a lower rpm’s it’s fine. I’ll very likely pair it up with a manual transmission so not worried about converters.

 

Not a 79 block. Your casting number starts with E9, and E= 1980s. to that is a 89- or later casting. The date code below the E9AE-6015... looks to be 9E25, or May 25, 1989 for when that block was cast. IRC, there were two block changes around the late '80s. One was the elimination of the boss for a clutch Z-bar bracket when they went to the hydraulic clutch for manual trans applications. The other change was when they went to the one-piece rear main seal. At the front of the motor, on a machined surface by the timing cover there should be another date code - that will be the actual engine assembly date

 

^^^ beat me to the year, a note the op needs to stay on top of while shopping ebay or bone yards for a intake is needing to remember a 302 and a 351 look alike, but are not a 351 is a tall deck block the intakes from a 302 will NOT work on a 351 . SBF's on the street run super on dual plane manifolds ,and believe it or not those under $200.00 intakes sold by summit flow pretty good, youtube up engine masters ,you can find the show they did that dyno's 4 intakes on a SBF the cheapest from summit flowed and made the best power ,
carb size i agree with our mod 600 is enough no need to over fuel
cam wise edelbrock has a few nice mild but mildly choppy RV grinds sold as cam/lifter kits that can use a stock convertor , no need to go wild on a total street motor

 

The vehicle will still matter - a 2500-pound bracket car or 4700-pound truck. I split the difference with my 351W build. Mine was in a '89 Crown Vic LX that leaked oil like crazy at 190k miles... It was my daily driver, that I also wanted to have some 'fun' with, as well as being a second tow vehicle...

I got a deal on a 'blem' 3.85" stroke crank (turned .010/.010 under) for less $ than it'd cost to turn my stock crank, so my 351W rebuild turned into a 393W build. At the time (2006) the available 393W stroker options were either 7.8:1 or 10.7:1 compression. The 7.8 wouldn't give me the power I wanted and the 10.7 was too high for an 87 octane daily driver... Soooooo.... I looked for a solution for a 'tweener'. I found a 22cc dish piston that with 64cc heads (E7TEs- or common aftermarket) got me to 9.3:1 compression - perfect! The place where I got the crank from confirmed my CR math - That stroker kit is now a popular regular catalog offering at CNC-motorsports.com https://cnc-motorsports.com/catalog/...category/1007/

One of my build parameters was that I needed to pass Ohio's tailpipe emissions testing, so I couldn't go nuts with camshaft. I chose a 4x4 truck 'torque grind' Comp Cams X4262H, Performer intake, 670 Holley Street Avenger carb, and Mustang 351W-swap shorty headers. At first I was going to use ported 64cc E7TE heads, but found a $400 deal on a set of professionally ported iron World Windsor Senior 64cc heads. My car's stock AOD was turned into a custom wide-rato AOD trans (4R70W internals in the AOD case) along with many upgraded parts and other mods... A 2400rpm stall converter (just a bit over stock) that still retained the lock-up feature and the rear gears changed from 2.73s to 3L55s. I daily drove this car for several years, year round - even in Cleveland winters!

Note I mentioned towing. I used the Vic to tow a buddy's second drag car to the track on special occasions - 2600-pound V-8 Pinto Wagon on my 16' open trailer. At the one Fun Ford Weekend event, I towed the Pinto (he was also racing his 9.60 second '72 Gran Torino Sport), unhooked the trailer, bolted on a set of ancient drag radials and ripped off a 13.8-second pass with the emissions-legal 393 Vic. When the car became emissions-testing exempt due to age, I dropped in a mild Comp 276 retrofit hydraulic roller cam, Weiand Stealth intake, 770 Street Avenger, along with a 2700 converter (still with lockup) and recorded a best 13.06 at 106.55. The car is slow off the line - recording ~2.00-second 60' times, but MPHs at the top end like cars that are a full-second quicker.




Please ignore the contingency stickers. They're on sheet magnet and stored in the trunk when not racing!

 

Yeah that is an '89 block, the fact you got an EFI intake with it makes sense now. The cylinder heads should then be E7TE castings, have a look at the underside of the intake ports for the casting numbers(see pic below).. If that is what you have then this can be a solid running engine but it won't make big HP... the max potential with these heads is about 300hp naturally aspirated.

 

Here’s the casting numbers, so yeah it would be a 89

 

would anyone know if this is stock crank or upgraded? Guessing stock because there’s ford casting on it

 

Yes that is a Ford crank and it's plenty stout

 

ok, what choppy cam that’s around the 250 mark would you recommend?