Yeah, work on all the Chevy's then tell me how bad the Fords are. Ford, Chrysler and GM are all goofy. Everyone talks Chevy, but the parent company GM, if you will remember had all sorts of different crap. And lets not forget a 305 and 350 crankshaft have the same casting numbers, will interchange, but the balance is way off. Late model 350's have a weight on the flywheel and all the others are neutral balance. A 396 and a 454 look the same, but one is internal balance and one is external. And don't even get me started on Chrysler.....
Hell, sbc ain't quite as interchangeable as some think, there's plenty of fish-hooks with their stuff too.
Not that it matters, but I beg to differ here. A 210hp - 289 4V was offiered and is and often called the D code 289 engine. Also the 289 - 271hp 4V engine often called the K code or HIPO-289 was also available.It was released in 1963 for the Fairlane line and offered the the beginning of July 1964 in the Mustang lineup.
Should have bought a Norton. They didn't change their bolt pattern or prime dimensions from the mid 20s until 1967. Made pick and mix very easy.
They both are full of hurdles with numerous changes. SBC and SBF both have 2 different balancer/ flywheel balance variations. They both have multiple water pump variations. bracket mounting hole variations on the cyl heads of both ,the list goes on.
Didn't the sbc have some first year only details that were changed early on? No oil filter and stagger bolt valve covers come to mind. Does a 265 Chevy bolt up to the same bellhousing as a 267 Pontiac? Or does a Buick 350 interchange with with a 350 Olds? Ford made the change to improve driveline rigidity. From 1965 to 1996 there is almost complete interchangability as long as you match components. I don't think you can say that about Chevy small block intake manifolds, valve covers and heads.
They had a flat head in 28 but it was not a v8 flat head. A flat head is a flat head which is a general classification of engines. A V8 flat head is a specific classification of a flat head. I think every car manufacturer made a flat head at one time. They ranged in number of cylinders clear up to 12. Some were in lines and some were V's. Chevy had an overhead four cylinder which would be a banger according to your terminology but definitely was not a flat head. I saw one a couple of weeks ago at a swap meet. The engine did not have provisions for valve covers. It was a cool engine. The banger term was used in the old days to describe an old car that was not real cherry. An oldie but a goodie. It did not indicate a four cylinder engine. I do not agree with all of the new terminology and I will never be able to correct the miss use of terms. by young punks.
Chevies are no better than fords, just cheaper - why use 4 bolts where 3 will do? That being said, ford did some weird stuff, cylinder numbering and firing orders that defy logic come to mind. As to GM transmission interchangeability, how many tailshaft lengths were there on Turbo 350's? I had a buddy pole vault his Chevelle on the driveshaft when it popped out - shorter tail on the tranny he swapped in (I know - he was very stupid not to notice how much the the drive shaft was hanging out when he bolted it together, but he likes chivies)
I think all cars are about the same. Some have better stuff in one area and not in others. My 89 Olds with 400,000 miles is a great car. I hate to work on the car because of metric and fractional bolts. There is little room to work on the engine. I have owned the car for a long time and I never plan on getting on the learning curve. There are people that love working on this type of car and would hate working on a car manufactured before the big one, WWII. I think that this is what makes Chevy people Chevy people and Ford people Ford people. They like what they are use to working on and they get upset because they do not know the in and outs of other manufacture's products.
I think that say a lot about the quality of your friends mecanical skills and not the quality on Ford parts
Chevy motors had the same bell housing patterns from 55-99,valve cover bolt patterns same, water pumps one short one long. The only SBC that had external balance was the 400 c.i.! All of the motors 4,6,8, had the same bell pattern till up in the newer year models, 99 up. BBC the same bell pattern two different water pumps and the 396-427 were the only two that were internaly balanced 454 was not! Now heads were a different story, early heads had no hole provisions for acc. 1969 is when holes were added to the heads for acc. Still the easyest to swap and never go by casting numbers they did use some of the same for different parts! It will get you in trouble! Ford has internal and external balancing on some of there SBF models too! 1982 or so comes to mind. My .02 Fords are good too just have to look a little harder for what you need and make sure it is what you need!
It is called planned obselescence in the marketing and design world. You make the young but older part obsolete so that the buyer has to have the new stuff. Well that's a pretty crappy thing to say.
Be happy. The '84 302 V8/AOD in my avatar is assembled with metric and fraction fasteners. Guess Ford had some left over fasteners they needed to use up. Now the real hair puller, was converting the serpentine belt system over to vee belts, and getting the pully's to line up with the power steering and alternator pully. Gotta use the right water pump too.
To those that have said 1965 Ford products were all 6 bolt are a bit incorrect. Early 1965 models like my 65 Comet Caliente HT had 5 bolt blocks. Mine still has the original in the car I bought new.
When I was working in independent shops and a factory owned tire store the usual joke was you had to give the color on 60's/70's Ford to assure that you got the right part. You learn to take a sample part to the parts house with you when you are working on a mid 60's or later Ford. I have to agree with Hichhiker in that all of that happened long after Henry died and he most likely wouldn't have let it happen.
Just to keep someone from trying to bolt a V-8 up to their 235/261, they used a different bellhousing bolt pattern than the V-8's and late (62 up, I think) sixes. Also small block Chevies had an early staggered 4 bolt valve cover, bolt pattern, a straight pattern 4 bolt valve cover and a center bolt valve cover during the time period. I'm pretty sure some of the flywheels for the one piece main seal blocks (85 up??) had a counter weight on them too (externally balanced). But yea, they're easier than Ford.
Remember when you could buy bell housings to bolt a 39 Ford transmission to a SBC. You still can but nobody makes adapters like they use to make. I think Henry had a great idea. Why retool every year. This saved Ford a lot of money and made him competitive. I do not see a lot of adapters being made for engine swaps in new cars. I like when Henry made the deluxe model a standard model the next year. Just one more thing to complain about. The USA went with European styling. I always thought USA styling was great but the manufactures needed to bad mouth the old styling to sell new European styling. Of course, I think the tri-five Fords and Chevys had great styles. We use to go to the new car dealer ships just to look at the new models. Now they all look the same. No need to go look at the new models now.
Oh good god don't get me started. My first experience with top-notch Ford engineering was working on my Dad's 1980 Mercury station wagon in the 1980s. EVERYTHING on that 302 was "one year only," hard to find, and cost more because of it. Then in the late 1990s my wife had a beautiful 1967 Cougar with a 1969 351 Windsor out of a Mustang in it. Every time I needed any part at all I had to take the original with me to the parts store because there would be three or four options. Meanwhile Pontiac (my fav) had pretty much one of everything from sometime in the 1960s until the '80s. I took parts off of a 1968 350 and bolted them right onto a '75 455 (water pump, manifolds, brackets and pulleys, etc.). It's not just that they fit, it's that they were THE SAME. My friend's entire family are diehard Ford nuts and they all have a massive arcane knowledge of which this you need for that combination in this car. I have no idea what Ford was thinking, other than never getting it right the first time and therefore always having to make changes along the way? I used to like ALL cars, but after dealing with those and a couple more Fomocos, plus a Charger, I'm GM all the way now. The others drove me away!
When I was a teen I owned a Mustang. ('67) I wish I could remember exactly what part it was I needed, but what I do remember is there were something like 5 revisions made to that one part with different part numbers for each revision that one model year.
Hmmm, thinking about the original question : Why Ford........Why? I have a theory. I is a engineer and working with other engineers, they just love changing stuff - makes 'em kinda think they is smarter that way. My theory goes; Ford allowed engineers to make decisions on things like engines, bellhousings, etc. GM was run by f^*(ing accountants even back then who would want to see why they would save money by changing. Maybe the engineers there lost the argument more times. It's only a theory, and probably not a good one.............................. your thoughts...????
I think you hit it on the head - one extremely one way, one extremely the other. Read On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors by John DeLorean, great insight into the General Monster.
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