desicion on buying a ford engine

[joe monreal]

:sick: OK you fans of ford truck die hard.
i have a 1973 ford f100 short bed 4×4 with 4 speed on the floor 150,000 plus miles and Manuel drive steering, second owner with only the timing chain change only
my engine seized on me so am going to make this my die till i get it back on the road project from the ground up but three things i cant decide on should i stay with rebuilding my 360 original engine with a 2 barrel curb or buy me another of the same size. i was thinking 302 and my wife wants me to convert my baby with an automatic transmission on the floor and power steering any and all ideas appreciated
thanks
Joe

Topic

[Mike]

Rebuilding a seized engine will suck. When I have to replace a seized engine and it’s also a auto trans, I have to get it moving again enough to be able to take all the torque converter bolts out. The damage is always nasty. You could need any combination of oversized pistons, new crankshaft or connecting rods, with the machine shop work to match. Rebuild only makes sense if you want to replace all that stuff anyway to do a performance engine build.

I really don’t know domestic classics, but this Pace Performance catalog I get once in a while has lots of engines and transmissions for GM and Ford, not so much the Dodges though. They have all performance levels of built and new crate engines, reman engines and trannies for stock replacement, and all kinds of neat custom engine bits.

[Mike]

It all depends on your budget. If you’re looking to do this cheaply, and want to change over to a different engine, you’re pretty much limited to whatever will bolt up to the transmission that’s already in the truck.

As far as I can tell, these were the engines available in ’73:

-240 I6
-300 I6
-302 Windsor V8
-360 V8
-390 V8
-460V8

For what it’s worth, ’73 was the first year for that generation of F100. I don’t know if it’s important to you, but some people might want to keep it as original as possible.

[Justin]

Coyote swap 🙂

[wafrederick]

The 360 was a huge pile of junk,bottom ends exploded apart in them.The 390 was a pig.Ford has a bad history of bottom ends going out in their V8sThe coyote swap involves more work and plus problems found with this engine,dropping #7 and #8 cylinders.

[Mike]

Few engines run as sweetly as a well-tuned inline 6. If you’re looking to have something that’s mildly customised and rodded, how about a 300 I6 with a trio of 2 bbl sidedraft carbs?

[Author]

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