Free 460 Ford-what would you do?

Or a '77-'79 F-150 step side.
 

Either way (Cougar or pickup)... Paint it brown and hit the town!

How about something really wrong?  

It's got a great long roof, modern suspension, readily available, and cheap. 

My favorite vintage long roof is the Vista Cruiser

My Dad had one when I was young.  The glass roof is fantastic.  They are now hard to find.

In reply to NOT A TA :

One of the more interesting things I had to do for a 385-engined Torino was cut and section a valve cover for master cylinder clearance.

wawazat said:

Bullet bird with Starliner roof.  

 

Drool. 

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

My grandfather had a one-year-only 1977 Cougar Villager station wagon, so if I were thinking about a Country Squire, I'd be searching the planet for one of those Cougars instead, but I don't think I've ever seen another one in person. 

The 77-9 Cougar front sheet metal is a bolt-on swap to the same years of LTDII or wagon. Building a clone of the one year option is definitely doable.

Is that Bullet Bird/Starliner mashup real? Because that is a thing of true beauty. 

Thanks for the insight on the older Ford wagon clearance issues.  That's a bummer.  
The bullet bird/Starliner is one of a few customs made.  Ford really missed the boat on that one.  

LTD II LX 460?

FJ 55?

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

My grandfather had a one-year-only 1977 Cougar Villager station wagon, so if I were thinking about a Country Squire, I'd be searching the planet for one of those Cougars instead, but I don't think I've ever seen another one in person. 
 

But, man those Montegos are cool!

Had a brown on brown 2 dr '76 Montego with 351C as a daily for a few years after being handed down from my MIL.  Never thought of it as cool and didn't really like it at all so I didn't want to put any money into it but drove it all over the Eastern part of the country to nationals for BMX racing on MIL's expired tag. Always figured if I got stopped I'd just leave the car wherever and rent a car to get home.  Eventually I did get stopped only a couple hundred feet from my bicycle store when taking a car load of skateboarders to a contest. Even though I knew the officers they said, "Gotta have it towed John, sorry." which I understood. It was my skate contest and was only a few blocks away at the local Boys Club, so we just walked/skated. I sold the car while it was in impound and paid the charges. Best part about the car was that I didn't care if the trunk lid got all scratched up from bike racks and bikes. Other than that it looked fine.

NOT A TA said:

wawazat said:

NOT A TA said:

I forget exactly which year but around '69? Ford made changes in the firewall and other things in the engine compartment to allow the taller deck BBF. Prior to that they can be squeezed in but it's a royal pain,  BTDT and wouldn't do it again.  So I'd recommend Country Squire wagon of  late 60's or early 70's after the changes were made.

Interesting.  I know the 385 series motors (429/460) are big but are they that much bigger than the FE (352/390/406/427/428)?  1971 saw the 385 motors replace the FE's in Mustang and Cougar but I dont know the mid and full size Ford platforms anyway near as well.  

If you're building a Mustang drag car or something where you can cut everything out and what not you can put it in lots of stuff but if you try and put it in something like a mid 60's wagon and want it nice and kinda stock looking for street use it'd be a chore. Master cylinder clearance, trans tunnel, hood, and other stuff comes into play and things like accessory mounting and AC can be a nightmare requiring billet accessory drive or other things. So if you want to build a street car that's reasonably plug & play stick to the chassis that were changed to accommodate the bigger engine.

I learned the hard way when I got tasked to work on this '68 Fairlane someone had shoehorned a 460 into. They got the engine & trans in but nothing functional and most everything was hacked or screwed up somehow. Drive line, brakes, steering, fuel system, etc. etc. etc.   Rewiring the entire car was one of the easier tasks even with some $25.00 cheap crap wiring harness someone had started trying to install. To say they got in waaaay over their heads would be putting it mildly. ahaha. Eventually the owner screwed me for $1,000.00 of my labor and it was almost a relief that I wouldn't have to work on it anymore.

[URL=https://app.photobucket.com/u/NOTATA/a/58621def-79a9-4637-bd17-8c7800ec222a/p/fa57e901-a643-4fe7-ae8d-3e6ae6d2cbff][/URL]

[URL=https://app.photobucket.com/u/NOTATA/a/58621def-79a9-4637-bd17-8c7800ec222a/p/7ff54063-0207-48ec-a04f-6a01d0ad0ef8][/URL]

[URL=https://app.photobucket.com/u/NOTATA/a/58621def-79a9-4637-bd17-8c7800ec222a/p/0947a0b1-6ad5-4f65-8ddf-31101e427943][/URL]

What is with that filter? Its like trying to breathe through a straw. I see way too many people with those stupid triangular filters who don't seem be able to do math in regards to the surface area required for the displacement of the engine. Every time I see mesh covering an air filter I have to laugh, especially on small air filters simply because you are giving up surface area and getting nothing in return.

My Cougar had the same filter on it when I bought it and I thought the same thing-WTF?  Slightly taller dual plane Edelbrock intake had a larger air filter housing hitting the hood inner structure.  After a series of issues finding something to both fit under and clear my giant MSD distributor I settled on an offset base.  Dropped bases wouldn't clear the throttle body.  Frustrating experience.  

Late to the party here, but you can count on me to aid and abet your impulse to shoehorn that into a proper station wagon.  It’s the only logical choice really!

It will be a royal pain to fit that into an Ford intermediate (Falcon, Fairlane, Comet) due to the massive shock tower. Just looking at the images NOT A TA posted make me want want to ugly cry. I’d definitely lean into the idea of a full size wagon, like a Galaxie. Plenty of examples of folks on the internet getting 385 series motors to fit so the engine bay size is not an issue. It seems like a well worn path. 

I’m a fan of 65-67 Galaxies, so I’ll just leave these here for a bit of inspiration:

And this. Not a wagon, but dang…

In reply to jerrysarcastic (Forum Supporter) :

If you think the shock towers are bad, wait 'til you see what the headers for that chassis look like!

Three piece slip fit headers, because two tubes go under the crossmember and two go over.

It is fun enough trying to line up four moving targets (three piece header, gasket) so you can get header bolts started.  Even more fun when you discover that the high dollar aftermarket heads had the exhaust manifold holes tapped with a dull bit or something, so you have to remove the engine to fix that.

Of course, the engine could not be removed with the trans in place, and the trans had to go in before the headers did...

Pete knows where I'm coming from!

Wicked93gs, that air filter was just the tip of the iceberg.

In reply to NOT A TA :

My grandfather's Cougar Villager lived about three blocks from your bike shop. In fact, both of your shops were within walking distance from his house. That car probably passed your shop a few times each day. They lived across the street from the golf course. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

Small world, I'm sure I saw your dads wagon at some point.   Jefferson, Madison, or over by Perry hill Rd? There was also a guy with a '69 Cougar XR7 I saw in that neighborhood regularly who was still driving it almost year round in the early-mid 90's.

In reply to NOT A TA :

He was on Beardsley Street. Weren't you on Coram and then later on Center Street?

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

Ahhh, They were on the other side of Highland from where I was thinking. Yup, started the bike shop business in Ansonia then opened a second store in a small building on Coram Ave. in Shelton, then closed the Ansonia store so I wouldn't put a friend who owned another bike shop out of business (also in Ansonia).  Then expanded to a much bigger place on Center St./Bpt. Ave. Shelton with two buildings. After operating for 25 years my stepson the store was named after was supposed to take over when I moved south. He changed his mind  (because it's a 7 day a week job to run a place like that) and I had to close it because I'd already bought FL house, sold CT house, and it was 2008 so couldn't sell the business (rented the buildings). Luckily the store had such a good reputation all the workers immediately got positions in other shops making more than I paid them.

Back on topic! If those full size 65-67 wagons are set up for an easy 385 install that's the way I'd roll. The white wagons with the wood grain were always my favorites. However I'd check very carefully before purchasing one to be sure it wasn't going to be a big production to install the 460.

In reply to wawazat :

My apologies for the threadjack.

jerrysarcastic (Forum Supporter) said:

yeah, stacked headlight full-size wagon. I prefer the grille and body lines of the green one above.

In reply to NOT A TA :

The '65 and up full size Fords and Mercury's are really easy to engine swap if you get the frame mounts from another full size car with a 429/460. I've done two - a '68 Galaxie fastback with a 429 from a '70 T-bird and a '65 Mercury Marauder with a 460 out of a truck. Both were mostly done in a weekend with just stuff like the drive shaft to finish off.

In reply to Racingsnake :

Excellent info for wawazat!

It isn't the initial engine cost (zero) but the cost of modding it (up tp $10K) that should be considered.

I am not as familiar with the Ford big blocks as I am the Mopar motors so can't offer advice on relative results and costs.

I don't want to contribute to automotive delinquency, but I did find this article interesting.

https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/cheap-ford-big-block-460-10-reasons-jon-kaase/

In reply to wspohn :

Oooh, I got PTSD from the Kaase article.

That Torino I built had a 565ci bottom end with Kaase heads and a Dominator type intake manifold.  The key here is that the intake manifold did not have a nice, large ID press in tube for the thermostat bypass "hose" (like 1.5 inches long), it had an NPT port.  The engine also had a March multirib belt drive that overdrove the water pump.  The engine, as noted in the article, was engineered in the mid-late 60s with room to grow to well over 500ci for future-proofing, so it had a very powerful water pump to be able to cool off a huge engine lugging a large car around at barely-above-idle speeds.

See where this is going?

It was bursting 250psi test rating heater hoses, and did this to the heater core.  It was shutting the thermostat.  It was blowing out core plugs.

I ended up drilling out the pipe fitting as far as I dared before seeing light through the threads, installed a fancy "sleeve" type thermostat that doesn't have to open against block pressure, drilled the thermostat anyway, and finally put a restrictor in the hose to the heater core when I could "only" get block pressure down to 70psi.

Of course, Kaase and March both said they never had seen this before.  Would have been nice to just slap an underdrive pulley on the water pump.