Ford 460 Engine Build On A Budget Part 1 - Horsepower S13, E4

hey guys I don't have to tell you that budgets are tight these days some of us don't have enough money to pay attention so when we say we're building a big block voter today on a budget we're talking down a dirty cheap but first we've got a long-awaited power payoff for our turbo Mustang here we're gonna see how its power at the flywheel compares to power at the rear wheels weeks ago we dived into a project we called the turbo stay a 382 cubic a small-block beefed up with a turbo kit from Hellion it made 1,100 horsepower at the flywheel on race gas almost a grand on 93 octane premium well later we built a complete roll cage then we followed that up with ten work to close up the cockpit we've reinforced the subframe and replace the four boards we bolted up a qa1 system up front that included a tubular k-member control arms and coal over a conversion kit we gave it a Pro Street brake kit along with a front engine plate that let us poke the motor right onto the sub front last week we installed the fuel delivery system from the tank to the fuel pump and filters up to the motor we installed a new trick - loaded with gauges and assembled the lightweight steering setup including of course a new wheel next was the radiator with a low-profile fan then we relocated the battery out back and installed a kill switch the rest of the drivetrain including the power glide and driveshaft and the performance shifter before its first time fire up inside the car now it's time to see what this thing's got at the rear wheels we're really counts because of parasitic losses in the drive train horsepower measured at the rear wheels is generally fifteen to twenty percent less than the horsepower measured at the flywheel now on our first run we're gonna take it easy with a mild first gear pull and make sure we're not gonna tear anything up how hard she twist I thought she was rolling off for a sec haha that was fast here we go we did one in a second do one in high gear alright did you ever wonder what 24 pounds of boost looks like want to see it again this was a problem on the dyno - this thing makes so much boost once you get it all plumbed up you can actually take these off get it welded together and put in and just have one or two of your access points so you can pull it apart be band clamps work real well - well after a quick fix our third run confirmed our suspicions the low rear end gearing won't let the current converter spin fast enough to lockup that's why they call it test and tune well no reason pushing this thing any harder today in a few weeks however we will take this thing out for the ultimate workout at a local drag strip meanwhile a complete turnaround coming up as we build a blue oval big-block without going in the red [Music] here it is the junkyard starting point of a budget engine build now what is it well it's a 385 series engine which was Ford's last attempt at a production big block there were three engines in the 385 series the 429 got the most attention and the most use in factory muscle cars this would be a nest nobody's home Wow four 60s were planted in a few performance cars most of those found homes and heavier cars like t-birds Mercury's and Lincoln's and I'm pretty surprised there's not a lot of wear on top of the valves either because of their long production run from 68 to 96 well-worn 460 motors are plentiful and pretty cheap compared to poor deafies we found this one for 200 bucks at a local boneyard for 60s are well known for their stout bottom ins parts are plentiful and despite that lackluster image these motors are capable of making massive torque and plenty of power here's a little-known fact the fabled EFI motor can only be stroked of 454 cubic inches while the 460 can be stroked up to 550 all that makes the 460 block a favorite foundation for drag race got some bruising it to I thinking crank can be cleaned up with just polish during an engine teardown you could learn a lot about how an engine ran and how well it was treated for example hammered rod bearings are signs of hard use and abuse no matter what they told you when you bought your old motor you'd never know the real story till you get in size or even a budget motor build involves a trip to the machine shop and even good blocks will need a little work now if you're reusing the crank like us you'll probably need to have the journal's polished alright you can save money by doing some of the work yourself like reconditioning reusable rods our fuel at the machine shop which included reconditioning these iron heads was about 500 bucks kind of what we expected so we're reusing everything here including the rods we've preassembled so everything over here is either a factory replacement or came from Comp Cams for about eight hundred bucks so with the block the machining and the parts so far we're at fifteen hundred not too shabby we also painted the block ourselves to save a few extra bucks now we're going to go ahead and install some freeze plugs now here's a little tip I see a lot of people just drop these into place and press them in well that can cause water seepage so we're going to use the little Loctite retaining compound which will take care of that leak now using the socket slightly smaller than the freeze plug tap it into place it's also a good idea to tap the head bolt holes to make sure they're clean otherwise machine material trapped inside could cause a problem when you torque the heads down just like ours now here's how you can do a little detective work and tell a little bit about when your motor was made and what was made for all thanks to this casting number ours is a D 90 e - a B the D 9 we learned stands for 1979 or later the t means it was made for a truck and the e stands for the Ford engineering group the a B just means there was one revision to the casting now we can drop in the upper half of the rear main seal now make sure that the larger side of the sealing lip is towards the front of the engine now since we only had to polish our cranks journals we can get by with standard size bearings like these stock replacements we got from down the street at O'Reilly we're the usual dab of silicone on the seal ends and some oil on the bearings we're ready for that crank now here's something for your ford buddies who are trivia freaks the 385 series gets its name from the crank stroke of this motor 3.85 alright now the original main caps can go on with the arrows pointing to the front of the motor of course and we'll keep them in place with factory replacement bolts that we torque to 90 foot-pounds in a crisscross pattern from the center out the factory replacement Pistons going in here are cast of course good for about 6,000 rpms and we'll have plenty of horsepower yeah now we're going to get ready to drop the rod and pissing in and I already oiled up the Rings and put lube on the bottom of the bearing so I think we're ready to pound at home [Music] all right with that we now have ourselves a fresh 460 short block that's solid and also pretty cheap yeah it turns over nice - hey we'll show you how we finish up the bottom end and the parts we're going to use up top on our budget big block when we come back we're back with more of our big block budget buildup now our recondition heads are almost ready to go back onto the short block but before we do that I want to show you something now when you hear somebody talking about valve lapping here's what they mean when a valve is lap compound is used between the face of the valve and the head then it's spun what this does is it gives it a perfectly consistent circle around the face of the valve what this boils down to is a perfectly good seal when the valve is shut and no loss of compression here's a stock spring and here's one of the new ones we got from Comp Cams now it's a little bit taller and it has a higher spring rate and check this out down inside there's a dampener and that keeps the spring from wobbling higher rpms now in case you're keeping score the specs on the valves of these stock heads measure out at 206 on the intake 165 on the exhaust side we can also tell you that the combustion chambers measure 88 CCS and since they're cast-iron they are ridiculously heavy fel-pro gaskets on a budget bill do you bet they'll cut corners here unless you want to blow a head gasket now you should always torque your heads from the center out in three increments in our case from 80 to 142 foot-pounds also whatever you do don't forget to install the head dials at each end of the block they're absolutely necessary to properly locate the heads our new cams the comp hydraulic flat tappet with a 494 gross valve lift on both intake and exhaust now since it is a flat tappet got to lube up every one of these lobes now this thing has a broad powerband and for you guys I'd love to hear them dance we've got a very noticeable idle the timing chains another thing you need to replace ours is a stock replacement installed dot-to-dot oh we are using the old cam boat though torque 245 foot-pounds then the hydraulic flat tappet lifters can go in and they need a lots of Lube to help break in that cow then our stock replacement push rods and finally the stamp rocker arms okay now for the adduction on our big block this original cast iron intake manifold is not only heavy comes up way short in the plenum volume Department now our why and replacements lightweight aluminum 37 pounds lighter and the extra volume one's gonna add up to a broad powerband from 1500 to 6,000 rpms with the usual bead of silicone laid down on the ends of a block and new gaskets in place we can drop on the intake and this you want to get right the first time looks like we did these boats by the way have a torque spec of 25 foot-pounds our 460 big block came with an old points type distributor we could replace it with a new high dollar piece but instead we're gonna save about 130 bucks with a little upgrade from per Tronics first remove the points condenser and grommet then clean out any dirt or oil between the breaker plate and camp next we can install the igniter module and place the magnet sleeve onto the distributor shaft now we can insert the black and red wires with the new grommet through the housing finally we set the air gap between the module and magnet sleeve using the provided 30,000 feeler gauge now what you don't want to do is fire off a distributor like this with a newer hei coil because you'd melt the module but Ronix recommends something like this flamethrower that's rated at one-and-a-half ohms with 40,000 volts which is just right for this application back on the bottom in we can bolt up the oil pump now we went with a standard volume since we don't need the extra volume you need in a high performance application we got the pump the pickup and the pan from O'Reilly Auto Parts now we can't put the pan on until the front timing cover is in place and that's part of this week's budget tip so stick around because we're going to have that tip and a trip to the engine dyno room right when we get back build on a budget horsepower projects that save you time and money delivery horsepower our low-budget big BOTS build all started with the junkyard 464 door we disassembled for some machining on the block heads and crankshaft then we loaded it with factory replacement Pistons hanging on refurbished stock rods we replaced the springs for taller stiffer ones from cop and installed one of their hydraulic flat tappet cams after a basic timing change setup we dropped in the rest of our valve train components and buttoned up the top end with a new aluminum intake then to save a few bucks we upgraded the stock distributor and bolted up a parts store replacement oil pump and pickup to pinch your pennies on a budget bill you got to reuse as many original parts as possible and Russ that means things like this timing cover even water neck and Oh since we like the looks of these old valve covers well they're on the list too that is after we show you how to bring them back to almost new condition starting with getting rid of this old gasket material then we use solvent and lots of elbow grease to get rid of the caked on oil and dirt after 30 minutes of this your arm may be done but keep thinking about all the money you're safe man for such an old valve car these things are still in pretty good shape they do need a little work though over the years they're most likely used with only a quart gasket what ends up happening is the area around the bolt hole gets pulled down and that adds up to a leaky gasket around the rest of the rail so I'm gonna use this hammer and dolly to get them back into shape with the dolly on the top of the rail I'll tap the bottom side to flatten them out while we're here a little facelift won't hurt either we're using dupli-color high heat ceramic paint with an aluminum finish more ford blue for the timing cover finally we knock in a new seal and it's ready to go back on the motor unlike aftermarket crank shafts that are mostly all internally balanced our 460 crankshaft is externally balanced so we got to run this counterweight on the front of the crankshaft now make sure when you do your teardown to keep track of this piece because they're really hard to come by [Music] we're dumping our for 60s exhaustion to some headers we got from Flo tech the pipes measure an inch and 3/4 and feed into a three-inch collector so it races just come out with a new street strip carburetor that's perfect for this project they got three versions we got the 750 CFM version with a manual choke and mechanical secondaries and at 330 bucks it sure fit our budget yeah and they use a tumble polishing process that makes it look a lot more expensive than it really is now let's see if she'll run [Music] I don't know about you guys but there's nothing like the sound of a clock on to a set of super 40 just for reference factory for 60s after 79 like ours had a horsepower rating of 215 447 foot-pounds 348 corners that's still 130 over stock now let's find the rest 472 foot-pounds 366 horsepower get in love it it's like in the timing it is loving it maeín for motor that was a dog back in the day this thing's making 493 foot-pounds at 3400 378 horsepower at 4700 rpm yeah I'm pretty happy and we only spent a shade over 2,300 bucks that's pretty little budget well we got to go but we're gonna keep playing we'll see you next time with a special engine builder challenge we'll try to beat that yeah us trying

Channel: PowerNation

Views: 1,271,177

Rating: 4.7992811 out of 5

Keywords: Automotive;, Cars;, Vehicles;, How-To;, Auto, News;, Howto;, How, To;, DIY;, Car, Tips, Budget Build, Budget, Budget Engine, Engines, Big Block, Small Block, Junkyard

Id: qQwoh0yxCBA

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2019