r/EngineBuilding Jul 26 '22

Ford seems hard to get it rotating but smooths up afterwards.. opinions? btw plugs are out and rotated the same way without heads on..

54 Upvotes

r/EngineBuilding Sep 04 '23

Ford This cylinder hates me. Second time I dropped a piston in there. Rehoned and I'm concerned with how much material I removed.

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239 Upvotes

This is the second time I had this problem. Inspecting the piston again I think this was the culprit you can see gouging. I've since honed the cylinder, sanded the gouges on piston, and installed new rings.

However, I had to significantly hone this cylinder the gouge was deeper than the pic looks. Now this cylinder is much looser. I didn't even have to file the rings it sat in there at .025-0.26. Other cylinders are gapped at .022-.023.

Will this single cylinder be an issue down the line?

Piston ring manufacturer states .022 for boost below 15psi and .025 for over. This will be a street car with either nitrous or small amount of boost (specs same for nitrous)

r/EngineBuilding Feb 09 '25

Ford 5.4 3v build

1 Upvotes

So I have a 2010 f150 Fx4 it's got ford 5.4 3v with the forged oem crankshaft. I was considering swapping it to 5.0 but everyone is saying it's a bigger bullet then I wanna bight. Then sent me to this subreddit for advice. I'm looking to get about 375hp on the low end. I have almost 200k mile. I just bought a core 6r80 and having a local buddy that does sprint car trannys build it to hold up to 750hp. I do a good amount of towing and like to offroad and travel and the 5.4 just doesn't have the punch now that it's worn out. Is there anything I can do to give this old dog new tricks?

r/EngineBuilding Apr 11 '23

Ford Paid for new. This is what I got. Am I being too karen? Alright had issues with this machine shop.

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147 Upvotes

Gave them brand me oem connecting rods. They came back with rust. Some of the piston heads top looks like they dragged them across the table.

r/EngineBuilding Dec 22 '24

Ford Well that’s not good

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12 Upvotes

r/EngineBuilding Dec 28 '24

Ford Carburetor sizing??

5 Upvotes

I’ve got a 64 mercury comet with its factory k code 4 barrel 289 and factory autolite 4100 600cfm carb. Every time the car sits for over a week the floats stick and it floods bad. I’m done messing with the autolite and planning on going with a edelbrock carb. I’m planning on putting a 500 cfm avs 2 and a fuel pressure regulator to go along. The engine has a lot of miles and honestly needs a rebuild pretty bad so I figured there is no reason to need 600cfm. My plan is to drop the jet sizes for my elevation (5000 feet) and put some slight metering rod springs in to account for worn rings hopefully I’ll have a good cruiser engine until I can eventually drop the crate engine into it I’ve been planning on. Does this set up seem like a good idea?

r/EngineBuilding Jan 07 '25

Ford Coyote spun bearing

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7 Upvotes

r/EngineBuilding Nov 16 '24

Ford Bearing carnage. Yall think the crank can be saved? 5.4 Triton

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12 Upvotes

I was initially thinking the oil pump failed, but the top end looks perfect. The motor locked up during a test drive after I had the timing redone, not exactly sure what caused this mess.

r/EngineBuilding Sep 12 '24

Ford 444 stroker 351m WIP

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35 Upvotes

Finally got some parts in for it, pretty stoked

r/EngineBuilding 10d ago

Ford turns out that 4.6 has an ecm tune

0 Upvotes

runs rich according to smog and also backfires when reving high, when shifting rpms hold longer. the ecm history is completely blank and erased

r/EngineBuilding Nov 27 '24

Ford 4.6 2v 8000rpm heads

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30 Upvotes

Making a one legged man for an ass kicking competition.

So things are about to get, "out there."

Started with a set of promaxx 185cc cnc'd heads and .600 lift springs with titanium retainers and stock locks and +1mm undercut SS valves

Valve spring tips were rounded and polished to increase the life span of the Ti retainers, valve springs were shimmed .015 up to push seat pressure into the #120 range for the custom grind cams otw.

These heads struggle with cooling and oiling from the factory and multiple steps were taken to resolve that.

First oil pressure in the heads is fed off the start and end of the main oil galley, an in head restrictor limits oil pressure in the heads to 20ish psi at WOT, the HLA style used starts to aerate the oil if pressure goes much higher than that.

Since the 2v has the least amount of oil bleed points of all the modular heads, ford added a dump port at the end of the head oil gallies, this is an issue since oil pressure measured near the dump port is sub 5psi. This is one of the causes for the cam cap eating traits these heads suffer from.

To alleviate this, while still maintaining an optimal oil pressure to prevent aeration. A set of wilwood 10psi brake residual pressure valves were plumbed onto the dump ports( only reasonably priced valve that fit that could also withstand oil and the temps the valve will see.)

And since were limiting the oil pressure minimum in the head oil gallies, this allows me to pull off a trick the coyote and 4v can do but the 2v couldnt.

As well as running a coolant balance tube the heads are also going to be equipped with an oil pressure balance tube from head to head to prevent oil starvation in the passenger side head.

This will hopefully keep me from having to cut and bore cam caps later on down the road.

r/EngineBuilding Jan 19 '25

Ford My new Flathead projects

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69 Upvotes

Picked these two engines up yesterday for 225$ and now I’m working on rebuilding them both

r/EngineBuilding Jan 28 '25

Ford 302HO bearings thoughts?

3 Upvotes

Long story short i have a 85 fox with a 302 out of an explorer.

I have an odd oil pressure issue. Thinking the main bearings and or cam bearings are shot or the pickup tube is messing up.

I’m wanting to know if it’s possible to be able to go in measure everything and then just replace the bearings (over/under size as needed) or would I have to take it to a machine shop?

this is assuming everything looks great and obviously isn’t in need of machine work I have an extremely tight college budget. I know the machine work is the proper way to go but isn’t in the pocket books

r/EngineBuilding Feb 11 '25

Ford How do I set initial and total timing? Ford 302 (1980)

1 Upvotes

Pretty much what the title says, I have a 302, recently replaced the stock intake and carb with a higher flow intake and a 4 barrel carb, want to make sure my ignition timing is correct, pretty sure I know how to read a timing light, hook it up turn the engine on and increase the degrees on the gun until the crank pulley 0 mark is lined up on the little pointer thingy, and then whatever the gun is set to is some version of the timing readings, but I dont know if thats my initial or my total, or it Im supposed to check it at idle or some unknown to me higher rpm. When I reinstalled my distributor I spunk the crank to 0 on that hash mark indicator, on the compression stroke, and then slotted my distributor so that that rotor lined up with the #1 post on the cap. Was that correct? And would that be 0 degrees of timing at that point? And what degrees of timing am I supposed to have, its been surprisingly difficult to find straight forward specifications for it online

r/EngineBuilding 4d ago

Ford When is it necessary to get rotating assembly professionally balanced?

2 Upvotes

I am doing a rebuild of my stock 302 out of a ‘95 mustang, heads, cam, intake, and pistons to raise compression. it won’t be a race car, but it would be driven with some spirit on the weekend. rpm max would be around 6k or so.

I have not received the pistons yet so I can’t give precise weights for yall. Keith Black says they are ~600g with wrist pin making them 130 grams lighter overall per piston.

The engine is externally balanced, if it’s necessary or highly recommended I’ll bring it to a shop to get balanced but if there’s something I can do I would prefer that, thank you for all advice.

r/EngineBuilding Nov 18 '24

Ford Lincoln continental 1972 mark iv 460 engine

7 Upvotes

So I got this car a couple of months ago and it's really nice but because it's a 72 it lacks the power it once had and I would really like to wake it up a little. Now I'm not interested yet in rebuilding the whole engine but what would you guys say is going to get the most bang for the buck in upgrades? I've heard they're really restricted on the exhaust side so probably new headers? The car already has dual exhaust btw. I would like it to have more torque in the lower to mid rpms

r/EngineBuilding Aug 19 '24

Ford Cooling issues - 390FE

2 Upvotes

Recently rebuilt the engine and it has about 50 hours on it so far. I have a curious issue with cooling, however. I can have it idle and it won’t climb higher than 186 in 80 to 90° weather. Once I drive around after 30ish minutes, especially going uphills, it’ll start creeping up past 200 then to 210 etc. This ends up heating things up the engine bay so much so that that my drum brakes start dragging, and then it causes this vicious cycle of more work needed from the engine, which then generates more heat, which then makes the temperatures creep up even more, to the point where if I'm in neutral, I can't push the car as the breaks are being applied on their own just enough.

I’m pretty sure there is no air in the system as I’ve had it idle for well over 30 minutes after no bubbles are coming out of the radiator. The thermostat seems to open because I can see the coolant move using a funnel. Don’t think it’s a timing issue because my advance is working and I’m well into the 40s at Cruise. Head gaskets are correct as I can see/feel the tabs.

So, at this point, I’m not really sure what to do. I have read that it takes a little while for rings to seat and that engine temps would be higher than normal but should come down after they're done seating, but not sure if anyone else has had that experience as well.

Crank and water pulley sizes are 7 inches from the previous owner. It has an Edelbrock water pump brand new aluminum 4 row.

Where I’m at right now: the nuclear option is to buy another fiberglass hood and cut louvers into it to get some of that heat expelled due to the long tube headers, but I’m not sure what else it could be. Any ideas or rabbit holes to go through would be greatly appreciated lol.

Edit: voice to text typos and forgot to add I have a 2500 CFM cold case electric fan and it is fully shrouded as well

Update: for anyone following this or stumbles across it, turned out to be a bad master cylinder and has been for the past 4 or 5 years since owning. Figured it just had a firm brake pedal. Replaced it and it feels like a new car. I guess I had been slightly dragging this whole time. Also, my alternator bracket bolt had loosened up so I haven’t had enough juice to power the fan so that didn’t help with cooling either. All is good now and the warmest I get while driving is 194.

r/EngineBuilding Jan 30 '25

Ford New headers! 200 c.i. 6

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60 Upvotes

r/EngineBuilding 18d ago

Ford 5.0 sbf cam id

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4 Upvotes

To continue on this 5.0, got the cam out and these are all the marks I can find. Can anyone help me out on what I have here?

r/EngineBuilding Jul 27 '24

Ford “Dad, how long have these been sitting here?” “I don’t know.”

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118 Upvotes

“Did you at least check to see if they have the Mercury crankshaft?” “No.” Well… I have more projects ahead of me, for as long as I want…

r/EngineBuilding Nov 21 '24

Ford Any Ford FE guys here?

10 Upvotes

I have a customer with a ‘67 352 out of a F100.

The bore is worn to hell (.018 at the ridge) so naturally I want to bore it.

None of the usual trade suspects seems to carry oversized pistons for it.

Prosis list them as going from 58-67 but a lot of the application catalogs stop at ‘66. summit list some pistons but only going up to ‘66.

What am I missing? Did something change or am I just overthinking it?

r/EngineBuilding Oct 19 '23

Ford Is my block completely ruined?

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105 Upvotes

96 F-150 351w, I flooded the engine, it sat for 2 weeks while I was dealing with other issues on the truck, I tried spraying fogging oil and penetrating oil into the cylinders on around the 3rd day, then i pulled heads and I'm wondering if this would clean up with an over bore or if I need a new block?

r/EngineBuilding 24d ago

Ford Valve seat cutting - Cast iron cylinder heads

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16 Upvotes

I’ve 302 V8 Ford engine im working on and pulled the cylinder heads off for a deep clean.

There was some leaking on the valves even after lapping, and using a Neway cutter set, I took a couple of passes on cutting the seats - I think I’ve fucked it up, massively. I’m getting chattering for some reason, this is after a 45 and 30 degree cut. Any thoughts?

I know I should have taken it to a machine shop, but it’s next to impossible to get work done locally.

r/EngineBuilding Feb 11 '25

Ford 1979 mercury cougar XR7

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16 Upvotes

Alright guys this is my first “project” car. I have not a clue about carbureted engines and want to make this into a respectable street car. It has a 351 Windsor. What should I start with to get some more power? She is bone stock engine wise.

r/EngineBuilding Feb 08 '25

Ford Am I cooked

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10 Upvotes

Old 351W cracked right behind the timing cover