As much as i hate a small block ford, I'm gonna have to agree with @Crazy Steve , 351W would be the best bang for the buck and probably the easiest to find a core core motor to build from. The most options for transmissions, ease of parts availability and they will pull real good with the right gears and good trans.
My Dad built a .030+ 312 back in about 1965 and put it in his 6 cylinder 1956 Ford pick up. This is the engine he showed me how ro rebuild engines on! The truck had 6.70x15 mud grip tires and a 3.93 rear end. While I would not recommend that ratio for a highway truck, I assure you that combo will have enough “ pull” to pull any trailer! At fifty mph on the dirt roads around the ranch, back in the day, I could stomp the throttle in high gear and tear the road up! Two rooster tails of dirt/would be thrown out behind that truck for fifty feet! Most “ torquey” combo I ever drove! So, in my opinion, the-Yblock , built right will give you the power you need! Coming in way ahead of the 302, approaching the 351! Cool! Yes! Best choice……maybe/ maybe not! My choice? Yes! Ps: I still have that truck in one of the barns on the ranch! Bones
I dunno about that.... The 'Ford into a Ford' swap on these trucks is probably the best-supported option out there. The truck guys seem to stick with Ford motors far more than in the cars so mounts and exhaust are readily available for most of these combos. And there is one more choice that bears mentioning; the 429/460. The big downside here is fuel economy won't be good and you'll be locked into a C6 pretty much as manual trans weren't used very often behind these and Ford never put a automatic OD behind one. But you won't have to worry about towing power, these have that in spades. Hunt down a trashed-but-low-miles motor home and you may find a engine/trans that needs little more than a 'freshening' and desmogging/tuning that could come in at lower costs than any of the above. You might even get lucky and find a aftermarket OD unit under one for mileage relief.
Dollar for dollar, it is not your best choice. We know that. I'd say the better question is "Is it an acceptable level of expensive to justify running a cool, obsolete drivetrain?" In that context, I think yes, it is. The Y block has enough aftermarket support that though parts are more pricey than the SBC and Windsor Ford, they're not so much so that I would remove the Y block in lieu of another platform. They're also good runners, pretty strong and reliable, look great and sound awesome. Very torquey for the small cubes. Most importantly, there are legitimate options for a better transmission behind one that don't cost a damn fortune.
Also, if you want to go Windsor, I'll take some detailed pics of the 289 in my '55 while I have it up on the lift. It fits really well in that chassis without any sort of exotic work to get it all in there. That's half the battle sometimes is all the ancillary bullshit you have to deal with when going from one engine family to another. Everyone seems to just focus on fitting the engine in the chassis but completely forgets where everything else needs to go; accessory drive mounting, power steering pump, inlet and outlet of the water pump and thermostat neck relative to the radiator you have, hood clearance, header clearance, would you have room for a mechanical fuel pump, do you have room for a standard oil filter, what fan can you use, do you need to reroute fuel lines and battery cables relative to existing plumbing or wiring.... this is the stuff people forget about and what can run the time and price of a project through the roof. And it's for this reason that there needs to be a BIG difference in cost for me to reengineer a different engine family into a car, because the savings of the expensive rebuild for the obsolete engine versus the more common platform can evaporate in the blink of an eye when you need a custom radiator, new hoses, special headers, hard to find and expensive accessory drive brackets, not to mention your TIME to do it, to make it all work properly. Not saying that that is or isn't the case here, that's a personal decision to make. But the car is engineered around a Y block from the factory. There is no easier route than stock.
If you go with the Y-block in the 1956 Chassics the drivers side exhaust manifold will dump right on the steering box. What we did , back in the sixties , when in our home town hot rod things were kinda scarce, was to mount a passenger side T-bird exhaust manifold on the drivers side! It dumped out in front and we just curved the exhaust and ran it to the back. Looked kinda odd, but worked great! Bones
What would you use then? 57 Y block dual exhaust manifolds or use the center dump manifolds like you can get from Speedway?
Remember, he's talking about a truck. Other than steering box clearance, it's wide open under the hood.
We wanted some of those truck center dumps, looked for them, back then no internet! Gave up and used what we had or could find! We had an extra set of 312 T-bird exhaust manifolds. They are duals and are larger than the 272/292 dual exhaust manifolds. Bones
I misread the first post so thanks for setting me straight there. Yes agreed, it's a blank canvas there. It would take a mountain of an engine to fill than engine bay.
If you do decide to go with a 351w, vans and pickups are good places to look. Get everything, mounts, pulleys and brackets, linkages. Ford is noted for being hard to find matching pulley sets. And since it’s a driver, don’t overlook the serpentine belt systems. Not really HAMB friendly, but easy to set up when you have all factory components. Easy enough to convert FI motors to a carb, too. Same with the distributor, older DuraSpark units fit, just match the gear material to type of cam.
I grew up with y blocks and fe's. I wouldn't put a y in any thing other than a light weight rod. I've been looking for a 351w roller block for 3 years. If you can find one, check for cracks from the cam bores going towards the main webs. My choice would be a 390 if I could find one. There's plenty of bolt on parts to make installation simple. They have adequate torque for light trailer pulling. The rest of your truck is modernized. I would do the same to the drivetrain if possible. Driving everyday and being dependable should go hand in hand.
I have a 292 y block in my 56 F100. I love it. The transmission sucks. If I had built the truck, I would have put a 429 in it. There is a lot of room in that engine compartment. Fits well. You can still find 429 / 460 engines that are good runners without a rebuild. Buy a driving parts car and use all of the needed parts. I did that in a 64 F100 years ago and made a real cheap driver / parts runner / tow rig.
I personay think Y blocks are junk. I've had 5 that I count, plus several cores . They look cool, the t bird valve covers are pretty, they sound awesome, oiling sucks, and mine have been less than reliable, to the point I won't even try to run the 312 in my 59 ford. Anymore, it's about what you have to start with. If given the choice I would get a 351 Cleveland . When not given the choice, Windsors fall into my lap.
You are semi-correct, but those transmissions are pretty much useless here. And those aren't AODs, they're EAODs or more correctly the E4OD with electronic shift controls, so you need a computer to run it. Not the same thing as an AOD with its conventional hydraulic controls.
That was my first thought .When I was 15, my Father found me a 55 F100 with a 365 Caddy and a Jetaway. Best learning experience I ever had. Tranny was the weak link. Well, that and the stock rearends. Blew out three of them before I went with a 9 inch. You would not be disappointed with this and newer OD trans.
As stated, my trucks, I am aware of the electronics. Electronic or not, the overdrive is real and functional, and aftermarket controllers are available no more or less appropriate than a 700 r4, 4l80E, t5, t56 4 +3 etc. It is invisible to the eye when installed, and relatively useless as they don't seem to help the 460 get any better mileage than a carbureted c6 truck. In fact my carbureted 77 did better than the injected trucks with od
292 out of my '55 Merc. Needs pistons and a Bore job. THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!! Gonna clean it, paint it and put it on a stand and use it for garage Art. Will use a 351/C6 in it's place.
Pretty impressive numbers on a Y block here. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/nice-little-y-block-build.1278417/
The last Y block I built I got new pistons for $41 free shipping. it was an e-bay listing and I thought I was getting one piston but a complete set showed up..... should have reordered more. that bit of luck kept the cost down
Y’all think a Y block is expensive to rebuild! Try building a MEL big block lol. 1500 just for pistons. I do love the sound of my 292 Y also. I say keep it.
Falcon Performance lists a Ford Y Block master rebuild kit with new pistons, bearings, cam, lifters... whole shebangabang for $1,334.00 on eBay. Granted that's all stock, non-performance rebuild stuff. But for many of us, that's perfectly acceptable for guys that just want their cars to run reliably and get us to where we're going without burning oil, smoking, or similar fanfare. I'd actually like to put an Olds V8 together with one of their kits. Everyone talks about how expensive these obsolete engines are to rebuild, and it's a valid concern. But I would like to see how inexpensively someone could do a complete rebuild on one and not really cut corners.
Plain and simple, I think it's been said before but I'll say it anyway. Absolutely life will be easier with a more modern block, but if it was me I'd keep the Y-block unless I was building for a purpose where I cared more about the gains that could be had with a more modern powertrain. I'm working on a '56 F100 now with an S10 frame swap because it's for my son and that gives him 4WD, fuel injection, ABS, OBD, etc. When I'm done with that I'll get a '57 F100 for myself and work on using some of my FE block supply. I had a '55 Ford Fairlane in the '90's as a daily driver, can't speak to towing, but I drove it from Florida fully loaded and if not for the carpet smoldering because an exhaust leak heated the floor I'd have done the trip in a day. I'd be happy with it if I could do that again.
Besides parts why does it cost more to machine a Y block? Is it about the same as SBF? I figure the machining is all about the same-I am NOT a machinist so don't know the processes. Mike
My stepdad used to have a well-used 58 F250 with a 292, all stock except for duals with truck mufflers and an Okie re-ring at some point. It had two 55 gal drums in the back, one for gas one for diesel, always carried a Wacker plate, shovels, rakes, several fivers of oil, tool boxes, bed was always full, carrying at least a ton every day. He bought a small asphalt paver that came with its own trailer with ramps that loaded from the side, which weighed about 10K loaded. We did custom driveways all over up in the hills of Napa Valley, and I drug that trailer everywhere, not once could I not get up the hills, never spun a tire with that weight in the back, 2nd gear and the 292 howling up through the trees- man, did it sound good. Points n plugs and oil changes, never failed for 6 years, chugchugchug. It did suffer from the SD's (lack of) mechanical knowledge- some other old fart told him that it had hydraulic lifters that had to be set at zero lash, and occasionally he would come in on Saturday and "adjust" them to zero- even though the original air cleaner still had the decal that said "Valve lash .019". You could always tell on Monday, it would start and run, but like schidt, and he was the the MOST bullheaded about stuff like that, no, it's adjusted right, so and so said so blah blah blah, get fighting mad and his favorite saying was there's the right way, the wrong way, and my way... So I would limp it around, come back after work and reset it and it ran great again. He got a package deal on a pair of pickups one day, an F250 for himself and a 68 GMC 3/4t that was setup for towing a camping trailer, treefiddy, fat back tires, 4.10 gears, all that, and it became the paving pickup. Same load, same trailer, decent truck but get up in those hills, and sometimes have to hook a tractor on front to make it up there. He sold the old F250 to one of the guys who was still driving it when he croaked years later
Back in the day, when I was growing up on the ranch we had five Y-blocks going at one time! Folks talk about power of the Y- block….we had one 292 in an F-600 with a 22 foot flat bed. That truck could haul 10 ricks of fire wood, not sure how much that weighs, but we did it. A well built and tuned 292/312 with the right gearing will give you all the power necessary to get the job done! Bones
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