Fe i.d. Help

Hey guys I need some help from you ford FE guys. I have an FE that came out of a 68 P.A. state police car way back in the day i was told it is a 390. but on the bell housing it says 66-427 and it has starter holes drilled for a cross bolt 4 bolt main. ford stuff makes me nuts can someone shed some light for meGASSER JEFF

 

If it has the pads for the cross-bolted mains, but they are not drilled, it is likely not a 406 or 427 (although there are some early 406's that were not cross-bolted, but they wouldn't have the pads).

Can you get the casting number? It's on the front of the block, below the passenger side cylinder head/block mating surface... sometimes cast upside-down. This will at least give a year to play with. The casting number on the heads is between the center two spark plugs.

428's are easy to identify... they have a damper behind the crank pulley.

Typically the only way to be absolutely sure of an FE's guts is to disassemble it and measure bore/stroke.

 

the motor was my brothers he took it .30 and did the whole bottom end..i remember him telling me the original heads had casting #'s that were the same as a 68gt mustang. they are long gone..he gave it to me and it was never started.

 

if the casting says 352, then its either 352,390...if its an upside down backwards 105 then its a truck block...

given its in a trooper car, it prolly is a 406...first letter on the motor code is decade...c=60's d=70's and so on...second digit is the year...C6=66...

post the code from the heads, and Ill tell you exactly what you have...

Cheers and beers
Hodge

BTW FE ID can be very frustrating, if its a truck block it will look something like D3TE and it will have extra webbing in the mains 3 in stead of two, CJ's had 3 webs as well, almost all had cradle hole around the upper pan area, might be mistaken for cross bolts...

 

well... you'll tell him what heads he has.

My 390GT has C6AE-R's on it... that medium-riser head could be found on almost any single-four-barrel-equipped FE. From 352's to low-rent 427's to 428CJ's.

 

You have good heads Madgrinder....I am running oldschool EDC heads from late 57 early 58 on my FE...They breathe really well up high....

What intake are you running?

 

thanks guys..I told him i wouldnt sell it so I'm going to trade it off...I need a th400 trans- a good one- pass the word boys..thanks GASSER JEFF

 

The "66-427" on the rear bulkhead is meaningless, many 360/390 blocks were cast using that core bulkhead. It wouldn't be a 406 from '68, '62-'63 only. C6AE-R's are not "medium risers", but they have the high, short intake port- as do all the later heads except the 428CJ. C6AE-R's did not come on 427's or CJ's. If it says "352" on the left front, it can be a 352, 360, 390, 410, 427, or 428. Reverse 105 blocks are the newest blocks, generally the 360/390 type. The casting code will not tell you what year the block is, only the year model the casting was designed for- as the third digit tells you what line it was designed for, the fourth is the type of part- like a C8OE head designates 1968, Fairlane, Engine, and the suffix -N designates the CJ casting, and 6090 just means cylinder head, 6015 is a block. The date codes will tell you the year the block & heads were cast, block is above the oil filter mount, heads are unde the valve covers. The holes in your block are probably an oil return hole for truck air compressors, or the holes for holding the block for machining at the factory. A 428 block will usually have "428" inside the water jacket behind a freeze plug, a regular 428 will usually have a big "A" on the rear bulkhead that looks like weld but is actually scratched out of the sand core, and a CJ block will have big "C".
Some early engines have no dampener, just pulleys, but a later engine could be anything, not just a 428 (that's one I never heard before LOL)

 

I like them

I have the factory mid-rise four-barrel intake... the cast iron dual-plane one. I looked at a few aftermarket manifolds, but the flow numbers didn't back-up the added cost. I know the factory "stock" cars with this intake could get into the low 13's with a cam-swap, cast-iron headers, and a decent tune-up.

(sorry for the hijack, but I'm an FE addict)

 

Maybe med-riser was the wrong term. I meant it had the higher, shorter intake runners and the higher exhaust ports. I know it has no resemblance to the 427 medium-riser.

I've driven a factory 427 4V car with C6AE-R's. According to the original owner, the heads had never been removed. I know time allows for many parts to be changed, but this was a very low-mileage car with a very well-documented past.