Need some advice on rebuilding my 460
 

Hey everyone how's it goin? Pretty good on this end... got a 460 the other day for 100 bucks... hopefully it'll turn out to be worth that... I'm not sure what the motor come out of or what year it is... so I got the code off the passenger side of the block and was hoping someone could decode it for me... the number is D9TE then below that is the number 20??? I dunno if this is important or not but figured I'd mention it. In the motor now is .040 over pistons... the cylinder walls are pitted and need to be bored again... at least to make the motor rebuild right... .060 would do it, but what will this leave me as far as overheating probs... room to have another bore job done in the future if need be? And reliability issues? The motor is going to be put to use in a 1978 F150 4x4... it has the mounts on it and the sump is where it needs to be in order to fit my truck... however the rubbers in the mounts are junk what can I do to fix this??? Can one just buy the rubbers? Anyhow... I was going to have the block and heads dipped and checked for cracks and if everything is good there I was going to purchase the Speed Pro brand engine rebuild kit out of summits book it lists for $509.95 that is for forged pistons. Do I want this or hypereutectic???? and what is the difference? In the book the difference b/w the two are compression ratio's... Anyhow I will start here but I have many more questions to ask... in the end I want a reliable good running powerful truck, that I could drive 300 miles non stop and not have to worry about it... the motor will be replacing my current "has taken a lickin and keeps on tickin" 351M... reliable but no power.

The D9TE block is an externally balanced, 79 and up 460.

It seems to be the general opinion on here that it will handle a .060 boring alright.

You may want to get some L&L engine mounts that will allow you to mount the 460 to your existing 351M engine frame towers.

Is the engine just going to be a driver?

Well, the truck will be used for various things mostly for hauling and/or towing... but I'd like to have a truck that would no longer embarrass me when taken to the truck pulls, lol. Boring the engine out would only be to get rid of the pits in the cyl. walls. However I would be running the truck down the interstate at 70mph for hours sometimes... with the motor "built" to do these things. Would it hold up for that kind of road driving?

You will want to keep it pretty sane then for reliability.

You won't believe the difference between a stock 460 and your stock 351M.

And just a few aftermarket parts for the 460, which would still fall in the sane catagory, will wake it up even more.

Ditto what Superdave said - keep it sane. You can do a lot with 460 cubes. Just exercise some basic hot rod common sense...

- A good dual-plane intake/carb combo and maybe some port matching and minor porting. Remember that too much carb will kill intake velocity at lower revs. A well set up vacuum secondary 750 cfm unit on a Weiand Stealth intake is about as good as it gets for a streetable 460. A double pumper is an unecessary pain in the rear for a daily driver.

- A good, reliable, modest cam. Remember that too much cam is far, far worse than too little. Going overboard on the cam is the most common engine build no-no.

- A good set of small-tube primary headers to enhance low rpm cylinder scavenging.

Other than that just make sure your machine shop knows what they're doing and keep your head screwed on straight when wrenching it all together.

Brad

Thanks guys so much for ur input I really appreciate this. I have always talked up fords for there reliability and trustworthieness... last thing I want to do is put a bad combination of things together to give ppl a reason to think otherwise...lol. Um another ? for ya u said that I wouldn't believe the difference between a stock 460 and a stock 351M... outa curiosity what would a 351M with some mods compare to a stock 460... I'm going to redo the 460 regardless just cause it sounds cooler when ppl ask whats in it... lol
And again thanks so much...

Ditto what Brad said on the carb/cam combo... one of the guys at the shop has a 79 F150 w/460 in it... Comp Cams 4x4 Cam (pn 34-235) Edelbrock Performer Intake with a Holley 780 Vacuum secondary carb and 9:1 CR. This thing will idle all day long with no problems, cruises down the highway at 70+ at 180 degrees and at the last truck pull we took it to, pulled 235ft on the track, which isnt bad when there were dedicated "pulling trucks" that didnt get that far