Old school engine rebuilding wisdom welcome here

[Gearhead999]

When you balance and engine, which is very cheap to do, you balance the crank, rods, pistons, rings, flywheel and balancer. It is WELL worth the money.

As far as a roller cam, great choice. Crane, for one, makes a retro fit kit that fits a reduced diameter roller cam to your block. I have installed several....and they work great.

Cylinder heads, well I'd save my money on working the stock heads over. Go out and get a set of Elderbrock or another. Well worth the money and darn near the same price as working you old stock head.

I wouldn't restict oil anywhere. Leave the oil route stock.

You usually go .030 over to clean up the bores and get the most cu in for the buck.

[DeltaMustang65]

Ok. Call me crazy but I think it'd be sweet to be able to say I've got stock heads and still be fairly fast (fast enough to spank these ricers even harder, and those annoying monkeys in their stock 5.0s). I also kinda hope I can keep my block virgin, but yeah, I know sometimes you need to bore it over just to keep the cylinder nice and straight.

Let's say I get some new aluminum heads. I will paint them, of course, but since it's a common thing to do these days I doubt anyone that knows the first thing about cars will be fooled. I should still have them ported and polished, right? What about any other work, is it needed or would the performance gain be too small to justify the cost of labor? The only bad thing I've heard about aluminum heads is that they don't mate well with iron blocks. Or maybe it had something to do with the gasket too, I forgot. Has anyone heard of this issue?

Just a couple more things for now.

Does anyone happen to know the difference in output of the 289 with stock worked-up heads and the same 289 with aluminum heads out of the box or with the average port job? (This is of course assuming that the hypothetical 289s' other parts would be the same and also that they would be optimized for use with aluminum heads)That would go a long way in helping me decide what route I should go.

And...

Would stock worked-up heads be too much of a bottleneck to justify a roller cam? I'm assuming that they're pretty much the best option for aluminum heads here, but if I'm wrong, by all means let me know.

Thanks all.

[rwhite65]

The numbers you are looking for are not far off if you are judging at the flywheel. If you want the 302, swap a 302 block in and put all the 289 front accesories on it. Then nobody can tell if you have a 289 or 302.

If you started off with a 5.0 engine, the heads are better then the older ones and the engine would have the roller cam right from the factory.

I am a bit partial to this conversion....cause I have done it to mine
Ryan

[DeltaMustang65]

Hmmm...I'm definately keeping the original 289 block unless, god forbid, it's cracked or something. But I doubt that very much.

If I can keep the stock heads and just have them worked on AND get 300hp at the flywheel along with the other upgrades, that would be good enough for me. I don't plan on racing, I'm scared to death of damaging this car since I restored it and it's in such great shape. I just figure why not beef it up a bit since I'm itching to rebuild it anyway. (I think it's fun. I was raised on Legos, what can I say...)

Also, I know some people at work that have run C4s just like mine that have stood up to just over 300 horses and haven't run into any problems over the years. I might actually be leaning towards this simply because I wouldn't have to change my transmission and differential. I don't have a whole lot of money to throw around, I'm a college student, after all.

On a different note, I've heard I can get 4 speed autos from Ford that look exactly or almost exactly like the old C4s. Are these the transmissions in the old 5.0s?

[rwhite65]

I would assume the transmission you are referring to is the Ford AOD. A bit bigger transmission, with a bigger oil pan. yes it came in the old 5.0's, I put one of those in my car too.
Ryan