Pro Charger, Super Charger, or 391/428? POWER

[spikhead]

Hey again all. So, starting out the goal was to keep things original. Doing the engine rebuild we put in bigger cam, head, and some other random stuff. The 351c has some decent power. It does a mean burn out lol, however I recently was in a friends camero. You touched that thing and it was like a rocket. Which of course like any red blooded American I wanted more power!!!!! I work in a mechanic shop as a receptionist so get all kinds of ideas. Jeff, a young guy recommended just putting on a pro charger but I’m having trouble finding that or what it would cost. I’ve found general cheap super chargers but say only like 80 horse power. So option three. A gentleman who owns a salvage yard I was like hey you got any 428 cobra jets? He did but said you don’t want one. He said the blocks are known for cracking and not worth it. He said what people he knows have been doing is taking a 391 truck engine which he said is the same block but thicker and putting 428 guts inside it. He said that thing would be a monster could run it hard all the time haha. So any tips or suggestions would be great

 

[libram]

opinion 1 don't screw up your mach 1 at all, lots of cheapo running stangs out there that are just whatevers............... cheap use one

opinion 2 ya know why so many Camaros are in junk yards............. but that may be a ford bias

opinion 3 got real money and resources? that 351C can come out .......my 351C is at 500 ish hp but hey if you need more. Find a FORD 427, mod it out, crank, cam, roller lifters, pistons, machine shop, carb....etc If you have the cash and can find the motor you could pretty easily get 800+ hp and 700+ torque awr with one of those nasties all naturally aspirated. Some people might call it a sleeper but if you heard one you wouldn't.

427 is carroll shelbys legendary motor for a REAL racing Shelby cobra, also I have never seen any documents to prove it but legend says the 427 was legally outlawed because there was no way the police vehicles of the time could be modified to pace a 427 ford. If anyone can give a full story on that I'd like to read it or it may just be old mechanics lore. I do know I wouldn't bet against a 427 against a 428 SCJ on any day of the week.

I also met a gentleman out of Salisbury NC about 10 years ago at the Charlotte Auto Show that said he had multiple low mid and high rise 427 engines available, if that helps anyone.

So what's your engine build? 351C to what? Any overbore? Stroke? roller lifters? cam? heads? carb? You might have some movement within the 351 that you didn't think of. Ram Air adds from what I know 6 ish hp but only at highway speed. Love sales gimmicks lol that become pop culture desired options lol.

If I'm wrong about any of this feel free to correct, its just based on memory.

 

[spikhead]

opinion 1 don't screw up your mach 1 at all, lots of cheapo running stangs out there that are just whatevers............... cheap use one

opinion 2 ya know why so many Camaros are in junk yards............. but that may be a ford bias

opinion 3 got real money and resources? that 351C can come out .......my 351C is at 500 ish hp but hey if you need more. Find a FORD 427, mod it out, crank, cam, roller lifters, pistons, machine shop, carb....etc  If you have the cash and can find the motor you could pretty easily get 800+ hp and 700+ torque awr with one of those nasties all naturally aspirated. Some people might call it a sleeper but if you heard one you wouldn't.

427 is carroll shelbys legendary motor for a REAL racing Shelby cobra, also I have never seen any documents to prove it but legend says the 427 was legally outlawed because there was no way the police vehicles of the time could be modified to pace a 427 ford. If anyone can give a full story on that I'd like to read it or it may just be old mechanics lore. I do know I wouldn't bet against a 427 against a 428 SCJ on any day of the week.

I also met a gentleman out of Salisbury NC about 10 years ago at the Charlotte Auto Show that said he had multiple low mid and high rise 427 engines available, if that helps anyone.

So what's your engine build? 351C to what?  Any overbore? Stroke? roller lifters? cam? heads? carb? You might have some movement within the 351 that you didn't think of. Ram Air adds from what I know 6 ish hp but only at highway speed. Love sales gimmicks lol that become pop culture desired options lol.

If I'm wrong about any of this feel free to correct, its just based on memory.

How did you get 500ish out of your 351? I’ve saved up money and thought about leaving as it is but it’s not super aggressive. They had bore it out a little but nothing crazy. So anymore I have no idea what to do. The best thing I want to do is use the 351 and just beef it out

 

[turtle5353]

Here’s a link to my cleveland build.

https://www.7173mustangs.com/thread-my-408-build-its-alive

I have changed the cam for a little bigger one and also different roller lifters. But everything else is still the same as in that thread. I am pushing 550-600 hp out of my 408ci cleveland stroker.

 

[libram]

well lets see, machined the block to a +.30 if I remember right, taking it to 383, most aggressive cam possible without going stupid rpms at 70 mph, machined and decked the pistons, I don't think they were domed but if I remember right they were dished. Roller tappets, balanced and tweaked crank , and most importantly after all of that was set, I sent the specs to CHI in austrailia and had them cnc a custom set of heads, carb is a big holley and the headers are ceramic racing headers into an H tube stainless exhaust. She aint no joke. All in its about 10,000 between machine shop parts, labor, other engine parts etc. That's a lot but we knew it was going to be a 40+ thousand resto to begin with. (Too bad its gone way beyond that due to a bad shop)

I'd be more specific but the build was ten years ago. And she just fired two weeks ago.

 

[L.C.Gray]

well lets see, machined the block to a +.30 if I remember right, taking it to 383, most aggressive cam possible without going stupid rpms at 70 mph, machined and decked the pistons, I don't think they were domed but if I remember right they were dished. Roller tappets, balanced and tweaked crank , and most importantly after all of that was set, I sent the specs to CHI in austrailia and had them cnc a custom set of heads, carb is a big holley and the headers are ceramic racing headers into an H tube stainless exhaust. She aint no joke. All in its about 10,000 between machine shop parts, labor, other engine parts etc. That's a lot but we knew it was going to be a 40+ thousand resto to begin with. (Too bad its gone way beyond that due to a bad shop)

I'd be more specific but the build was ten years ago. And she just fired two weeks ago.

Sorry.. but most of that don't even make sense...

A .03 over bore on a 351 would only make it a 357, not a 383. Do the math. Bore squared over 4 x pi x stroke x # of cylinders.383's are normally derived by putting a 3.75 stroke crank in a 350

Decked pistons? How do you do that? Normally its the block that is decked to achieve the deck height of the pistons.

Tweaked crank? If I had a crank that was "tweaked" I sure wouldn't use it in an engine build.

That one of those famous 3/4 cams? A Cam's profile has no bearing on how many Revs the engine will be doing at 70 mph, that would be controlled by transmission gearing, rear axle gearing and rolling radius of the tires.

Me thinks thou hath just thrown out every hot rodding term you ever heard and don't really know much about engines....

 

[turtle5353]

well lets see, machined the block to a +.30 if I remember right, taking it to 383, most aggressive cam possible without going stupid rpms at 70 mph, machined and decked the pistons, I don't think they were domed but if I remember right they were dished. Roller tappets, balanced and tweaked crank , and most importantly after all of that was set, I sent the specs to CHI in austrailia and had them cnc a custom set of heads, carb is a big holley and the headers are ceramic racing headers into an H tube stainless exhaust. She aint no joke. All in its about 10,000 between machine shop parts, labor, other engine parts etc. That's a lot but we knew it was going to be a 40+ thousand resto to begin with. (Too bad its gone way beyond that due to a bad shop)

I'd be more specific but the build was ten years ago. And she just fired two weeks ago.

Sorry.. but most of that don't even make sense...

A .03 over bore on a 351 would only make it a 357, not a 383. Do the math. Bore squared over 4 x pi x stroke x # of cylinders.383's are normally derived by putting a 3.75 stroke crank in a 350

Decked pistons? How do you do that? Normally its the block that is decked to achieve the deck height of the pistons.

Tweaked crank? If I had a crank that was "tweaked" I sure wouldn't use it in an engine build.

That one of those famous 3/4 cams? A Cam's profile has no bearing on how many Revs the engine will be doing at 70 mph, that would be controlled by transmission gearing, rear axle gearing and rolling radius of the tires.

Me thinks thou hath just thrown out every hot rodding term you ever heard and don't really know much about engines....

Im assuming he's talking about a stroker kit for his Cleveland. All the stroker kits I have seen require a .030 overbore to achieve the CI advertised in the kit. Scat makes a 383 kit as well as a 408 kit.  As far as tweaking a crank... could possibly be talking about having it blueprinted and balanced. My kit from scat came already balanced but my machine shop fine tuned it to his liking.  Also if his compression ratio was too high, you can have top of the pistons machined to help get the compression ratio you want, to a certain extent. So he may know something about his engine, but just uses different terminology than you're used to. Also after I did my cam swap in my 408 I did noticed that my RPM's dropped approx. 200 rpm at 65 mph compared to what my other cam ran at. Nothing else was changed in my car. I also sent all my engine specs to an aftermarket head mfg, AFD in Australia. And he's pretty close to my build price also. I was in probably $12k range.

 

[Carolina_Mountain_Mustangs]

I have tossed this info out several times. The closed course speed record that Bill Elliot set back in the 80's, that still stands, was with the Australian version of the 351-C. It was not the 427 Tunnel Port, Boss 429 or Hemi 426 a 351. Granted they ran 16 to 1 compression but they held up for 500 and 600 miles of wide open throttle.

Don't ever think you can build an all out race engine and drive on the street you will more than likely eat up a cam pretty quick. They are made to rev not idle around town beating the cam to death. Race engines last a few miles not thousands of miles no matter who makes them.

Now that being said the better choice for big HP and dependable is the new Ford engines, 4 Cammers and Coyote. You can push 1,000 HP and be dependable. Several guys here have Mustangs with Cammers that have rear wheel HP over 800 they have the dyno sheets on their dash to prove it. Air conditioning and all on pump gas.

If you are not worried about original the newer engines are the better choice for sure and will give you thousands of miles of trouble free service and easy to get parts for.

Check for thread one of our members has a Coyote in his now and should be finished I have not checked lately.

David