A Monster followed me home.....

is there a way to prevent a repeat of this or is it just one of those "when your number is up" kind of things that just happens?

Are you sure it wasn't a failure of the trans-to-engine locating points that caused the crank to break and not the other way around?

 What sort of redline can i set the 5.0 to and be safe? 

Depends on how much of that '380hp' you want, i'd bet. I also think that is optimistic unless you are camming and spinning the crap out of it, and i haven't noticed pics of said fancy intake which might be a dealbreaker if it's not as fancy as PO thought. Luckily since it's a mainstream engine theres a huge dataset to work off of in guesstimating what it will do once you really know what you have.

Also, CRAZY cool project for the money!  

I routinely spun my stock cam/e7 5.0 to 5600. Stock cam ran out of steam with those heads at 5400.... Factory limiter was 6250.

Ran a Bernie cam with stock expo long block and it was done at 5800.

Sounds like the rear is out of a Lincoln, so standard 8.8" internals with lighter arms than the T-bird got.   With aluminum heads and a cam you should have larger than stock injectors and matching MAF.  The stock #19 injectors are supposedly only good for 325-350 horse, probably what that engine will make, they will just be maxed if stock.

Big MAF and 45 lb injectors.  I have the cam specs at home and will post them up this evening.

You got a heck of a good deal! Beware of those aftermarket fuel injection parts though, I remember in my 5.0 days a lot of stuff was worse than stock because of the crappy build quality.

Those injectors are way too big, unless you plan to use a power adder.  It will probably run better and be easier to tune with some #24 injectors.  Kind of like adding dual quads to a stock motor.

You got a killer deal on that, can't wait to see how it runs.

Very nice! Sounds like we may have a nice number of vehicles from the area at the Challenge next year!

Yeah, the TKO comes in a couple versions, a 500 and a 600 lb/ft rating on each, respectively.   It's like a T-5's 3rd cousin, twice removed, and it's a lot stronger.  Heavier, more costly, etc.  This just sounds like a lot of motor for a T-5 with a good clutch.  And perhaps that's how to deal with it, a clutch that won't allow more than 300 lb/ft through the input shaft.  

Another dumb idea I had was really tall rear end gears for that 8.8 and a Super T-10.  I mean, if a Top Loader worked in the Cobra, something similar should work here, right?

45lb/hr injectors in a street driven 302 is kind of over the top.  24's or similar sounds much better as previously suggested.

so my trolling CL marketplace paid off today.  This clean T-5 with aftermarket shifter popped up for $250.  It's mine now so the questionable one can come out and I'll sell the core to a trans shop ($150?).