I just got hold of a fordl FE block motor for my lakester. I dont know if its a 332 or a 352 but thats not what i need to know I need to know what gear box's will bolt up. I want to run a 4 speed if I can. Also where to get some info on hopping it up or if any one on here has built one. Its the first time I've delt with them and know nothing. Cheers guys.
There is actually an FE forum. The engines started life in the 1958 cars with a 332 and a 352. The 332 is pretty odscure. I ran one once and broke the cam at about 10,000 miles. I was told that was a problem with a 332 for some reason. The engines do have a lot of potential. They made the FE through the 1976 model year trucks but the engine disappeared from cars around 1970 or so. Personally if you are going to dump the money into building one, I would get a later block.
A 4 speed is no problem. They came with the basic toploader 3 and 4 speeds through the 60's and early 70's. The earlier transmissions had a different pattern than '64 and later toploaders. Toploaders had a dual pattern, so they will work with either an early or later bellhousing. The granny gear 4 speed in trucks used the same pattern as the later p***enger car trans, so a truck bellhousing would probably be the easiest to find.
When you start looking at top-loaders for F-Es remember Big Cubic inches equals big shafts. The input and the out-put shafts on the big block ******s are huge >>>>.
I don't know about DRLA but with SCTA you will need a blowshield for a lakester. Lakewood makes one for the FE and they show up used from time to time. It bolts to a top loader or a T10 with the Ford bolt pattern.
engine pro 5 x is exactly right 2 different toploaders make sure to get the big input shaft toploader to go behind an fe , or if you go the automatic route a c6, as far as hopping it up they are pretty good motors lots of torque, the two displacements you mentioned are the lesses desirable but not bad motors if your looking for big power i believe there are stroker kits available to wake up the 352 , kinda pricy engines to build, ditch the cast iron intake & go aluminum, good luck
A couple of points. There is a real CAR FE belhousing that is an expensive part to find since every 67-70 Mustang guy would like to have one. They run about $500 but you can find deals every now and again. There is a little rounded hump on the top that allows for an 11" clutch. The truck 4spd bellhousings CAN be used but they will not have the hump and I think they can only take a 10.5" clutch. Truck bells can be had for $50. Also, the truck bellhousings are slightly different. They mount the trans one inch closer to the engine IIRC. Meaning your trans has to have the correct legnth input shaft, but these can be cut off to fit easily since the end is not splined. The transmissions themselves (toploaders) are also different. The input shafts are longer and shorter depending on the application and there is a big spline and small spline versions. There is a small shaft trans that fits small blocks and big blocks, and a large shaft FE trans that was put in like the cobrajet cars. The FE big spline toploaders will run $600+ for a core and up to $2,000 for a rebuilt one from a rare car. The toploaders have a metal tag on the pasenger side of the housing that can be decoded to tell you exactly what the trans came from. This tag is what makes one trans cost more than a trans from another car. If you have one with a tag that decodes from say a 1968 1/2 428 CJ Mustang, it will be worth a lot more than a trans from a 1971 Mustang 302 coupe. Any toploader can be modified to go behind any ford engine, but it costs a little to do the mods.
There is also a kit to bolt a t56 up to an FE. I'm going this route in my 65 f100. Google "David Kee top loaders" for really good info and products. The performance possabilities are endless. Check out http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/forum51/ It's a truck forum but this link is the FE section and it his Tons of great info. If it's a 352 or smaller you will probably want to bore it and stroke it to get any real performance out of it. This isn't that bad though because you can get any number of factory cranks to stroke it. I don't think you will want to bore that block much more than the factory 390 bore wich will get you in the 410 range with a 428 crank and rods. Mike
Thanks guys when I get5 to see it when i pick it up I'll take a look and see what I can do. Any one got any pics of these motors or info on where to get parts?
I used a 66 truck bell housing. It was drilled for the larger pattern but the casting still had the undrilled bosses on the inside for the smaller pattern.I made a template and drilled it for the older pattern. They changed the depth of the bell housing which affects the length of the trans input shaft. Ford actually made an adapter pilot bushing so that the shorter input shaft trans could be used with the deeper bell housing in fleets that were swapping engines and trans around in the maintenance dept..
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