Changing a 351 c to a 351w

[Al rumble]

Looking for some more advice.

I have a 351 cleveland that has 2 cracked heads and a cracked crank.

It is a matching block to my 73 Grande.

I have a great engine builder ready to rebuild it but it is going to cost a lot....... And will but out 350+ horses.

My FMX transmition is being " rebuilt" and the car has a standard 3.25 rear end.

I was thinking that an option may be to buy a 300hp 351w from summit racing For well under half the price.

The car is nice, but numbers matching or not, it will never be worth a ton of cash.

I'm wondering if the motor mounts and the bell housing will be the same? I know that the alternator starter water pump will need to be replaced.

Any advice.....

 

[Mister 4x4]

Personally, I'd stick with the Cleveland. A "new" crank and heads aren't horribly expensive, and you won't have to change out anything left in the car to drop it back in.

When you go from Cleveland to Windsor, you'll [potentially] need some or all of the following:

• different engine mounts
  
• engine accessory mounting brackets (Alternator, power steering pump, A/C)
  
• radiator and heater hoses
  
• exhaust manifolds
  
• intake manifold
  
• and a new bell housing (if the FMX bolt pattern isn't the same as the Summit Racing engine)
  
• anything else that doesn't come with the Summit engine
  

Just my thoughts.

 

[Mikes73]

I am almost done putting my 375 horse windsor into my fastback, as mentioned by mister 4x4 the accessory brackets are different. You need to make sure your windsor also has a front sump oil pan. I am pretty sure the FMX transmission will bolt up to your windsor, mine does. Pretty much anything from your cleveland won't work with the windsor lol. I ended up having to buy new headers, brackets, an oil pan and pickup and a few other odd and ends. I already had the engine so at least that was one expense I didn't have to worry about. I will run this engine while I rebuild my cleveland.

p.s. the motor mounts and bellhousing are the same so no worries there.

 

[Don65Stang]

Is the 351c a 2v or 4v engine?

 

[MotoArts]

I'm doing the same conversion in my car.

Use a roller cam ready version found in F250-350 trucks and E series vans. Scrapyards are full of them. I changed the oil pump pickup and pan to make it fit the car, and am going to reuse the serpentine belt system in place of the V-belts (never needs adjusted).

I will add a spicier roller cam (can find them used everywhere from the Fox bodied Mustang guys - the "alphabet" cams can be had for well under a hundred bucks) and a set of GT-40 alloy heads.

Ford advertises their crate combo @385hp that is similar to what I have. If mine has anywhere near 350 I'll be ecstatic.

I am into the whole deal for well under a grand including headers, intake and carb (shopping and collecting used stuff over the years).

The money I saved over rebuilding the Cleveland will go towards some spare rear tires

The smiles-per-gallon from my son will be worth it...

Regarding the Cleveland, if it's a 2V, core (rebuildable) heads can be found for next to nothing... literally. Usable ones are only a little more than that.

Conversely, the 4V's are not inexpensive.

Crank kits aren't horribly pricey either.

What caused that damage in the first place??? Those sorts of things just don't happen to Clevelands. Has to be a story behind it... do tell...

 

[wwhite72]

Why is it going to cost a lot? I bought a complete short block bored 30 over for $2500 bucks. and this is an engine that dyno'd at 375HP with a Crower hyd roller and Crane hyd roller lifters, forged pistons and H-rods! keep the cleveland and drop on a set of CHI 3V heads and a new intake. A replacement 351C crank can be cheap or expensive. A real Ford cast 351c crank is a well engineered piece, even the 2V ones. you should be able to find a good used one if your builder does a lot of Clevelands. if not call Joe at Danbury Competition Engines. Even if the Grande isnt a collector model, it is a great looking car and probably the stiffest of all the body styles. great for auto-X

 

[Al rumble]

She is a two valve car. The builder has a crank and I will be using edelbrock aluminum heads stage two. He addresses oiling issues and breaks it in with lighter springs.

I was just trying weigh my options.

What about my standard rear end with 350+ hp will I have control issues?

 

[luxstang]

I have not much input to offer but as I swapped my 302 for a 351W I know that there are special aftermarket shorty headers by Hedman for 351Ws in our cars.

 

[Mister 4x4]

She is a two valve car. The builder has a crank and I will be using edelbrock aluminum heads stage two. He addresses oiling issues and breaks it in with lighter springs.

I was just trying weigh my options.

What about my standard rear end with 350+ hp will I have control issues?

Well, the Edelbrock heads... yeah - there's your expense at $1100+/- per side. After seeing those numbers, I decided to stick with my plain ol' 2V heads, get a mild port & polish, hardened valve seats, 3-angle, and load it up with the springs and pushrods from the roller cam kit along with 1.73:1 roller rockers. The machine work on the heads and parts for both sides cost less than one "Stage II" Edelbrock head... and I'm a huge Edelbrock fan! (I saved that money for the E-Street fuel injection)

I ain't gonna lie - I have a lot of money in my engine - probably around $11,000 counting all of the machine work and all the parts from the carb [and waiting fuel injection] through to the exhaust system (which is technically part of the engine, IMHO). Not as much as some, but more than others. I'm not even planning on racing it - I just wanted a cool hot rod with enough power for an occasional burn-out. But this whole thing is a crap-shoot: my original block was seized, rusted, and pretty much sat that way since [i'm guessing] 1980 or so, when the registration stickers I found on the car had expired. So, I have no idea if this thing will hold together for the next 10 years or the next ten miles.

But - if it does blow up, I'll be rebuilding another Cleveland using whatever is reusable because it'll still be cheaper than completely changing out to a Windsor (IMHO) while still maintaining the integrity of the car's heritage (not that it's all that important being a restomod).

Sorry to blather on - and I'm not trying to change your mind on which way to go... ya gotta do what's best for you and your car, after all. ::thumb::

 

[will e]

I would reconsider the edelbrock heads. There are lots of options out there. Is your builder familiar with Clevelands? They are not common.

 

[MotoArts]

She is a two valve car. The builder has a crank and I will be using edelbrock aluminum heads stage two. He addresses oiling issues...

Is your builder familiar with Clevelands?

2V and 4V cranks are the same from the factory.

If you're gonna spend that kind of coin on heads, search AFD and/or CHI and compare.

Street Clevelands do not have oiling issues. Only vintage NASCAR and NHRA caliber Clevelands require mods, not the common streetable ones.

I'd question the builder right away. If he has Chevy orange engine enamel on his fingernails... run, don't walk...

 

[4Vforever]

She is a two valve car. The builder has a crank and I will be using edelbrock aluminum heads stage two. He addresses oiling issues...

Is your builder familiar with Clevelands?

2V and 4V cranks are the same from the factory.

If you're gonna spend that kind of coin on heads, search AFD and/or CHI and compare.

Street Clevelands do not have oiling issues. Only vintage NASCAR and NHRA caliber Clevelands require mods, not the common streetable ones.

I'd question the builder right away. If he has Chevy orange engine enamel on his fingernails... run, don't walk...

^^^^^ LOL, Made me laugh reading that, almost spat out my drink. Spot on about street Clevelands and oiling issues, built many and the only things done were a good pan, blueprinted the pump and some drain back mods without any restrictors (especially on a hyd cam) and these things revved to 6500-7000 RPM without a problem. On a side note, I was reading about another mob here in Australia doing their own Cleveland heads and these guys have quite a few engines making over 800 HP on our crappy pump fuel. I remember about 13 years ago, a Cleveland we built (cast 4V cc headed) that made around 620 odd (on pump) on the dyno, and the guy I was working for got a couple of pairs of heads from CHI (early prototypes) for him to port and report back to them on his thoughts and figures. So we put a pair of those heads on that same engine and nothing else and it made 666 HP (easy to remember that number, lol) and I remember thinking how good it was to make this sort of power with a set of heads that took all standard type Cleveland gear, unlike the Yeates or Ford Racing type heads that were basically the only other options at that stage, that require special parts eg: rockers, intake, etc. The best part of all was, we were making big block power from a small block, just goes to show those Ford engineers knew exactly what they were doing with the Cleveland. One thing I've always thought about was, imagine if the Clevelands life didn't get cut short in the U.S. and got the type of development that the small block (or even big block) Chev got, imagine the power levels we'd be looking at today.

 

[Don65Stang]

Great info and discussion.

Here is some additional info.

www.7173mustangs.com/thread-the-amazing-351c-4v

 

[4Vforever]

Thanks Don for putting that up, some interesting reading in there, but most I've previously read before many years ago. I have an interesting interview (hopefully somewhere, I hope) with a couple of the Ford engineers and go into some really good detail about the Cleveland engine. I'm pretty sure one was Wayne Gapp, but I can't think of the other one and they both commented about the genius of Bill Gay and his out of the box thinking of this engine. It also goes into detail of what they wanted to achieve with this engine (as we now know to be competitive against big blocks) in all forms of racing from NASCAR to the famous tracks around the world, from drags trips to light to light racing on the street. I'll have to have dig around and see if I can find it, or like everything else, either lost or thrown out which seems to be too common with my stuff over the years. Also about that write up talking about the Cleveland in Australia, there were no Boss engines to come to Australia (maybe for special projects, but not for production cars) but Boss parts were eg: all the mechanical valve train, and the GT HO engines were hand built from US production engines that were stripped, machined for the adjustable valve gear, all tolerances checked and corrected where needed, reassembled using a 2 bolt block with the Boss type pan, balancer and the Boss cam and adjustable valve gear, valves, springs, retainers and keepers, the dual point dizzy, the cast square bore intake, a 780 Holley and the Phase 3 got headers (the Phase 2 used cast exhaust manifolds) and had the Boss 6150 limiter. Why Ford Australia never just imported the Boss 351 engine is puzzling as the engine would also of had, 4 bolt mains, more compression, buddy bar intake and the alloy rocker covers, but interviews over the years with Ford Australia engineers said that wanted to build these engines the way they wanted for production car racing here in Australia, particularly the Bathurst 500. Bathurst was a race back then for showroom production cars with very minor mods, basically blueprinting of the engine and racing tyres and ran for 500 miles. Cleveland powered GT HO's ran 1-2 in its fist two years and would have have been a real hot chance of winning again in 72 if not for the supercar scare and the XA phase 4 being banned. This car in testing was run at 170 M/hr at 7200 RPM, so another interesting fact about the 7200 RPM limit on these engines that was spoken about in those articles.

 

[wwhite72]

Edelbrock heads are shiney and nice but dont flow like CHI's and are too expensive.

 

[cazsper]

Though my '73 Mach-1 has a built 4v- Cleveland, I love the Windsors. I also grew up with the 5.0's. But besides the motor mounts, nothing else will carry over. If you already had a 350+/- hp Windsor, I would actually trade you. I already have an intake for a Windsor so I don't care about that. If you are even entertaining the idea, pm me.

Mike

 

[Mikes73]

I liked my old cleveland but love my new windsor, it runs great and is a lot easier to work on. Another plus is the lighter weight, my car sits up an inch higher in the front now since the swap.

 

[Muswagon]

I stroked a 351W from an 84 truck to a 408W, AFR heads, wicked cam, etc.. More than happy with the build but it was a hassle, stick with the cleveland for a mild build.

Selling my cleveland more than paid for all of the things that don't carry over..kinda wish I kept it now however, seeing as how hard they are to find a really nice rebuildable 351C..oh well

Mild build side by side cost would be very close... but I can tell you a wild windsor stroker vs a wild cleveland stroker, the windsor was much, much cheaper. That does not sound like your game plan

I really wish I had gone with a roller block. Not just because of the roller cam which means not having to worry about zddp...but I would have loved to have the serpentine belt system.

As far as the brackets went, we fab'd some stuff to make it work.

Motor mounts work, bell bolts up.. If non roller W my understanding is the distributor will work with a different gear? Not 100% sure on that one.

 

[1973grandeklar]

My son and I put a 351W into a 1972 coupe. Everything bolts right up as far as placing the engine into the car. However, the exhaust required modification, all the brackets on the front are different, and the water pump is different. It was the water pump selection that kind of directs you to the required brackets. We bought brackets that were for a 1969 351W, but I still had to modify the power steering bracket. It really is not a hard conversion. One other point, we used the flex plate that came with the 351W. I am not sure that this part is cross compatible due to some balance differences.

One other note: We had a chrome air cleaner that we had to use a slightly lower spacer on the carb (holley carb). I think the original spacer would of fit, but it would of been real close to the closed hood.