I have an 87 F-150 with the 351W. The motor needs a rebuild but I'm going to swap it out instead. Any ideas on what years would be a direct swap other than another 87?

 

That depends on how much swapping you want to do. Carbed or EFI, it doesn't matter, if you want to keep swapping out parts. I'm a little fuzzy on when the 351W went EFI, but you should be able to go all the way to '96, you'll just be pulling more of the parts out of the donor vehicle and adapting them to your own truck. With time, patience and parts, you can make just about anything work...

Jason

 

Yes, if you go down to the basic long block and use your old externals, just about any 351W can work. If you don't want to go that far but want to buy a complete motor and just swap it in, then you need to stay pretty close to your '87, I think up to '89 or even '90 would still be okay.

 

Thanks for the reply's. I have a few parts from the blown motor that I can swap in. I just didn't know if there were any other suprises I should be aware of if I went with a different year's motor.

 

So I found an pre 87 351W rebuilt fairly cheap. How much trouble is it going to be to reuse the top end of my bad engine? How much will bolt right up? I guess basically I'm trying to say I want to make a early/mid 80's 351W carbed motor into EFI. I'm sorry for the dumb questions but I'm pretty new to Fords. Jeeps are my thing until now but I need a truck to get my Jeep everywhere.

 

Everything really should be a bolt-on. Are the oil pans the same on the two motors? If so, that'll simplify things a little. It might be helpful to know the year of your new/replacement motor. Look at the underside of the block where the starter bolts up and read the casting number off of it. If it's an '80s engine, the first digit should be the letter E, followed by a number that denotes the year of that decade, and then two more letters. For more about decoding casting numbers, see the sticky at the top of the forum page.

Basically, you'll want to compare the two motors closely and use everything from your old motor that's EFI-related.

Here are a few things to watch out for: your '87 motor should be serpentine belt, if your replacement engine isn't then you should know that the serpentine water pump turns backwards and you'll need to either re-use your old water pump if it's still in good shape, or replace it with a new/rebuilt reverse-rotation pump. Some of the early 80's engines used the serpentine-style flat belt, or a couple of them, without actually being serpentine drive. Look at the water pump pulley: if it's flat and the back side of the belt rides on it, then it's reverse-rotation. If it has the small multiple grooves and the inside of the flat belt rides on it, then it's standard rotation as is a v-belt pump.

Pull the intake manifolds on both motors, clean up your EFI manifold and bolt it to the replacement motor with new gaskets. (I prefer Fel-pro.) You may break some if not all of the manifold end bolts when taking the EFI manifold off of the '87 motor, but that shouldn't be a problem on the other motor if it's a fairly fresh rebuild. Just something to be aware of, those bolt do tend to rust in place since the bottom ends of the holes are open, and often get crud bulid-up on the threads as well.

Now, here's a subject for a little hot debate: Some intake manifold gasket sets come with rubber end peices, some come with cork, and some come with none, just a small tube of silicone gasket maker. Because the end pieces, when coated with gasket sealer, can become slippery and squeeze out of place when the manifold is torqued down which can cause a heckuva oil leak, it's become quite popular to run a bead of silicone across the end rails of the block in place of the end pieces and set the manifold down on it. The problem here is that many people use way too much silicone in this process. Usually, it's not a problem...but occasionally (and I have seen this firsthand) some of the excess silicone that gets squeezed into the engine by the torqueing of the manifold breaks off after it sets up and finds its way to the pan where it gets sucked into the oil pump causing catastrophic engine failure. For this reason, I prefer not to use the stuff. I have other methods to seal up the manifold, but it's really your choice. If you do use the silicone, don't go by the "more is better" method. Use only as much as is neccessary to make the seal.

You'll need to swap the distributors as well so that you use the EFI TFI distributor. Let us know if you need advice on this. Not trying to treat you like an imbecile, I just don't know how much mechanical experience you have and if you're comfortable with distributor swaps. Be aware that the oil pump driveshaft often gets hydraulically locked into the bottom of the distributor and comes up out of the oil pump partway when you pull the distributor, only to fall back and slide down into the pan when you get the distributor further out. To avoid this annoying little happenstance, pull the distributor up about 1/2 inch out of its hole and tap on the base of it with a hammer to break the seal and dislodge the pump shaft, then remove slowly and carefully while looking down into the hole to make sure the shaft dropped out of the dist. There is supposed to be a little circlip that hold the shaft in place and not allow this to happen, but many builders don't bother to put them on, and they often break and fall off over time if they were originally present.

Well, that's some of the finer points. I'm not sure what I've forgotton, but I'm sure there'll be others posting up here to cover the points I missed. Have fun with it!

 

WOW! Thanks for the reply TigerDan. This doesn't really seem to be a difficult swap from the little information I have gathered. I understand that it would be alot easier to just keep the Carb instead of changing over to EFI.

I don't mind be treated as a newbie because on Fords I am a newbie. I'm just learning how to weld and have built a very capable Wrangler but luckily I haven't had any reason to dive into the motor yet so this is all kind of new to me. I did rebuild a VW motor once but that was pretty easy.

I don't have the new motor yet, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any major obstacles to keep me from doing this swap. Come to think of it, the swap may or may not happen. All of the problems started when my Dad was driving the truck and the lower radiator hose came off. He didn't realize it and the motor ended up shutting off on its own. We replaced the water pump and plugs but then realized the head gasket was blown. I'm sure there was damage due to the heat and I figured a replacement would be cheaper than a rebuild. Keep those thoughts coming and I will keep you posted on how its going. I can't thank you enough for all the info. I'll be joining the site soon to give a little back.

I do know Jeeps are soo much easier than Fords! http://images/icons/icon7.gif

 

I can't get your link to work, maybe there's some info missing?

Anyhoo, if the original vehicle is EFI, it's actually easier to stay with the EFI by swapping the parts as outlined above rather than to swap a carbed motor into the truck...although that isn't difficult either.

But, if your original motor only has a blown head gasket or cracked head, it would be easier (not to mention cheaper) to deal with that. Here's what I would do:

Pull off the EFI upper and lower intakes, being especially careful of the end lower manifold bolts as mentioned before since you may be reinstalling the manifold on this motor. Pull both heads and have a good close look at them. Look carefully at the cylinder bores for scoring, it's possible the moter seized when it overheated (they can seize when excessively hot and the pistons expand in the cylinder-aluminum has a greater rate of thermal expansion than cast iron or steel) and then when it cools off they can shrink back to normal size and free up...but the damage is already done. Usually the result is major scoring of the pistons, and possibly metal transfer of aluminum to the cast iron cylinder walls. Another thing to look for is ring ridge at the top of the cylinders that would tell us that the engine has a lot of wear and should be rebuilt or replaced anyway. There are other things to check for, but that's the simplest thing for a novice to identify.

If the cylinder bores look good and show no evidence of seizing, take the heads to a machine shop to be cleaned and checked for cracks and flatness of the block mating surface. When hot, they will often warp. If they're okay you may be able to simply bolt them back on with new head gaskets and get down the road. Or they may not be cracked but need resurfacing, or they may need a valve job in the process.

If it all looks bad however, then go back to plan "A" and get ahold of that other motor.

Just some more stuff to think about...

 

Ok so I'm dumb. As I was talking to my dad about this, he told me the blown motor is not EFI like the front of the truck says and I thought. Its actually carburated so this should make things alot easier that I had thought. I guess its a mutt of sorts. My brother in laws truck is the same way. Its a 97 body with a 98 motor and drivetrain. Guess they just ran out of parts at the factory. Thanks for all your help TigerDan. I'm sure this won't be the last you're going to hear about this swap.

However, Do you know where I can get a "GOOD" diagram of the vacuum lines? I know there are a ton under the filter and I need to replace all of them. Thanks again!