Greetings everyone

I found a 292 Y8 from a Galaxie for about 100 bucks. The guy says it runs but that it is "Weak" meaning new rings etc. He states right up front it will need a rebuild.

So the question is, I have a 63 F100. I know the car block is configured a little differently ie dipstick tube etc.

Will it matter if I put it in my truck? Or should I continue to look for a truck block if I want to use a 292?

Thanks

 

To use the car engine all you need is to put on your current timing cover, water pump, water pump pulley, oil pan + pickup, and change the location of
of the dipstick. You also may want to swap the valley cover depending upon what is found regarding PCV.

Keep in mind that a simple ring replacement on this engine will probably be inadequate. Be ready for a full rebuild.

 

I have seen some folks do this swap without changing the oil pan, i.e., they used the car pan in their truck. I wonder about clearance to the front axle in this case. However, the truck pan is lousy for oil control (it doesn't keep oil around the pickup very well on stops or when going down steep hills) and in that sense, I would think that the car pan is an improvement.

If you can keep the car pan, it would also mean that you don't have to change the oil pickup, either.

However, you would have to use the car dipstick and this would mean drilling out the passage for it in the truck timing cover (which you must use for the front motor mount). Not a hard job.

 

Good point, as I have seen the use of a car pan in a '63 F-100 myself. I pulled an engine in a '63 set up with the car pan, and it looked to have plenty of clearance. Reported it here and others said no way. Way!

 

Heh heh! Yes, 46, the truck pan looks to have all of the science of something one cooks a turkey in -- no hope at all for oil control. The car pan at least deals with the braking and downhill end of things, and also takes a stab at acceleration with a baffle in some pans that I've seen. The pickup tube is longer, but I think that would be a worthwhile trade for the benefits of oil control.

About the only thing I can say good about the truck pan is that it would work well for irrigation pump motors.

Wall flood: check out the right hand side of the truck timing cover, down near the bottom. You will see where the car dipstick tube goes.

 

I currently do not have a truck 292. My existing motor is a 223cid inline six. I want to get rid of that and swap in an 8. I plan to either find a Y8 or 390 V8.

So Im not truly familiar with any of it other than I know the Y8 can be built to be a nice motor, would work with my transmission if I get the Y8 bellhousing, and that there is a truck version and car version.

So Im on a steep learning curve-

Thanks for the replies everyone

 

Wall Flood:

To do the Y Block swap, you need to decide if you are going "car" or "truck" regarding your engine mounts. I believe, if I recall correctly, that your truck has a hydraulic clutch. This will make it much easier to go the truck route if you can find the parts.

You need a truck bellhousing. This is easily distinguished from the car belhousing because it has rear motor mount ears on each side. If I am not mistaken, with the hydraulic clutch setup, the bellhousing will also need to have a pair of threaded holes in an ear on the driver's side of the bellhousing.

Make sure you get the right bellhousing for your transmission. If you have a 3 sp, then you want a bellhousing with a 4.675" hole in it. If you have a 4 sp, then you want a bellhousing with a 5.125" hole in it. Remember that the 6 and Y block bellhousings look the same, but one way you can tell them apart is by measuring the distance between the top to bolt holes: the 6 holes are closer together than the Y Block holes. Take a ruler and then you'll be OK in your junkyard search.

Another thing to be sure about is to check the two 3/8" pilot holes in the bellhousing that mate with the locating dowels in the Y Block. There are only 4 bolts that hold the bellhousing to the engine, and if they become loose, then the bellhousing will shift and the locating holes in the bellhousing will become egg shaped. No matter how hard it is to find the bellhousing you are looking for, don't get one with egg shaped locating holes. It will ruin your clutch and perhaps your transmission as well.

Of course, you want linkage -- I'm not sure whether the 6 and the Y Block throw out arm is the same. If you don't know, ask and I or someone else will get out a Ford parts manual and check for you.

All this assumes that you will keep the same transmission that you now have. If you want a different transmission, you will need to come up with shift linkage and column shift if you are going from 4 sp to 3 sp (this is what I did) or, you will want the floor inspection cover with a hole in it if you go the other way.

As a rough guide to get you started, this is the path forward. If you decide to go FE rather than Y Block, your parts search and method will be about the same, but with different parts for the FE.

Now, if you decide to go with a car bellhousing and motor mounts, you can do this too. But you will need a different transmission. The truck transmission that fits the truck bellhousing has a 7.125" long input shaft. The car transmission that fits the car bellhousing has a 6.5" input shaft. Your input shaft length needs, then, to match the bellhousing you use: truck to truck or car to car.

The car transmission will have a rear motor mount. You will need to fabricate a cross member with motor mount to mount the tail shaft of the transmission.

To use side car mounts, there was a tubular cross member made that worked on F100s from 54 to 64, IIRC, that would work with either a Y Block or FE. You will need one of those (can't remember at this point who made it) or you will need to fabricate one. Of course you will need the driveshaft yoke that matches your transmission of choice and you'll need to get the driveshaft cut and install the new yoke. (If you use your current transmission, you can keep your existing drive shaft.)

The toughest part with using car mounts will be with the clutch. The car bellhousing/clutch uses a stamped throwout arm that is pushed by a linkage from the front, where your truck uses a hydraulic setup, I think. I don't know how you will deal with mounting the slave cylinder to a car bellhousing, maybe you will need to fabricate a bracket.

Good luck with your planning and swapping. If we can help with your parts choice, I'm sure more than one of us here will be more than willing to answer your questions, if we can.

 

I would look for a truck engine. The installation will be much easier. In either case, you are going to have to fabricate something. The front mounting point for a truck Y block is farther back than that of the I6. My truck was originally equipped with a 223. When I purchased it, a plate had been installed which mounts in the 223s stock location. This plate extended far enough back so that the 292 could mount to it. I would not recommend this as the solution but it will work temporarily. I have since welded a proper mount onto the frame.

The truck oil pan can be made to work just fine for normal street use. Some of them came with a baffle. Some did not. It is a simple job to add a baffle. I took it a little farther and gated the baffle so that the oil cannot rush away from the pickup while stopping but it will return to the pickup with ease. I would not use a truck pan without a baffle - the oil pressure drops too much for my comfort.

 

Wall Flood, I can trade parts if you've got something to trade.

 

Anybody running an early truck pan without the baffle ought to change it I think. They are crap. Any little hill and/or moderately hard braking sends the oil rushing to the front of pan starving the oil pump.

With the simple baffle of the later pan, I havent had the problem occur even once.

 

Ok so...

Im going to have to locate the correct mount for a Y8

Truck specific Bellhousing

Truck specific block/motor

Later model oilpan (or custom pan with baffles)

And with all that Ill need to be lucky enough to find a truck block within a few hours of me, and one that is in rebuildable condition, not to mention that Y blocks are somewhat expensive to build.

Im thinking that the cons might be stacking up against going this direction. For the effort I would put into this I could find a 460 with readily available parts and swap that in.

But thanks for all the suggestions guys. Ill keep looking as I have some time before I do this, but unless I find a good donor motor within a state or two Im going to go a different route-

 

Y blocks aren't hard to find and since they were no longer used in cars after '62, the truck motors are slightly easier to find. Where are you located? If you're near Atlanta, I probably have everything you will need, other than the front frame bracket to install that galaxy 292.

There is not really a truck specific block. A car motor can work. You just need to swap the appropriate parts in order to mount it in the truck. The motor in my truck came from a 59 Fairlane.

They are expensive to build. They are not much more expensive to rebuild.

The 460 is not going to be a bolt in and installation will be much more involved than using a Y-block. Can you perform the swap yourself? If not, the 460 will be significantly more expensive to install... and everybody has one.

The other option, in my opinion, is to hotrod that 223.

 

Wallflood:

Because I don't know what your vision is -- what you want to end up with when your modifications of your F100 are done, I can't comment one way or another about your plan.

From some of the swaps I've seen, I would offer this to you to think about:

If you stick more weight on the front of your truck, it isn't going to make the steering situation any easier. How this works out is somewhat troublesome in an F100.

Power steering is an obvious solution, but there are two directions you can go with this, and each has its own problems:

The stock solution was an "add on" type of arrangement: there's a pump and a cylinder for the assist, and then a special drag link that controls how the assist is managed. Two problems with this are that there are hi pressure hoses moving back and forth with the special drag link valve and the fact that the bulky drag link reduces clearance to the left front tire. If you run fat tires, this second problem is more of an issue.

Or, you can add a modern integral unit power steering unit. The problem here is that the stock steering location is a sore spot in F100s -- you already have an exhaust manifold clearance issue that precludes an easy dual exhaust solution, and adding a bigger motor like a 460 isn't going to help here one bit.

Frankly, from the installations I've seen, if you go with a 460 and you want power steering, the sano way to do this is to get an independent front suspension front clip from a car and redo the whole front end.

Either way, if money for rebuilding a Y Block is an issue for you, solving the money problem isn't going to be helped by going to a 460.

Do you really want/need that sort of power? If you are on a budget and you want to keep the truck basically stock for financial reasons, I would be thinking about a little Ford, like a 302. They are easy to come by, also. They are more compact than a Y Block and since they weigh so much less, they will ease your steering issues. All kinds of parts are available and as you go down your merry road with your F100, you can stick all kinds of goodies on a 302, like a 5.0 FI setup, or whatever your fancy dictates.

I only say these things so that you might consider your costs before you start chopping and end up in a situation you didn't really want to get into.

A 302 with an automatic would be quite easy and very streetable, and you can get a very respectable amount of power and performance from such a package.

 

When I bought my 54 F100 the plan was to swap in a lightweight 302. After I got to understanding how my F100 was built, I realized that the front frame, suspension, and the engine mounts were a very specific design, much like the Model A and similar early cars. The frame was designed to flex. The bellhousing mounts and the front/center engine mount allowed the frame to flex without the geometry of the linkage changing.

So I'll be sticking with engines that have bellhousing mounts to allow the frame to work as designed. Options include 223/262 6 cylinder, 239/256/272/292/312 Y8, Lincoln 279/317/368 Y8, Ford FE (390 and related), and possibly Windsor bellhousing types.

 

Actually, I think that the truck frame would have an even greater tendency to flex, all other things being equal, since the buggy spring front end of Ford cars up to 1948 will tend to pivot at the front spring perch (and the back one, for that matter), rather than twisting the frame with the conventional half-ellipitcs all around.

That said, I would also note that a lot of the linkage problems go away with the hydraulic clutch setup of these later F100s. Anyway, I'd take advantage of using an overdrive automatic if I ran a 302, which would eliminate that issue as well.

But my preference is to keep things quite stock and I like the Y Block. Still, if the man doesn't want to pay the admittedly higher price for building a Y Block, then my suggestion of looking at a 302 is simply one of many routes he could take.