Okay, I bought a clean 66 for my son a couple of months ago- he's a good kid and keeps his grades up. We decided to pull the engine and detail the engine compartment. While pulling the engine, we noticed the drip, drip, drip of oil forward of the flywheel. Oh please let it be the oil pan... No such luck, it was the rear main. Okay now this quick detailing task is getting bigger.

The VIN says 352, but the casting numbers tell me I have a 65 intake, 68 heads, and a 68 block. Sounds like a Johnny Cash song, except that I'm sure that all of the parts are Ford. After going through several postings and the Steve Christ book, I feel pretty comfortable with determining what size engine we have. Need this to get the right seal. Since the rear main is gone, we decided to pull the pan and check for crank casting numbers- no luck, the crank had no numbers. While scraping the inch of grease from the engine we noticed that the intake gasket was also leaking, so off went the intake.

Yesterday, off went the heads and we measure the bore and stroke and determined that we have a 390. While the over protective dad in me longs for a 240 or 300 six cylinder, having the 390 makes it more exciting to borrow it from him. Besides if it were a six, I'd be on the wrong forum.

We're almost ready to paint the thing and put it back together. Any feedback on gasket sets would be appreciated. I'm leaning towards FelPro, but have not yet committed Thanks

 

I'm running Fel-Pro from top to bottom. Use the search feature to look at recent threads in this forum. There have been lots of gasket discussions.

Fel-Pro makes a R.A.C.E (remainder to assemble a complete engine) set that fills in all the holes. Then I run their performance pan and valve cover gaskets (commmon FE leakage points) and the print-o-seal intake gasket (some debate over this one recently in this forum). I also run the head gasket that compresses to .041" (can't recall the part number).

Anyway, they work pretty good. the only other contender I've heard of is the Victor Nitro-Seal for the intake.

 

gtex,
thanks for the tips!

 

you can find a great gasket set on ebay like i did from parts dinosour which is a brand new rol gasket set for 40 and it comes with everything head gaskets pan valve cover rear main timing seal fuel pump seal valve stem seals ehaust seals and a ton more for a good quailty gasket set and i would recomend while you have it out to replace the freeze plugs and flush the water ways

 

I'm sorta in the same position, trying to figure out what gaskets to use. I have a set of Felpro head gaskets but I noticed that the bore on the gaskets isn't quite round. Are these gaskets still good to use?

 

Sure they're good to use. Fel-pro knows what they're doing. I have a set running in my 360 right now.

 

all ford fe head gaskets are not completly round they all have a flat spot in them but that is how it should be

 

Great, thanks guys.

 

ford390gashog,
Thanls for the freeze plug suggestion/ I changed them today/ four were in good shape and two were practically rusted through. These two were the ones under the motor mount.

 

Do head gaskets come in different thicknesses?

 

yes they do

 

Do you know the thicknesses and the applications?

 

Debest, the factory gaskets most FEs came with from the factory are steel shims, they are .017 thick, there are also some .034 steel shims, . Aftermarket offers copper in .020, and the FelPros most of us use (1020s ? ) are .041 thick when compressed. DF, @ his Dad's

 

I am not too disappointed with fel-pro. The head gaskets and permatorque intake gaskets are great as far as sealing goes. I did have a problem with their oil pan gasket being to soft. Mine leaks a little now. The next time I tear it down for a freshen up I am going to go to napa and get the Victor Reinz gasket kit. I like their material a little better. I like to put more than 5 ft/lbs on my oil pan before the gasket squishes out the side.

 

whatever you do stay away from MR. Gasket, there cheap and cheap is what you get, after 2 intake gaskets, pan gasket, valve cover gasket and both header gaskets, i will never buy another gasket from them, ive had goodluck with fel pro gaskets besides header gaskets, i cant seem to get my headers to seal the greatest.