Hello all. I'm sure I'll get flamed for being a newbie and asking open ended questions but its the stage I'm at. Also, yes I have used search. I'm not new to working on cars/trucks just new to the F100 world.

With that out of the way. I currently have a FE360 that runs decently but was not taken care of well. So I'm going to pull it and rebuild it so that I can be assured that I don't have to worry about it.

Purpose: Utility Truck (not daily driver). Use to haul loads on a residential level, loads of dirt, fence supplies maybe tow a boat or something. So basically a mild 390 build. More for TQ rather than HP.

What I have: Running, unknown internal condition stock 360.

Question: About how much money should I set aside for the build? From what I've read so far, I'll need a crank and rods for sure to make it a 390. Beyond that, what reliability/power upgrades should I consider?

Finally, thanks for any input!

 

It will be costly I looked into doing the same thing. What I ended up doing was I found a 390 and freshened it up with new rings, lifter, pushrods and had the heads rebuilt by a friend. The other thing I'm doing is putting an aftermarket 4bbl intake and 600cfm carb on it. Much cheaper this way than everything needed to go from a 360 to 390. The 390 I found at a local boneyard got to hear it run before I bought it. cost me $200 for the engine. With that and parts I'm only in it $600 almost ready to go in. Not sure if this helps but worked out great for me and my truck is a work truck not daily driver.

 

Thanks! Thats actually a really good suggestion. Now searching or a list of all vehicles the 390 was used in.

 

You don't say specifically the truck it is in or the size of the load, but if I take "runs decently" as meaning it doesn't burn oil or leak fluids, and it starts well, and I take your reference to an F100 as suggesting it is in an F100, what is the point of taking it apart? It is in effect a lower performance engine than a 390, but it doesn't sound like you plan to race it!

The 360 is a workhorse with acceptable low end torque and it is a very reliable engine. A 360 that doesn't burn oil or have other issues is quite likely good for another 100k miles if you take care of the externals.

By the way, the 390 was used in just about everything at some time, but there were a lot of 360s put in trucks, and many of them get sold to the unsuspecting as 390s - sometimes the seller doesn't know. It is not possible to tell if an engine is a 390 by examining the outside of the engine. You must either see the crank or measure the stroke.

 

Sorry forgot to add the details.
The truck as its parked now = 1973 F100 360 with a C4.
The reason I'm interested in doing anything with the engine is that I'll need to pull it out to clean up the body and paint it the right way. The truck was not treated very nicely by its previous owner. For example, the oil breather has no filter nor is it routed back to the intake, hence a lot of oil condensation in the engine compartment. Also the radiator overflow was an empty coolant plastic jug. So the coolant is a baby crap brown color.

After talking to a mechanic, I asked about getting the engine flushed to clean out the sludge that is surely sitting in the bottom of the coolant passages. He said that with a setup that was run like that, I'd need to do more than just the pressure flush, I'd need to drain the entire block, blah blah blah.

Amazingly the engine doesn't really leak oil. Maybe just a little bit from the oil pan, but after 3 weeks of being parked in the same spot it left only a 2 inch circumference circle on the ground.

The carb needs to be rebuilt and so does the tranny.

Basically I'm looking at pulling the engine anyway. I'd like to make the truck nice and reliable, so it seemed natural to freshen up the internals just to be sure they were done. I suppose I could leave it as a 360, but it seems that a 390 swap would be fairly inexpensive and add a small amount of power. Anywhere between 5 to 205 hp gain depending on 390 year/valve etc. More importantly, somewhere around ~100 ft/lbs of torque. Thats all without switching out mount towers etc.

 

Marc,

Well, you can replace the 360 with anything up to a 427 (even though the 428 displaces more, the 427 is the apogee of FE racing development), although there are some small issues you will run into with some car FE blocks going into a truck. There are a small number of engines that had slightly different mount configurations.

The question is, for what purpose? My truck is a toy, driven frequently but retired from heavy lifting. I like to make noise and smoke the tires, and that is about it. For a working truck I'd probably start with a new 2bbl carb (when I first got my truck well before I restored it I was going to rebuild the carb but a new 2bbl was so cheap it made no sense to rebuild it). If you want to get more than a small difference from switching engines you will need to start spending money on headers, 4bbl, better ignition, head porting, intake, well you get the point.

So it has some sludge in it? Part of the beauty of these old beasts is that they just keep going. You may want to test compression, but if that is good, drive it until you decide to get silly and really do up a good FE.

One thing I have been told is that it is not a bad idea to run a little diesel through with the gas to keep the valves lubricated (these were intended to run on leaded fuel and the valve seats are not hardened). Don't know if it is a wive's tale, but it doesn't hurt.

If you do want to build a serious FE Barry Rabotnick at Survival Motor Sports has a book on it (check out their website) and there are some interesting tips on Dove Manufacturing's website. Both are firm believers in the old FE.

Good luck.