I am going to be building a motor for a 4x4 truck withing the next year. The truck will be a weekend warrior, with the occasional trip up north or to the sand dunes. I plan on using the 429 because I can get them for practicly free. I know the 460 would make better truck motor, but 429's are plentiful around here. All the motors are out of trucks. Can anyone give me a general horsepower ard torque numbers these engines produce stock? I will be porting stock heads, bumping up the compression, mild cam, intake & carb, and headers. Do any of you guys have a 429 done with similar mods, and what was the outcome? thanks.

 

depends on what year. from 1971 and before my shop manual says 360-370Hp and i think 400 torque. i dont have my manual arround so that is off my head. then i think 1972 and after it was i think 240ish HP i want to say. and i dont know the torque

 

You said all the motors are from trucks. Are you talking about the 429's in the medium duty trucks?

 

I bet they are out of medium duty trucks. I don't believe the 429 was ever offered in light duty trucks. The big boys were all FE's until the 460, I think. But if I'm wrong, I welcome any corrections.

 

385 HP listing

 

i just finished building a 429 .030 over had a comp camx4262 ground on a 109 lsa.performer intake with a 2" spacer 750 holley ,recurved distributer ,hooker super comp headers ,2500 stall converter,with a set of ported dove heads and 2.5 dual exhaust. its a real tire roaster and lots of fun

 

your right the 429 was never a light duty truck engine so that would have to be a medium duty truck motors, and be careful using those they crank snouts a bigger for use with the much larger balancers on them for low rpm use so needs a lot of machine work to make those cranks work in a light duty application, the heads are pretty restrictive the cams are lame but figure you gonna change that anyway the only advantage is that the cranks are forged steel but like I said you gonna have a lot into machine work so you can use the smaller balancers, and accery pulley that you need for your application, but if you buy the block, and stuff a stroker crank into that would work great but need to do some work to the heads to flow enough, and the stroker crank will be cheaper than machine work on that factory crank.

 

As to the crank snout being bigger. Rather than machine it, can't you just use the cover off the originial truck engine or is the inside diameter of the damper larger too? I know on the FE engines you can use the truck chain cover and the other dampers fit.

 

the dampner itself is much bigger both the inside dia. and the total dia/weight those things weigh a ton and aren't really good for reving much over 3500rpm, and I as far as I have ever seen there is no dampner you can buy that works on that snout thats not for a truck and low speed.

 

So you can't cheat the 385 series truck motors and get a steel crank without the machine work. That's good to know.

 

Sounds perfect for me, though! I've never been over 3,300 rpm with my 460!

 

I used a truck crank in my pulling truck motor. I turned the snout down and cut the new keyway myself to save some money. It also needs turned down for standard size lower timing chain sprockets. I got mine for free and after having it offset gound to change the stroke and balancing had almost $500 in it. But sure is pretty!!

Another problem you run into is pilot bushings and torque converter fitting.