Is the Proformanceunlimited 400HP 390 Turn-Key a fair deal?

[Ranchero50]

It's funny how quick a motor revs when nothings attatched to it.

Jamie

[1971ford]

that has got to be the most beautiful sound ive ever heard

[robroy]

Hey thanks for all the nice posts! I guess the sound and idle are nothing to be worried about after all!

Here's how I transported it from the UPS Freight center. I'll drive it in the back of my work truck (shown) to my father Hugh's where #50 is located. Then I need to find a way of getting the engine out of the back! I'm not very experienced with moving heavy things so if any of you have suggestions I'd love to hear them! I posted a question about this in the garage/workshop forum area yesterday.



Here's the moment I set hands on this beauty after cracking the box open. An exciting moment!



-Robroy

[Ranchero50]

Get a good engine leveller and bolt it to the front and rear of the heads. Put the bolt through a washer, then the chain. Remove the carb and tape the holes, remove the distributor cap (so it doesn't get cracked). Back the truck into the garage, Use a good engine hoist and pick the motor up off the bed, remove the truck, lower the engine onto a 2 x 12 that's sitting on the engine hoist legs, then move the engine. Don't roll the engine with it up in the air (center of balance is high and they like to fallover). Oh yeah, sweep the garage floor really well before picking the motor (little wheels get stuck easy, read prior sentence again)

Jamie

[1971ford]

Get a good engine leveller and bolt it to the front and rear of the heads. Put the bolt through a washer, then the chain. Remove the carb and tape the holes, remove the distributor cap (so it doesn't get cracked). Back the truck into the garage, Use a good engine hoist and pick the motor up off the bed, remove the truck, lower the engine onto a 2 x 12 that's sitting on the engine hoist legs, then move the engine. Don't roll the engine with it up in the air (center of balance is high and they like to fallover). Oh yeah, sweep the garage floor really well before picking the motor (little wheels get stuck easy, read prior sentence again)

Jamie

thats a tall cherry picker

[mljjones67]

My cherry picker would reach that high.

[fomocoguy]

You can pick up a nice (for the money) cherry picker at harbor freight or cummins tool for a couple hundred bucks, and they will fold up for storage when not in use. It's a worthy investment!

[papabug71]

Congrats on your engine! Sounds wickid!

[1971ford]

My cherry picker would reach that high.

well the ancient crusty engine hoist that im borrowing from my boss that leaks oil with every pump and makes scary sounds doesnt reach that far

[robroy]

Hey! Well, I'm scrambling to finish the chassis assembly so the engine can go in. In the meanwhile, here are some more pics from Proformanceunlimited of #50's engine being put together:





I should probably make a new thread in the Project Updates area instead of tacking updates on to this one, but it's neat to see the continuity from the inception of an idea to it physically coming to pass (all in one thread).

Thanks folks!
-Robroy

[robroy]

I noticed today another video clip of #50's new engine showed up on the Proformanceunlimited site. It's similar to the original one but meant for a wide audience (instead of an audience of one).

http://www.proformanceunlimited.com/vid ... _31_08.wmv

In case that URL goes away, here's one hosted on my web server (it won't load as quickly as the Proformanceunlimited server):

http://www.robroygregg.com/Number50/Robroy_390.wmv

Notice that Doug makes a mistake and calls this a "460" after shutting the engine off!

-Robroy

[robroy]

Get a good engine leveller and bolt it to the front and rear of the heads. Put the bolt through a washer, then the chain. Remove the carb and tape the holes, remove the distributor cap (so it doesn't get cracked). Back the truck into the garage, Use a good engine hoist and pick the motor up off the bed, remove the truck, lower the engine onto a 2 x 12 that's sitting on the engine hoist legs, then move the engine. Don't roll the engine with it up in the air (center of balance is high and they like to fallover). Oh yeah, sweep the garage floor really well before picking the motor (little wheels get stuck easy, read prior sentence again)

Jamie

Hey Jamie, thanks for your advice here!

I'm considering using a carb plate instead of bolting the leveler to the heads. Since I need to remove the carb anyways it should be easy to install the plate, and this will save me from needing to worry about torquing the head bolts again, not to mention helping me to avoid dropping debris inside of the engine once the valve covers are off. Do you think load levelers are superior enough to carb plates to justify the extra effort in using them? I'll be doing a straight drop in the frame, since the clip has been removed.

Your suggestion for the 2x12 resting on the lift legs is ingenious! I definitely wouldn't have thought of that, but it makes so much sense. I'll definitely do this to roll the lift around!

The suggestion about sweeping the garage floor is also a great one. It sounds like you've done this a few times before! In my case, I'll be doing all of this outdoors in a gravel yard, so I plan on putting some thick pieces of plywood down on top of the gravel as a makeshift "floor" for the lift to roll on (this was my father Hugh's idea). But I'll make sure my "floor" is as clean as possible before trying to wheel it around!

Thanks again,
-Robroy

[Ranchero50]

Robroy, you are gleening advise from years of bad experiences on this forum...

Engine leveller gets bolted to the front and rear assesory bolt holes in the head, not the head bolts themselves. If you are careful you can leave the valve covers on, if not cover the rockers with a couple layers of rags or old towels. A 2x4 laid over the towels with safely absorb any side loads from the lifting chains (great for 302s) You can also bolt the leveller to the exhaust ports on most engines (the FE's don't have much meat for the top bolt though so I wouldn't lift one of them by that).

You want a leveller because it will allow you to balance the engine and tranny level to install the whole assy and make life much easier. The carb plate isn't that great of a deal for installing stuff (hard to line up the parts fighting a moving motor). Even if you leave the tranny in the truck you'll appreciate being able to minutely adjust the angle of the engine to match the tranny. I strongly suggest removing the tranny and installing the whole mess together, that way you only have to worry about the motor mounts lining up and the headers not getting stuck in stead of worrying about them and trying to get the converter to line up with the crank, the converter bolts in the flexplate correctly, the tranny lined up with the motor and finally moving three things at once to get them to come together (up / down, in / out, and angle up or down). It's hard enough doing it on the floor. (put tranny on upside down milk crate with input shaft level and just drive the engine onto it.

For you floor, laminate at least two peices of 7/6" plywood onto a 2 x base so you end up with around a 2" thick platform. You'll need to keep the front two lift wheels on the platform at all time, the back aren't that important unless the engine is lifted high, then you want all the wheels on the boards and roll the truck under the motor / tranny assy. Did many motors like this;


Notice the black leveller sitting on the motor. This was just a single sheet of OSB since we were just swapping the motor / tranny in the boat 140 miles from home.

BTW, we ended up setting this motor combo in the boat with a backhoe since the marina's gantry setup was too short and narrow. With the leveller it took about fifteen minutes of me standing on my head lining up the four mounts and them shifting the motor so it sat level. Bad thing was the backhoe operator still charged him $300 for the 'service'... We could have built a big enough gantry to get the boat under for half that...


Jamie

[Dragon]

You actually have about 5000 in parts in that motor and to be truthful 8 mpg is a stretch on that motor. I have built many motors with FEs my speciality and that does not work out good for horsepower to mileage.

1 hp is 42.4 BTUs 400 is 16,962.891 for 8 cylinders per revolution. 16,962.891 / 8 = 2120.36 BTUs per cylinder

1 gallon of gasoline = 124,000 Btus you get 7.31 cylinders per revolution for 1 gallon of gas at 400 hp because 124000/16962.891=7.31

BTUS are BTUs per minute

[robroy]

Thanks to all the great advice I received here and lots of help from my friend Mani, I managed to get the engine delivered to the project site last weekend! I made a Project Updates thread about it here:

http://www.fordification.com/forum/view ... 22&t=37313

Thanks again for all the fantastic advice,
-Robroy