I finally did it. Hooray!

[plunker]

Hello Friends,

I finally bought a truck. I recently acquired a 69 f-250 camper special. 360 automatic. I plan on working on it with my son.

The body is in pretty good shape. Not too much rust. No rust holes.

The downside is that it seems to have a stuck or burned valve. It makes a popping noise when the engine is under stress (pedal all the way down).

I would ultimately like to put a 460 in it. I have a couple of questions for you all. I gratefully appreciate any opinions, advice, or direction to some online reading. I am comfortable with tools and mechanics, I am just a bit inexperienced here. I am very excited.

I am looking to buy a used 460 and have it rebuilt. I would like to still have an automatic transmission. What should I look for when buying a used motor? years? From certain types of vehicles? Should I look for a trans to be attached?

Then I am looking to have it rebuilt. Do I dare tackle this on my own? What parts are needed? I would like to obviously increase the performance so an upgraded Carb/Intake are on my mind as well. I have a friend who is willing to help me put in some time as needed.

I look through the LMC truck catalog almost daily with much giddiness. Are there other good resource for parts?

[brandon.k]

Welcome from north Texas. Its hard to go wrong with a 429/460 imo. As far as performance upgrades, it really just depends on what you are wanting the truck to do. Cant wait to see pics..

[JBoRacer]

from Indianapolis

[71highboy]

[Madsen1970F100]

Hi and welcome from Virginia. This website is a great resource. I am not an expert by any stretch but feel I know my way around the shop but did make a few bonehead mistakes in my project, so plan for those. I opted to have my engine rebuilt by pros. Cost more but I did not have the tools, experience or faith that I could pull it off without incident. You might want to consider a crate engine too. Anyway take your time, plan to spend more than you budget for, accept that its a long road and mistakes will be made but it will be a very rewarding process in the end.

Oh and shop around, there are more resources than LMC, like Dennis Carpenter.....cab mounts and any pressed metal work seem to better from Dennis Carpenter. Just my

[forrestbump]

I am not an expert by any stretch but feel I know my way around the shop but did make a few bonehead mistakes in my project, so plan for those. I opted to have my engine rebuilt by pros. Cost more but I did not have the tools, experience or faith that I could pull it off without incident. You might want to consider a crate engine too. Anyway take your time, plan to spend more than you budget for, accept that its a long road and mistakes will be made but it will be a very rewarding process in the end.

Oh and shop around, there are more resources than LMC, like Dennis Carpenter.....cab mounts and any pressed metal work seem to better from Dennis Carpenter. Just my

Take your time, study, be patient and y'all will have a Bump to be proud of!

[67 ford f100s rule]

Welcome to Fordification from Richmond, Indiana. Its always good to have a new guy who wants to save an old bump.

[fireguywtc]

from Texas!

[Racer Z]

Welcome from So Cal.

For questions & answers, start a thread in one of the other sections that would be more fitting of the question.

Since your current tranny won't fit on a 460, I would probably buy an engine with an attached tranny.

Try changing the oil in you current engine. You may find that it will help.

[old bulldog]

hello from nova scotia canada

[hdpusher]

Welcome from central Pa

[Mancar1]

Hello from Northern Ca.

[randyvines]

from waco

[robroy]

Good day Plunker, thanks for your great first post!!!

First, please forgive me if some of my responses come across sounding like I've misunderstood your experience level. It sounds like you're at a level that's similar to where I was when I began my truck project in July 2008, which is one of the reasons I wanted to respond. I made some expensive mistakes, and had some really positive experiences too.

I finally bought a truck. I recently acquired a 69 f-250 camper special. 360 automatic. I plan on working on it with my son.

The body is in pretty good shape. Not too much rust. No rust holes.

Excellent!!! That's fantastic that you're planning on it being a father-son project. I'd hoped to work on my truck with my father but it unfortunately didn't work out that way. It's a great opportunity to do something productive and fun together.

The downside is that it seems to have a stuck or burned valve. It makes a popping noise when the engine is under stress (pedal all the way down).

I would ultimately like to put a 460 in it. I have a couple of questions for you all. I gratefully appreciate any opinions, advice, or direction to some online reading. I am comfortable with tools and mechanics, I am just a bit inexperienced here. I am very excited.

While several members use 460 engines in Bumpsides and really enjoy them, I suspect that you'd get a lot of interesting input if you were to start a FORDification thread about engine options.

There are many guys here that have lots of specific experience with different engines, and by reading all the responses to a thread like this you might learn a lot about the benefits of each. I believe that FEs, Windsor V8's, 385-series V8's, Cummins 4BT diesels, and others I'm forgetting about (and some I'm not aware of, no doubt) are all good choices in their own ways. Before deciding on a 460 it might be good to understand the pros and cons of all the feasible options. (Maybe you're already aware of all the options--if so thanks for humoring me!)

Perhaps the key to getting a lot out of a thread like that would be to include as many details about your ultimate desired outcome as possible. For instance:

1. What would you like to use your truck for? (Work or play? Towing and hauling? Long-distance drives? Skylarking on back-roads? Drag-racing? Stop-and-go city driving?)
2. What are your reasons for considering a 460?
3. How much money would you like to invest on the engine?
4. How much money would you like to invest on the transmission and other driveline components?
5. How much time would you like to invest? Are you in a hurry, or would you be happy spending a year or longer getting the truck running with its new engine?
6. What kind of fuel mileage would you be happy with?
7. How much power would you be happy with? (Perhaps you could compare it to some production vehicle if you're not sure what numbers you're looking for?)

Then I am looking to have it rebuilt. Do I dare tackle this on my own?

I asked this same question a while back, and the best advice I received was to spend time going through an engine rebuilding manual. By reading about the details of rebuilding an engine, you can get a better idea about whether it's something you'd be comfortable doing on your own or not.

Maybe some basic cost information would be helpful. A high-quality performance Ford crate engine costs around $10,000, plus or minus a few thousand. As a case-study, my performance FE cost $9,475, like this:

• Parts: $3,692 (39% of total)
• Labor: $5,460 (57% of total)
• Tax: $323 (3% of total)

The thing to understand about that $5,460 in labor is that only perhaps $3,000 of it paid the builder himself, and $2,460 paid a machine shop. So you might have to pay that amount to a machine shop too if you rebuilt it yourself, which reduces your savings to ~$3,000, or about 30% of the engine's cost.

So you'd have to decide whether the time and effort it would take to rebuild it yourself is worth a 30% savings to you. Note also that, unless you're insanely patient, detail-oriented, and ready to spend untold hours getting advice from experienced engine hobbyists, you probably wouldn't achieve results nearly as good doing the labor yourself as it would be if done by a top-notch professional builder.

One more note: generally speaking, every engine builder in the world will tell you that they'd be happy to build whatever engine you want, and many of them will even claim to be especially good at building your type of engine. But very few of those will truly have the highly specific experience required to build a top-notch performance engine of the style you're after. So if you hire a builder, the selection of the builder ought to be done with uncommon patience and care. If you do it this way, you'll sure be happy you did down the road!

There are probably "classics" on 385-series (460) engine rebuilding that I'm not aware of, yet one respected book on FE rebuilding is How to Rebuild BIG-BLOCK FORD ENGINES by Steve Christ (ISBN: 978-0-89586-070-5). Here's the front and back of the book--you can click on these images to see up-close details:



Another GREAT book, which covers every aspect of fixing up an old Ford pickup, is How to Restore your Ford Pickup by Tom Brownell (ISBN: 0879387262 or 978-0879387266).

Without knowing more about your experience level, I'd recommend holding on to every one of your precious dollars until you've read and understood most of this book (I'd be better off today if I'd done this)!

What parts are needed? I would like to obviously increase the performance so an upgraded Carb/Intake are on my mind as well. I have a friend who is willing to help me put in some time as needed.

The required parts are going to vary a lot depending on what your ultimate desired outcome is. And while carburetor and intake upgrades are good, they'll work out best if done in concert with a well-planned performance engine build.

I look through the LMC truck catalog almost daily with much giddiness. Are there other good resource for parts?

There are many good sources of parts for our trucks! A bunch of them are listed in a vendor list here: http://www.fordification.com/links.htm. My personal favorites are Green Sales Company (for New-Old-Stock parts), Dennis Carpenter (for reproductions, many of which are made with the original Ford tooling), and National Parts Depot (for reproductions, including Dennis Carpenter parts that they sometimes sell for less).

As much as it's fun to get moving on a project immediately, I have a hunch that you'd be happiest in the long-term if you spent at least a couple of months studying before beginning to invest money and effort. If I'd been more careful about planning my own project, I would have saved around $10,000 and several months of work in the first couple of years and had a superior finished product!

Plunker, thanks again for such a friendly and detailed introductory post!!!
Robroy