I have just stumbled on a discussion about oiling mods that should be made to FE blocks.

I am just about to reinstall a freshly rebuilt 352 in my 66 F250. I did the assembly work myself, but had the machining work done by a very experienced local shop that I have used before and trust. They said nothing about any mods to improve oiling, and since I was unaware that was an issue, I didn't mention it either. Now you guys have got me scared. While this engine lived happily for 145,000 miles before I pulled it apart to rebuild it, apparently there are design problems hiding in there which are about to jump up and bite me?

Can one of you fine folks give me a quick lecture on what is wrong with the original design, and what I should do about it? A reference to a publication would be fine, or perhaps mention of some previous discussion. I've searched the archives here without finding anything specific.

I did run the oil pump with my electric drill motor before installing the distributor, and see a quick jump up to 60 PSI (I have 10W30 oil in it) with good flow at the rockers, so it is oiling the top end OK now. All parts involved are new, quality name brand, and stock design, including new rocker assemblies, cam and cam bearings and std. oil pump. The crank is now ground to 10-10 and the cylinders are overbored 0.030". The bearings all plastigaged to 0.0015" to 0.0018" clearance, and the pistons are all selective fit to 0.003" to 0.0035".

Thanks guys. Chewing my nails in hope that I don't have to pull this thing apart again!

##### Benjamin
4 Ford trucks, and
Many other oldies also.

 

Ben, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but fear you might be disassembling soon. If the shop did not metion the oil fixes it is most likely that they don't know about them. If your machinist is old enough (I'm 40), they might have fixed it and not even told you. I fix the oil in all of the FEs thay come through the shop were I work. It isn't a design problem so much as a lack of carefully following the blusprints at the foundry. You can check if yours was done by removing only the oil filter adapter. How big is the passage from the oil pump to the filter adapter ? If it is 7/16s or more you're in good shape. If it is the factory 3/8 inch hole, you have some work ahead of you. Don't let anyone try and convince you the mods are not needed- I have disassembled at least a dozen FEs that failed at less than 10K miles. I have never seen or heard about a bearing failure in an FE that had the oiling fixed. Yes some run a long time in stock form, but do you want to take the risk ? BTW, those oil clearances are kinda tight aren't they ? And you are talking about cast pistons with .003 right ? Why no HV oil pump ? Seems like cheap insurance to me. Pull off the filter adapter and tell us what you find. DF

 

OK, Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll check the oil passage; my recollection is that it was pretty big, when I cleaned it out after it came back from the machine shop, using my pinky and a lint free cloth.

Yes, I'm using cast pistons.

I've always used 0.0015" as a goal for oil clearances in bearings, but I admit most of my previous rebuilds have been on Packards. Packard specifies 0.0005" to 0.001", believe it or not! (No wonder my 9 main bearing '47 has almost 300,000 on it with good oil pressure!) Maybe Fords should be looser? This is on a fresh ground crank, so we know it is round. The crank turned real nice by itself. Of course with the rods hooked up it's pretty tight, but the journal ends slide through the sideways play (0.010") very easily, so I don't think I'm in trouble there.

I didn't see the need for a high volume pump with these clearances, and was more worried about the strength of the pump drive shaft than I was about inadequate oil flow. I've lost two Ford engines over the years with twisted and sheared drive shafts.

Thanks for the advice! This is a great group!

#####.
##### Benjamin
4 Ford trucks, and
Many other oldies also.

 

I'm not the expert on oiling mods here (DF is the man), but I will say one thing -- the fact that you are seeing oil at the rockers doesn't mean anything. The FE engines oil the cam and upper end first, so you could have plenty of oil up top and still be starving at the #4 and #5 main bearings. I know that one of the standard recommended mods is to insert some Holley carb jets in the oiling holes in the head to restrict flow up top and force more to the rear and bottom of the engine. That's a pretty cheap fix that can be made without pulling the engine. I'm sure that DF could give you the details (I haven't got that far on my 416 yet).

karlsd a/k/a "ksd"
69 F100 Explorer 360/C6

 

Doesn't that kind of answer your question? went 145,000 without them. I didn't pull my engine apart to do them. (but I did match the oil holes to the bearings and am running holley jets under the shaft stands) I have had no problems, some 390's have gone 400,000+ miles from the factory without the oiling mods, I've got E-mails from the netherlands where FT's (industrial version) were even used for locomotives and I doubt they had oiling mods. If it will give you peace of mind go for it. But dont be fear-mongered into doing it. Far FAR more engines have lived a long time without the oil mods than those that failed without the oil mods. But at the same time dont let yourself always be wishing you would have done it. If it was a race engine I'd totally agree with doing them, but for a engine that will rarely if ever see 4000RPM my opinion is it doesn't matter. And I intend to do the oil mods on my 410. If you intend to street race your engine, or show your taillights to kids in their honda's now and then sure go for it, easier to do it with the engine out of the truck than in it.

 

and some quotes from Shoe

"Lotsa folk do "oil mods" to their FEs because all the books tell them how crummy the stock oiling system is.

I tend to disagree with most of the mods, in particular since most of the instructions leave out the only crucial problem I can see: The oil pan.

A car running 15 second ETs in the quarter can generally get away with a stock oil pan with no problems. This includes many 390GT cars. Early 428CJs got this same oil pan, but apparently accelerated fast enough to drain the pan dry during a race, so in the early 1969 model year Ford recalibrated the 428CJ dipstick to show "full" at six quarts. Two weekends ago I witnessed an early 1969 Mustang 428CJ car with SCJ gears lunch it's motor. The driver had run 180+ passes on the motor with no problems, but still had the early dipstick in the car. This day was the first time he ever raced without "overfilling" the engine with a sixth quart. He'd simply fogotten to add the extra quart and did not realize it was all that importany. On the third pass he spun some beaings in the traps, after running two passes which were a little slower than usual."

"Replacing the pan and matching pickup will buy you LOTS of margin with the oil system.

Other problems crop up when installing HV/HP pumps, including twisting the stock oil pump drive shaft to death, shearing the distributor gear's drive pin when you beef up the oil pump drive shaft, pumping too much oil into the heads (which naturally drain back slowly) causing the oil pan to dry out and the rear-most intake valve stems to suck oil into the combustion chamber, and gobs of other little oily things that all need to be looked at when upgrading the pump.

If you go the "heavy oiling mod" route and disassemble your whole motor to add the proper restrictors and chamfers for the HV/HP setup, I personally recommend that you do NOT modify (drill or chamfer) the holes drilled in the block that go to the main bearings. Some very experienced persons recommend it, but I believe this is more likely to cause problems than solve them. Ford has published a TSB for the FE on this topic, and it makes sense to me."

"As for FE oiling: The stock FE oiling system is GREAT, except when it comes to the oil pan. Fast front-sump FEs can dump the oil out of the pan when accelerating or cornering hard. I don't suspect you are dealing with any oil pan limitations, so this is not a factor to you.

I've heard all the stories about how you need to drill and chamfer FE oil passages, add oil restrictiors to the heads, etc, etc, etc, and find that most are unneeded unless you are hanging the revs way out there. The FE flows oil just fine, so long as the pump pick-up can find any oil in the pan."

"I used to believe that enlarged oil galleys, large filter adapter, hi-volume/hi-pressure pump, and windage tray was the answer to all the FE oiling needs.

After a while I got to thinking that this info, while being O.K. advice, was probably being propagated through the years by Steve Christ's book more than anything else. Everybody agreed with this solution, but it didn't answer the question I had of why my 452CJ would clack the lifters in really hard, fast turns or why my stock-oiled 428PI blocks never showed any signs of wear anywhere - no ridge or anything.

After speaking with folk at the FE forum site, I sorta concluded that there was more to FE oiling than just oil pressure and volume. This has a common-sense basis, too.

If you did none of the oiling mods - keeping the FE oiling system stock, you are still gonna see 55 PSI at the oil filter and pump and maybe 45 PSI at the rear main. Doing all the oil passageway mods is gonna buy you one extra PSI at the rear mains, max. The oil flow is slow enough that you can sorta imagine what the pressure gradient across the entire engine is gonna be.

I found myself driving my 427 stroker with windage tray and a CJ/GT/late Galaxie-type oil pan with all of Steve's recommended mods and I'm obviously sucking air thru the oil pump on hard curves. My FE didn't have an oil pressure or flow problem. It had an oil starvation problem. I took another look at the basics.

Question: What is more likely to kill bearings in a high-horsepower motor - running 45 PSI instead of 46PSI at the rear mains with stock oil passages or zero oil pressure with fancy enlarged oil passages.

I studied oil pans for a bit and bought a baffled pan. As far as I can tell, I've never sucked air since, but I know I'm only running an extra two quarts of oil, so I can't be too far away from starvation."



Just some extra info to ponder, no sense making your engine flow more oil if theres a strong chance it will empty the oil pan, right? your worse off in that case, which might be why the dozen engines failed, not running 6 quarts in them and they sucked themselves dry

 

Boy what a great group you've got here!

Thanks so much to all for the information. I now feel much more relaxed about the subject, and I will take it from here.

Since this truck is merely going back into service as a utility and family camping vehicle, with no interest at all in any performance mods or fast driving, I think I'll take a chance on the factory design.

If I ever redo the Hi Po 428 engine in my other 66 F250, I'll certainly take all this advice to heart, even though I'm too decrepit to enjoy the blast from 0 to 60 in 8 seconds anymore.

Thanks again, guys. This was exactly the sort of info I was looking for.

##### Benjamin
4 Ford trucks, and
Many other oldies also.

 

Ben, if you cleaned the pump-to-filter passage with your pinky finger, it seems that your block has the oiling fixes. I do all of the oiling work on the FEs that come through the shop where I work, but the office is not always aware of whats happpening. I do hope you will check however. It seems that one of our posters doesn't understand the issue. It is not a matter of 1 more psi at the mains that this work gives you. The bearings need oil not just to float the crank but to keep them cool. The way your block came from the factory is simmply not adequate. It is not an RPM or performance issue, it is a durability issue. There is no 'factory design' here, the design of the engine calls for the pump-to-filter passage to be 7/16s and the factory didn't do it. So if one runs a block without fixing the oiling, you are getting less oil than what the Ford engineers intended. None of the failed engines I have torn down were 'performance' engines. All were grocery getters or snowplow trucks. All FEs NEED these mods. Anyone thinks otherwise does not understand what their oil system does for them. All it takes for failure is one steep hill climb when someone didn't notice the engine was a quart low on oil and you're toast. Do you want to take the risk ? FE427TP does have a point on the oil pan however, the stocker is not so great, a Canton would be better. Remember this is a durability or reliability issue and has nothing to do with performance or heavy duty usage. DF

 

not really my point, the credit has to go to Shoe he's forgot a lot more info about these engines than I ever will know. But it does seem to ring true. I'm thinking of trying a Canton after reading about how it can be made to fit with enough work. I just cant see it being a need when I've seen/heard of so many engines that have gone so long without it and aside from your experiences haven't heard of any failing without the mods unless they were raced or abused. Not discrediting yoru experience, in any way though. It's just the the 390 got it's reputation of being a real workhorse that takes a licking and keeps on ticking without meeting the engineers guidelines, and even the CJ which should have been done by the prints wasn't recalled and fixed it was just told to run 6 quarts for the new produced engines. they didn't even fix the old ones...

 

I hate it when I have to ask a question that is probable so obvious only a novice would ask. Anyway; how are you checking oil pressure at the rear main? Is their a fitting I can install to get this reading?
My 65 F100 Custom Cab has the original oil gauge at the oil filter; as well as an aftermarket SW gauge I could use.
Thank's
P.S. I did the oil mods when I assembled my own engine. One other suggestion I might add. When you drill out the oil passage hole this creates a lot of cast iron chips.
Try too keep some kind of control on these chips, I used an old radio magnet about 3" Dia. 1/2" thick with a 1 1/2" hole in the center. Placed the magnet over center of the hole; worked great had too clean the magnet about 4 times to get the job done, so you can imagine how many chips you are going to create.
Of course you will totally clean everything when you are done, I just felt safer with some control on the chips produced.