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Was this engine well maintained?

3K views 26 replies 13 participants last post by  Bradrock 
#1 ·
The seller promised me that the 40,000 miles on the odometer were all the car ever saw. The valve train looks a bit rough to me????


 
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#2 ·
looks like it was well maintained but sitting in a garage a while with no cover for all the surface rust. id just get some new push rods if they are to rusty on the ends and run it.is that a 302/ 351?
 
#3 ·
It's a 400 & I'm just funnin y'all. The pushrods are so bent I'm taking the rocker bolts out by hand ! Don't matter ,the only part going back in is the block
 
#7 ·
Current state YES. In a few months it will be mildly badass. You can have the heads . But I'm banished from Florida. I could tell you exactly where to go dig up a Chevy engine & Paragon transmission out of my 32' Chris Craft. I buried between Punta gorda & Arcadia. Heh...heh
 
#10 ·
Early 400s had the same heads as the 351C-2V. Later ones got the 351M heads. The difference is that the 351M heads put big water jackets around the exhaust valve stems. That helped valve life, but the jackets are huge potbellies that hang down into the exhaust port, choking it off so much you can barely get a finger past them.
 
#14 ·
Ford in their infinite wisdom oils the main bearings last.
Just like a Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, or Cadillac... and some non-V8 Chevrolets.

Hank the Crank and Mario Rossi went to elaborate lengths to alter the Cleveland oiling system. Down in Australia, nobody worried much about it, either at the drags or at Bathurst.

I had one stroker engine stick a valve on the run stand, for no reason I ever found out. It pretzeled a Manton pushrod and spat a lifter out, which dropped the oil pressure to zero. I welded up a retained bar and bolted it into the lifter valley; it keeps the lifters from coming out. I've done that to several Clevelands since.
 

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#12 ·
Looks like it was already used for an anchor! LOL
 
#15 ·
I live THREE miles from town & am disabled. My wife is a quad. I just want a fun grocery getter with a comfy ride at the same time. I can put more stuff in this trunk than the little pickups I see around.
I don't expect to be taxing the oiling system all that much. But I did get the high volume Melling pump.And I may or may not use restrictors to redirect the flow a bit. I'll talk to my machinist about it. Hell even if I grenade it.....I only have to crawl on my hands & kneees a couple miles at the most..Heh...heh
 
#16 ·
When you assemble the motor, make sure to Plastigage the main bearing clearance. Ford had an intermittent problem with oversize main bearing bores on the 400. If your clearance exceeds spec PM me for further details.
 
#17 ·
Will do. Thanks for tip. I plan to get it align honed. I have plasigage & bore mikes . From my racing days I have a habit of checking maybe TOO many times.
Sucks too get it back in the car & have low oil pressure right off the bat.Or spin the bearing. I ran my 2300 pinto up to 7000 rpm's by the end of the straight :nanabang:
 
#18 ·
Don't align hone it unless you have to. Check by dropping the crank in on dry bearings, Plastigaging to check for excess clearance (which would point to a possible oversize bore problem), and then oiling the bearings and spinning the crank with your hand, no rear main seal. If it spins freely, the block (and crank) are straight enough.

Besides the $100-$175 cost of align honing the block, you'll be out $100 or more for a .003-.005 undersize timing set.

Too bad you don't live closer; between Fords and Kalashnikovs, we could probably find something to yak about...
 
#19 ·
eons ago i raced the old 351c mills some --only time one failed was cause the oil pump shaft twisted off. had a 340 mo-pig do the same thing once--

i don't recall any serious oiling problems with it. it was one of the more fun fords we built--

at one time i was thinking of building a 426 stroker mill from a assortment of 351/400/ and 351w parts for an AC kit project. i figure some of you remember that 426ci 351w kit that PAW out at chatsworth sold back in the day?

only thing this one had aluminum 351 boss heads with 7/16 studs and so on. so it was sort of a mini-big block chevy painted ford blue--

the cobra deal fell through and i ended up selling the mill new in crate and never fired it up--LOL

the fellow that bought it said it was a real screamer though---

we didn't build that many fords -i wanted to build a 429-460 back when summit was selling those big -altered port heads-- but never got around to it.

-mostly chevy big blocks with a few MOPARs tossed in for fun.

those were the good old days--LOL!''hell we thought that 500hp 327 chevy was er--small back in the day--
 
#21 ·
It's got a CFS protective rust coating lol. you don't see many pintos these days. I was considering a pinto motor for my Suzuki Samurai.. I helped my body build a Pinto motor up back in the eighties. thing was pretty fast it had about 12.5 to one compression
And a custom head. his boss raced Formula Ford for some sort of open wheels type thing. we got a lot of take off parts. that little Pinto was pretty fast for the first eighth of a mile.
 
#22 ·
Only seen one Pinto motor, in my Brother's 4 cyl Pinto Wagon. He drove it up here from FL in the middle of a blizzard with a line of tea candles on the dash as a defroster! My Dad instantly traded him for his Ford Ranger pickup as he wanted him to get back alive! The car lasted another couple weeks then snapped the timing belt. Snapped the new one too. Pulled the valve cover and discovered the cam had worn flat and was jammed against the rocker. Ford in their infinite wisdom made the cam bearings decrease in size at the front, so to pull the cam one has to remove the head first. I said screw it, removed the radio and cut a panel in the firewall to remove it through the dash! When we junked it we discovered the problem with the defroster, a dead Palmetto bug was jamming the door that moves to divert air to the defroster ducts! You FL guys use Mouse Traps on those suckers? This thing was huge!
 
#23 ·
Anything less than a bowling ball will not faze them. The name palmetto bug was made up for the snowbirds. Somehow not as disturbing as cockroach.
 
#24 ·
yea we had a major malfunction with a timing belt failure an destroyed some very expensive titanium, custom intake valves an banged up some custom pistons . that little motor was a bomb anyway, was close to a midget motor in street legal ugly ass green pinto with some big ansen slot mags. he used to piss off Camaros an Stangs on the street all the time. I think we put 3 different rear ends in with welded up side gears.
The spare stock motor had a timing belt let go also seems like that was common on them.


I had a 240z Datsun with a 410" chevy with brodex 10 heads an full roller valve train at the time. guys could never tell what hit them LOL the 240 z looked stock except for the Enki rims an tires had about 650 HP with out the bottle LOL first they would get beat with a 240 z on the highway then some kid in pinto would dust them from the lights. LOL. it was about the only ford engine I really played with. had one in a boat that was OK.

I miss the Z it handled really well an was ungodly fast if Id had a 5 speed instead of a Muncie 4 speed back then it would have been a porshe killer. I blew a front tire an rolled it hard on hwy 1 north of bodega bay almost went off a cliff into the pacific. sold the motor to guy with a Anglia drag car it went low 10,s.

The pinto was junk aside from the engine an was junked at some point the motor grenaded when a shift got missed .

I should just sell all the gun parts an build a new car, or finish one I got. maybe they wont out law them in the next 5 years . LOL
 
#25 ·
I never had belt problems. But I did break a few distributor shafts. We had to run stock distribs. Not made for 6 or 7 grand I guess. The pinto gets a bad rep from media hyped up stories of gas tanks exploding. Never mentioned that getting rear ended on the highway speeds would fuck you up in any small car. fire or not. Great circle track cars.
 
#26 ·
we had some sort of prehistoric crank triggered ignition that was made from some other 4cyy ign race car parts. I do recall that the stock distributer was not up to the task. we had head bolt issues an used arp studs an oringed the head. that motor was apart more than together. I always thought the pinto was a decent little car.
id like to have that old motor in a sports car on a road course
 
#27 ·
They still run them in racing hydroplanes last I knew. There's a really nice dirt track near where we live now but the four cylinder class is front wheel drive only. Otherwise I'd be over there picking up a rule book & building a car. Even test & tune night is way more fun than I could stand!!
 
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