I have a 76 f-150 4by with a 390 in it. My buddy has the same year truck in the 2by version with the 460. The motor in his truck fills the engine compartment and the motor in mine looks alot smaller. Is my motor a small block or a big block. I need a tranny and don't want to be looking for the wrong one for my motor.

 

It is a big block. But it has a different bellhousing pattern than the 460. It needs to be for a FE.

 

It is a big block. But it has a different bellhousing pattern than the 460. It needs to be for a FE

nope this has been gone over hundreds of times. there is no sb bb when it comes to fords. that is a chevy term. ford has enigne famlies. the 390 is a fe the 460 is 385 series. also no 4x4 came stock with a 390 it was a 360 unless it was swaped out.

 

OR a 359 if it's an old U-haul

 

Neither. It's a Ford. Chevy had 2 engine families in the 60's and 70's The 350 and smaller variants and the 396 and larger versions. Both engine families had decent parts interchangability within the family, but not across the engine family lines. The smaller engines had small blocks and the larger engines had bigger blocks. Thus the names.

With Fords, you have more than 2 engine families. The 289, 302, 351W which some mistakenly call a 'small block'. Then there's the FE family which has a larger block than the 302 famliy. But wait, the FE has a 332 cid engine. How can a 'big block' have a smaller engine than a 'small block'? Then there's the 385 series which includes the 429 and 460. These also had large blocks, but share no parts with the FE. So now you have 2 'big block' families that don't share parts. If I were to referr to a 'big block' you would have no idea which family engine I'm referring to without more information. Now if you want to consider the 335 series engines, you've got displacements from 351 (small block size) to 400 (big block size).

See how bb and sb don't fit into the Ford world?

 

ok, The reason this question came up was because I was on the Summit Racing website and when I used the search engine based on motor size my only option for class was : ford big block fe. Then I started wondering which tranny I needed. I need the C6 but I thought with the rounded bellhousing which someone on the forum in a different post referred to as the small block pattern. Or Baby C6. But if the motor is a "Big Block" then the tranny off a 460 should work lol. But what you guys are saying is that my motor is an FE class? So that means the bolt pattern for the C6 I need would have to be for the FE class. Do I have it right?

 

Yes... The FE series will have the "rounded" style housing, as opposed to the housing with what I call a "hat" or flat top.

--Mike

 

That's what I thought. There's only one in my area also lol.

 

summit now uses chevy terms so don't let that confuse you. the big block fe they list is the the same as a fe. they just put big block in front of it.

 

oh, thanks for clearing that up lol thanks alot guys I appreciate it.