Well my 351m is laying all over the garage now...my wife has bet me $100 that it will never run again...Don't tell her but she's gonna be out a $100 bucks !! This is my first motor rebuild but I think I can do it!

Anyway, standing there listening to country music and cleaning valves my thoughts sort of congealed around this motor, horsepower, compression blah blah blah thing. I want to try and share with you these thoughts and see how far off base I am.

It seems to me at the very "core" of all our motor work there is ONE TRUTH !...everything revolves around the perfect "burn" of a cylinder full of fuel/air. If we intake the perfect amount at the perfect mix to fill our compression chamber the perfect amount and squeeze it just right and light it up at the perfect time...we obtain the most possible power out of that one "explosion" that we can...then just repeat several thousand times a minute..lol

Everything we do is in trying to achieve that perfect burn. Sometimes I get lost in the numbers and complexities of motor building but when I remember what we are REALLY after it seems to help me think more clearly about what I am doing and how to do it.

We modify our carbs and intakes to get the correct mix and amount of fuel..we machine our heads and pistons for the best compression of that mix..we adjust our ignition to light it at the perfect time...we port our exhausts to fully clear the chamber. We build our cranks and other parts to withstand this perfect explosion, even our fuel economy is just and extention of using the minimal amount of fuel to achieve this perfect burn...and so on and so on...we simply adjust the parameters of our motors to fullfill our needs...am I a dragster? a mudder? a daily driver?

When I think about what I am doing and start relating it to the "perfect" burn it seems to help me understand better the how and whys of motor building.

Ok you can laugh at me now...It's taken me many,many hours of reading, thinking and "mechanicing" to get to this point mentally and I just really needed say it!

 

Cool :-)

 

Rjcline,

Somehow I don't think it could be said
any better than that... thanks for the
decomplication and reset! If you ever
wish to expound on the mysteries and
verities of life, rave on my man!

Shazam,

Care to share that recipe for the killer
400 with a newbie? My 400 is in a '77 F
250 Ranger 4WD lowboy, bone stock 2V,
102000 miles- but it doesn't smoke! I
would like to tweak rather than swap.

Thanks guys!

white _knight
Supreme High Priest of the Fire Fart Cult

 

white night do a seach for it. shazam has posted it 2-3 times already

 

Lucky you, I book marked the thread.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/dcforum/DCForumID12/142.html