The first motor lasted 27,000 miles of occasional to frequent abuse and I can only hope the new one will be as good. I was leaving Pittsburgh Raceway Park after a good day of racing and heard a knocking sound less than a mile from the track. By the time I had determined that it was indeed my car and not the noisy truck in front, I had wiped out a rod bearing. Luckily, the guys I went with trailer their driveable stuff so we swapped cars on the trailer and came home. After tearing it apart I found the cast crank needed replaced from severe scoring.

Engine on the stand, ready to install after the rebuild in Aug '03. I kept everything pretty much the same. Only changing to a new set of Harland Sharp roller rockers and a new timing chain. It also seemed like the perfect time to use the CJ rods I found on eBay since the assembly needed rebalanced anyway. It had already had been bored .030" and has forged TRW pistons. After cc'ing everything the compression figures out to 9.97:1, still great for pump gas. The cam is the Motorsport C460 hyd flat tappet with a lift of .588"/.613" and duration of 244*/254* @ .050". I used Weiand's Stealth intake and a Holley 800 DP carb.

Here are a few pics of the original D0VE-C cylinder heads that have some modifications done to them. Lorne and I have too many hours in these to keep track of. I had 2.19"/1.76" stainless steel valves installed and have Comp Cam springs, retainers and keepers. The above pics are of the intake valve area and port.The pic to the left is the floor of the exh ports after they were mig welded and ported to a more desireable D shape. The top was also mig welded, ground and filed smooth to the CJ exh port size. The pics below are the final result after zinc used to fill the heat riser. Boy was that stuff slick! Except for my brother burning me trying to stir the stuff it worked perfectly. You only have once chance to make it right without starting over. The porting was done following instuctions on Scott Johnston's website

I highly recommend Scott's site to anyone wanting to do their own porting on any BBF head. He has awesome pics on just about any BBF cyl head ever made. He also has great info on the Duraspark distributors too.

The cooling system consists of a 4-row high efficency brass radiator and a factory Ford water pump with an 18" reverse rotation Flex-a-lite fan. I put a pair of 12" pusher fans out ahead of a/c condenser just in case. Because the water pump is spinning the opposite of the way Ford had designed it, I ground out the part of the pump that made the "chutes" for the water to follow. I also added a Flow Kooler plate to aid in moving the water. The fan shroud is an '87-'93 Mustang GT item that needs a little trimming to fit around the 5.0L accesories when mounted on a 460.

Another part that need significant work to become usable was the air cleaner. It is the original unit but needed the snorkels reworked due to the higher and more forward carb location. I also stiffened up the flange where they bolt on while I was at it. They were very flimsy before. The center was cut out and the air cleaner was tipped to match the slope of the hood and welded back together.

Making the serpentine belt set up work is one of things I'm most proud of. I made adapter plates that hold the 5.0L brackets where they need to be. All the stock brackets work but some grinding needs done to the alt and p/s brackets and I had to modify the steel a/c-p/s bracket to fit the 460 water pump.

The C-6 I had Rossler Transmission build was the only thing, besides engine machine work, That wasn't completed by my me or my brother in our garage. I added a van pan for extra fluid capacity, the steep gear set from a E40D and a 10" ATI converter. I bought this converter back in 1994 and it still works great. I highly recommend ATI to anyone thinking about buying a torque converter.
I got a 9" rear from a '67-'76 Bronco. It is actually an inch narrower than the original 8.8 rear. The top brackets are homemade and the lower ones are from a 7.5" rear. I'm using the stock coil springs and added Southside Machine lift bars, Air Lift bags and Lakewood 50/50 shocks. I had the axles redrilled to 4-lug so I could retain my stock wheels. I left the original sway bar on also. At the moment I'm running 3.50 gears but have had everything from 3.00's on the Power Tours to 4.30's for some 1/8 mile racing. Can't beat the ease of the gear changing. I eliminated the spare tire well and replaced it with a 2" x 3" bed floor support from a GM truck and a flat sheetmetal floor. The extra space allowed us to enlarge the gas tank. I gained at least 4 more gallons doing this. I have 2 Carter HP series fuel pumps that have performed flawlessly for years. In fact one was on my original 460 car over 14 years ago.

Home Page
Engine Compartment/Undercarriage Pics-Page 2
Exterior/Interior Pics-Page 4
Serpentine Belt Set ups-Page 5
Lorne's Truck-Page 6
'01 Big Block Mach 1 Clone/Other Projects-Page 7
Fun Pics & Links-Page 8
Friend's Rides-Page 9
My Side Work-Page 10
Power Tour Pics-Page 11