I'm helping a co-worker try to sell his late stepfather's 1955 Ford hot rod. He doesn't know anything about it other than his stepfather regularly drove it until he got sick ~18 months ago.
His mom needs the money, so I'm trying to help him get it sold for decent money while understanding it's hard to sell a car like this when you can't tell a prospective buyer any details. It runs and drives and sounds great. But needs a lot of interior work.
On to the pictures.
Here is the car
The one tag I could find (pictured above) is stamped with 345CI and 10/95. Is that a clue?
Small block Ford. 289 /302 from what I can see here. Measure the width of the intake, or figure out whether the lower thermostat bolt looks like a pain to get out from behind the timing cover. 351 W is taller, the bolt is easy to get at and the manifold is wider. Could be anywhere from the early 60's on, but the distributor suggests later 80's.
SBF stroker? It's been too long since I looked at it in person but can you give us a better picture of the distributor pad and it's height relationship to the bottom of the intake?
Try here for an ID and a place to sell
This is the only other picture I took.
In reply to dyintorace :
Just call it a small block Ford. That covers a lot of area since you don't know the particulars. It looks like a neat, clean, install not the typical back yard hack job you so often see.
Pressure wash the engine and spray clear over everything. It will show off the engine to an advantage.
Looks like where the water pump connects to the block, that flat surface touches the head, so its a 289/302. There is a gap for the 351 block.
Look at the first picture in this thread for a 351:
Thanks everyone. Sounds like it is a 302. Based on the tag pictured above, I'm wondering if Stampie is correct that's it's now a stroker.
In reply to dyintorace :
It is definitely in the ford Windsor family (ford never used the small block /big block names). And a 347 is a very popular stroker Windsor from a 302, so yea, I think you can tell folks it has a stroker in it!
one of my favorite cars ever, btw!
To be a pedantic weenie, only the 351W was a Windsor, per Ford. The 221-302 was just called the V8. Windsor was a back-naming. (and if you want to REALLY be a weenie, they stopped making the 351W in 1977ish, after that they used 302 intake bolt pattern heads and were called 351R or 351K or something, internally anyway)
Either way. Looks like a 8.2 deck to me too, the only way to get a socket and extension on the lower thermostat housing bolt is with the intake or timing cover off.
03Panther said:In reply to dyintorace :
... so yea, I think you can tell folks it has a stroker in it!
one of my favorite cars ever, btw!
I strongly disagree with this. You can tell folks that it might be a stroker and why you think that might be but, the fact that a block that's over 20 years has 345CI stamped on it is pretty meaningless. Old engine blocks can have all kinds of outdated and/or mysterious stamps and markings on them. It could be a stroker, it could have once been a stroker, it could be that someone wanted to disguise it as a stroker or it could be that 345CI had some other meaning to whoever stamped it.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:To be a pedantic weenie, only the 351W was a Windsor, per Ford. The 221-302 was just called the V8. Windsor was a back-naming. (and if you want to REALLY be a weenie, they stopped making the 351W in 1977ish, after that they used 302 intake bolt pattern heads and were called 351R or 351K or something, internally anyway)
didn't know most of that. Good info.
learned to drive in a 63 galaxy w/289 in the late 70's, but by then the whole family was being referred to by the "later" name. The backdated name doesn't surprise me, though. I have heard the 221 and 260 referred to as the fairlane engine, in some early ford stuff, I guess to differentiate from the FE.
I didn't hear SBF being used till well after the 302 started being called the 5.0!
In reply to APEowner :
True, he could tear down a running engine, to prove or way or the other, if he really cares that much what the John Q. Public thinks, but I strongly think it maters very little.
Can't you figure stroke by pulling a spark plug and measuring directly via a dowel or pushrod dropped down the plug hole while rotating by hand? I don't know the geometry of Ford heads.
Keith Tanner said:Can't you figure stroke by pulling a spark plug and measuring directly via a dowel or pushrod dropped down the plug hole while rotating by hand? I don't know the geometry of Ford heads.
The plug holes are at a pretty severe angle to the bore so I don't think that would work. If they have a displacement gauge the local circle track tech inspector might be willing to check displacement. That does require pulling the pushrods on one cylinder but that's pretty quick.
I don't think that knowing is going to affect the value very much one way or the other. In a car like this one the overall condition is going to affect value more than what it actually is.
It's a short-deck Windsor, so 302 or 289. At least that's how it started life. If it really is a 347 (common stroker), it is hard to verify with a stick in a spark plug hole because of the angle. I have used really long zip ties before, but not very accurate. Really needs a zip tie and a boroscope to verify that the zip tie is straight.
I would do my best to verify the stroke. It's not that a 347 is hard to make, but if it's already done it will mean that a bit of research on your part might make a big difference in the purse.
Find the casting code on the block. It will be on the passenger side just above the oil pan rail and between the bellhousing and the rear freeze plug in the block. That will help us narrow it down.
To add more question to what it is I believe a popular modification was to add 351 heads to the 302 block which required a special intake manifold. The 351 heads breathed a tad better.
A Boss 302 is a Windsor with 351 Cleveland heads.
Whatever Ford smallblock it turns out to be, just say it's a smallblock, don't hype it up to be anything else.
After all, EVERY 283 / 327 / 350 that's for sale is a "Corvette motor" in Chevy land.
Don't be that guy.
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