I've got a 1970 f600 dump truck it has a little 360 in it and its getting ready to blow. So i was wondring what would be a good motor to put in it. I live in western NC so I am always goin up big hills or down big hills and usualy haul 7 to 8 tons with it. If anybody has any advice I would shore appreciate it
5.9 or 8.3 cummins, or a dt466 international would get my vote.
If you want to go back with gas, the 391 will fit right in where the 361 was as its the same engine family. I've got a '74 model with the 361 in it. They will pull pretty good with the right carb on it. I think a diesel engine to transplant would cost more than what the truck's worth, but so would a overhaul maybe. Check with a junk yard for good runners.
whats the diffrence between a 391 and a 390 I can find 390's all day long but i have looked for a 391 and cannot find one
A 391 is a truck engine from the FT family where a 390 is a car engine from the FE family. Crankshaft snout will be different, and some other differences like the distributor won't interchange. The 391 will be lower compression/high torque and the 390 will be high compression/higher horsepower. I don't claim to be an expert at Ford engines, only stuff I learned from my little F700 that I bought 25 years ago.
Thank you for the information I will keep looking for a 391 but what conserns me is my f600 has got a 360 I know they come with a 330,361 and 391 in that year but some where along the line some one put a 360 in it. would a 391 bolt right in if i took the 360 out or would i have to change some stuff. I know a 391 would bolt right in if it had a 361 in it.
As a Ford hourly employee, had the true honor to work on the truck engine assy. line. Location was Dearborn Engine Plant, Rouge Area, Dearborn, MI. 1973-1974. A Ford employee helping assemble 10's of thousands 330-360-361-390-391-428's. My station installed intake gaskets prior to intake manifold installation. Production line rate averaged 50-60 engines per hour. The line rarely stopped. Had to learn a few additional jobs nearby my station (tag relief was my title). Head bolts, oil pumps, 'dropping' (installing) intakes, intake bolts. Toured the plant many times watching other jobs being done. Hot test, piston fab, was pretty cool. Fond memories of it all. QC was minimal compared to today's standards. 360-390 were standard pickup truck engines, the most common daily production runs. Motorcraft/Autolite 2V. Seen some 4V 390's. Yellow colored valve springs, regular car type timing chains, were a giveaway. Much less common build 330-361-391 came in medium or heavy duty by changing the parts mix. Real Holley 4V's, some 2V. We welcomed the change of pace these required. Premium everything were used in them. Gaskets, manifolds, heads, valves/springs, pistons, big cranks, double roller timing chains etc. Some of the low production 330's had large dia but short bell housings (automatics?) I remember the days when the rare and also low production 428 boat versions were scheduled. A general foreman would lead the batch announcing: "The Marines are coming".. (marine gaskets and parts required).
If it has a 360 in it now then I think one of thoes 390s that you can find all day would do you ok.
I could put a 390 in it but i have talk to a couple of guys that has had medium duty trucks and they said a regular 390 would turn to many rpm's and it would tear the transmission and rear end out. I do not know how true that is I am just 18 and i don't know a thing about it. the guy that told me that said the truck must have the 360 truck version or it would have already tour some thing up. but like i said I was 16 when i bought the truck and now i am 18 I have no idea if a 390 would mess something up. If I new it would not tear some thing up I would put a 390 in it
Tyler, one of the differences between car/pickup motors and truck motors is the torque curve of the engine. In a true truck motor you want the torque to be produced at a lower RPM than the car motors do. For instance, an engine that has peak torque at 4,000 rpm will bog down under a heavy load as the RPMs drop causing horsepower to drop off. A truck motor, on the other hand, that produces peak torque at a much lower RPM, say 2300 RPM as an example, will allow for heavier loading of the engine at useful speeds and not bog down going up hills or on takeoff. So if you just look at horsepower and torque without considering the power band (RPMs) you can end up with a motor that has to scream and burn your gears up to create that power.
I would try and find a 361 to put back in it, which is most likely what it came with from the factory. The 391 engine was not nearly as good a motor as the 361, they seemed to break cranks quite often. A little more FE/FT info, if I remember right, the FT 330-361-391 were internally balanced and the FE 352-360-390-427-428 were externally balanced. Meaning the FE engines relied on the flywheel and front balancer for balancing and the flywheel for the FT was balanced to itself. I've dealt with a few wierd vibration problems in these over the years and it usually ended up being someone swapping parts ect. Hope this helps.
I would buy an old ford school bus with 7.8 brazilian diesel myself. After switching from a 79' chevy c-60 with a 350 to a 88' ford f-800 diesel my fuel costs are night and day and I have 2x the power. The chevy burned 5 mile to the gallon... the ford gets a little better than 12 loaded to 50k pounds and as good as 15 light.
gr79,shenandoah,excavator,stumpjumper83,d9gdon thank yall very much for the information
how much do you think that might cost? its a good idea. what all might i have change or pull from the bus
talked to a guy today he said he had a 370 out of a wrecked water truck does anybody know if that might swap out easailly. said he wanted wanted 700$ does that sound a little steep or is that about normal
Rebuild the 361, overall when you consider down time, $ , & resale its better to rebuild unless you can find another 331-391 used engine in good shape. Yes there is plenty of room to put any engine you want under the hood, but takes time & money to match up the transmission,clutch, power steering , cooling, fuel lines and to say nothing about electrical hook ups. I've found to switch engine families a complete parts vehicle is needed. $ 700 is not too bad price if engine good shape do a leak down test to find out before you buy.
Tyler, a 370 is a different series motor. It has a different bellhousing bolt pattern, different motor mounts ect. But they both came in the same style F-600 so if you could get all the parts I would think it would be a bolt in job.
We rebuilt a 361 engine for a customer about a month ago. It was in a 1967 ford C700 dump truck. He drove it over to the shop spitting & sputtering on 5 cylinders and informed me it also drank oil . The missing cylinders was due to oil fouled sparkplugs .Being the truck was a cabover I opted to "inframe" rebuild the engine. Heads were in good shape as far as valvetrain goes.Our problem was rings and found one piston with a broken skirt and another piston that the snap ring boss had broke allowing the wrist pin to put some grooves in the cylinder wall.I ended up boring the one cylinder .030 over taking care of the grooves that the wrist pin left.Could still see a little mark but felt ok.And replaced the piston that had a broken skirt.Ended up using the rest of the pistons as they looked fine.Rolled in new main & rod bearings ,rear seal and put it back in service.Standard pistons for the 361 are getting hard to find,.030 oversize no problem. My cost on parts was around 650$ just working on the bottom end. If you can get the parts reasonable then rebuilding is a good option in my opinion.
td25c If you do not mind me asking how much did parts plus labor cost. my motor is a 360 will the parts be about the same as a 361.
Tyler, you can go to eBay and see quite a few rebuild kits for sale on there for under $400 for the 360.
My labor cost on the engine would have been between 1500$ and 2000$ .Its hard to say exactly as the customer had us doing various other tasks on the truck as well,Rebuilt the dump hoist,fix parking brake,etc. I figure about 25 hours time on an "in frame" rebuild like I did on the ford C700. I remember telling the customer we would keep the overhaul simple and just re-ring and install new rod & main bearings then we found two bad pistons and had to bore the one cylinder.Nothing can be simple seems like:Banghead. Good luck with your ford project Tyler. Another website that has allot of information on the older fords is www.fordification.com
I just came across this thread, Tyler have a 391 completely rebuilt 5 years ago, with 0 miles on it since. I had your same issue, bought a 1970 F600 ran it for awhile, then bunt the motor. I was told it had the 361 in it, so I found a short block 391 supposedly rebuilt, to swap in. Come to find out somebody had put a 360 in it, so I had to source out all the FT parts from a local heavy truck wrecking yard. Once I had it in we fired it up, and proceeded to have some issues with it and spun a main bearing. Somebody messed up during the rebuild I guess :beatsme Anyways I pulled it back out and sent to a good racing friend or ours with a machine shop and had him tear it down and make it right. Got it back in a running, did the break in on the motor. Then proceeded to go through the brakes and such before loosing interest and a need for the dump truck. It has sat until last week. I pulled the plugs, shot in a little lube, changed oil, pulled the Holley 4V carb cleaned it up, and she fired right up and purring like a kitten. It has a rebuilt Holley 4V, new remamufatured govonor distributor, new water pump, fuel pump, all new internals. I'm in the Pacific NW though. I've got it listed on CL for $750 in Portland, OR
That sounds like a really good deal. but I would hate to know the shipping bill from OR to NC.
gr79 gr79, Thank You for that information, about the Ford V-8 engines. Never heard anything about the 428 having marine gaskets, great stuff. Ok, Here is the question: In about 1967-1970, a few Ford or Mercury cars had the 427 engine. I know of a Cougar, not sure of the year but I would think 1967-1968. It has the 427 emblem on the fenders, and I believe the code is in the serial number. How and where did the 427 come in, was it a special assembly line? Of course the 427 could be ordered over the counter; but some say it came off the assembly line. old1
I wish everyone who had these type of experiences would post them somewhere on the Internet for posterity to find. That would solve a lot of the mystery of how these types of things are different and how they are similar and where to look for parts to keep them going, and why they worked and why they didn't. Now if only we had someone like this from inside the Cat or Cummins plants that could explain why they did it that way, way back when.
How old is the boss in this shop? I would have thought the last shop that could in-frame bore a small gas engine quit doing that kind of work 20 years ago. That is amazing to me that somebody still does that.
Not referring to Cat or Cummins, but just a general observation on why things sometimes get done the way they get done... Two of the main driving factors are 'technology lock-up' (Patents and Licenses), and 'momentum' (we're too far down this road to change things now). The first one is fairly straight forward and the easiest to understand. If a company owns a technology and doesn't want competitors to use it they can keep it in house and refuse to license it thereby requiring the competitor to use or invent other ways of doing basically the same thing. This can apply to manufacturing processes as well as the products produced by such. The second, momentum, is counter-intuitive and can lead to such things as dismal quality and unhappy customers. The way it starts out is simple. A task is assigned to a team of engineers/designers to create a new or next generation of product(s). Inherent in the assignment is a proposed deadline for bringing the product to market. Rarely in the budget is there room for "we'll take it to market when it's finally perfected". The days of corporate raw R&D driving things went the route of the Dodo bird. Bean counters can't sleep at night in that environment. It still happens, but that is the exception to the rule. Getting back to momentum, once a foundation is laid down whereby the scope of the project takes on a concrete form such that the path is clear on how the departments will proceed, any changes to the overall plan create huge hurdles that are easier and more cost effective to simply postpone or kill off entirely. The flip side is 'good' momentum whereby a company has a tried and true process or product and builds iterations around the good core design. I've sat in meetings where changes to a product line were simply killed because to postpone taking to market the 'as designed' product would substantially jeopardize an already massive capital expenditure and also jeopardize future funding for the project. And I'm talking about engineering changes that cropped up due to unforeseen design flaws built into the original design. In other words, to make the product live up to the advertising hype, and hence long term customer satisfaction, the product would need to be changed. Believe it or not, that is not one of the overriding concerns corporations care about. They care about the next quarter. Ask anyone who has bought a Ford product where the spark plugs seized in the holes, or whose 6.0 didn't give them a trouble free service life if they thought something was wrong with the design. I'll bet they'll say, "Yea, how did that leave the factory?" The answer is simple...momentum. Sometimes things are done that don't make sense to the end user but from a corporate standpoint they couldn't be done any other way. It's the nature of the beast.