well fortunately for me, the 67 fairlane 390 gta will be restored with a 390. how wild i will get with it depends on my patience level for building the engine last, we all know once ya got the body and rest of the drive train, waitin on the motor kills ya. also the fuel mileage isnt gonna be a problem, the car will be a total braggin rights vehicle anyways. far as i can tell the 360 and 390's ive seen in some 70ish trucks got up and go even with their old age.

so im getting mixed reviews on the 390! those who complain about them bending / breaking / dropping lifters, is there anything you have tried to do to correct this via replacement / upgrade parts?

also, i have access to a few 390's some short some long blocks. guy says if i find anything wrong with the block he will exchange with me until i get a good one. $200 deal

 

I know this is an old thread but what the heck!

I had a 1963 Ford T-Bird with the 390 4 barrel that I bought with 158,000 (close to memory) miles on the odo (it rolled once according to the original owner who bought it new) with the original engine, being I was 16 years old I trashed that car every day. I had advanced the timing by about 8 to 12 degrees (can't recall) to get better low end power, I put on another 50,000 or so miles on it before blowing a piston ring and and head gasket racing a Corvette with a 427 which I actually tied the guy till it blew after the speedo was pegged! Years later I bought a 67 Galaxie with a 390 in it that had about 98,000 mile on it, I kept that car for a very long time till it caught fire due to an electrical problem, but I put about 75,000 on that car without an engine rebuild. Never had any issues with either engine (till I blew that one due to abuse).

My brother had a Ford with a 352, that one kept dropping pusher rods due to getting bent, he would buy new ones and a short time later they too would drop. He then had a valve job done because a mechanic said it was doing that due to sticky valves, well they kept bending and dropping after the heads were redone, so he got rid of the car and swore off Fords. I still like Fords. We have "talks" all the time about my love affair with Fords and his with Chevys.

No car manufacture makes their entire line of engines over every single year they've been in business with all highly successful engines, not even close, they've all had their crap engines. Mid 90's Ford 4.2 V6 was a piece of crap, there should have been a class action lawsuit against Ford and that engine that's how bad they were, everyone I knew that had one had problems. Before I knew of those issues I bought a 97 with that engine, but it was a Jasper replacement because the original engine let go at around 80,000 miles so I thought with a new engine with only 20,000 miles on it I would be good for a long time...NOPE, I was towing a 4,500 pound trailer and the engine blew. I know have a 94 Ford with a 302 I tow that same trailer with and no problems other then lack of power.

Some people cry that the 390 got horrible gas mileage...news flash...they all did back in those days! My T-bird got 14 mpg with a 3 speed trans and the Galaxie got 16 with a 3 speed trans, not bad, but wait, speed up to 1994 and my F150 with the 302 only gets 12 on the highway and that engine has computers and fuel injection with a 4 speed trans with lockout torque converter! Heck that stupid Ford V6 only got 14 mpg with the same sort of trans! So really those old cars didn't do to bad.

 

And guess what? We are still in the same rough boat with most trucks and even some higher end cars.

I'm still not convinced that technology has fixed anything with oil consumption, except worsened it's burden.

There needs to be some more electric cars and they need to be realistically priced or else there isn't going to be a driven demand. Even if there are gov't incentives.

 

I got my driver's license in 1960 so I enjoyed the 60's cars. The Chevys and most GM cars burned oil even when new. Ford's didn't. The Ford engines of all sizes were more reliable than the Chevys. BUT, if you wanted to drag race you wanted a GM car. GM cars ruled the highways until around 1968 when all brands were fast. Everybody I knew who owned a Ford with a 390 or 352 engine got good service out of it. I was a Chevy guy all the way back then. Later on in life, I started buying Fords and they won me over with their better reliability.

 

My dad had a 65 Custom 500 with a 352 4 barrel and a 69 Galaxie with a 390 2 barrel, they were both very reliable engines. I had a beater 65 Galaxie with a 352 4 barrel for a few months, the engine was fine but the tranny crapped out.

I seem to remember my sister had a F-250 with a 390, her ex had a F-100 (don't remember years) with a 390, I don't seem to remember either of them having any engine issues.

Yes, they all were gas hogs and burned some oil, but all engines back then burned some oil. They didn't burn it any worse than other engines from that era.

 

My dad had a '92 F250 with the big 7.5l V8. Thing was a beast of an engine.

 

Yeah, that's the 460. Not the same family. Had one of those in a 77 Lincoln Town Car.

 

Chevy faster than ford or others was a myth, the only reason people liked chevy was the fact that performance parts were cheap to obtain and any engine and transmission combo would bolt together and that combination could be dropped into any car, whereas ford and Chrysler didn't do that stuff. But in the late 60's it was Chrysler who had the fastest drag and race cars, not chevy. Also Ford and Chrysler engines both held up better than Chevy and required less tinkering then chevy.

 

Yeah those 413 pushbutton automatic Plymouths were fast on the drag strip, but the cars that most people bought left the Chrysler products and Ford products seeing the GM cars dust. I drag raced a lot on the highway and the strip back then and very few Fords or Chrysler products showed up and ones that did got beat. The 383 Plymouths were lacking in hp until 1968. The 390 Fords were low rpm engines for the most part and were slow. In 68 Ford offered a 390 335hp Fairlane that was respectable but not in the same class as a 396 Chevelle or 389 GTO. One of my first drag races with my 65 300hp 327 Chevelle was against a 63 Galaxie with the 390 330hp solid lifter "police" engine. I left him like he was tied. The 66 Mustang with the solid lifter 289 V8 may have been fast but they were expensive and very rare. In 61 the guy who ran the gas station where we hung out bought a 61 300hp 390 cu in Ford Starliner with a manual trans that we kids thought ran well until some country boy showed up with his 59 Chevy Impala with a 250hp 348 cu in V8 and challenged him. They were equal from start to finish. Anyhow! The memories!

 

To the OP who probably isn't around anymore, there is a malfunction with the 390 IF you intend to mod it up. The oil is restricted at the oil filter port. You merely drill it out to allow more oil flow. Otherwise, it has a tendency at high rpm to restrict oil flow.

I've still got 3 390 engines, or what started as 390's anyway. One is bone stock in a 74 F100. One is extremely modded in a 74 F100 with a C6 on the back of it. It makes huge amounts of power but the reality is with the suspension on it, it's an impressive tire burner. All smoke and show but not that much go. The third one is my baby. It a plain jane F350 flatbed that I built a few years back. It has a 4 speed manual and a 10" rear axle 4:10 gears. The engine was punched out to a 410 Cu In, cam, headers, 4 row 460 radiator, 22" fan with clutch, Edelbrock single plane with a Carter Superquad on top. The heads were ported and polished. It's built for stout and pulling. The 24 ft trailer is 2 lbs short of 10,000lbs empty. I've put as much as 24,000lbs on the dual tandem trailer and it literally walks off with the load. Stopping it even with dual trailer brakes is a little scary but I can set it down reasonably quick if I need to. My neighbor down in the country had asked if I would bring a brush hog back from Houston for him. He bought 3 of them and need a trailer for the third one. He drives a Dodge 3500 Cummins and his brother drives a Ford F350 6.0. Both are running propane and chips. They claim over 1000hp from each. We left at the same time but I didn't try to keep up. By the time I got to the place in Houston they just about finished loading. WE left at the same time coming back with equal loads. They ran out of sight while in Houston but I caught them on the way out. Seems a 1000HP is only good in short runs. Otherwise, things start to get hot and then comes the damage. I passed them up only to see them coming about 70 miles down the road. Then they faded again. I was back about 45 minutes before they got back to the ranch. They have a lot of respect for my old ugly F350 now. The FEs were not the quick engines like the GM engines. But they could pull most anything you could get a hold of. One of my buds back in the 70's bought a truck tractor for over the road hauling. It had a 390 in it and he pulled a 42ft flatbed trailer with 45,000lbs on it most of the time.

 

It's true, the 390 wasn't a racing motor and was never used as such to a major degree, but the reliability was second to none in the V8 department. However you can find a 429 crank and stroke the engine; I knew a guy back in the 70's that did that and some other stuff along with aluminum stuff to cut the engine weight, along with 3 dueces, and got somewhere around 400 hp out of his 390 and ran the high 12's in the quarter. There was also a factory Z code 390 with 3 dueces that came with 405 horses. Phoenix Engine has 390 with 427 horse crate motors. But even at 400 hp from the guy that I knew back in the 70's that was considered really good horsepower for the day as was running high 12's on the street.

I can tell you're a Chevy man and that's fine, but I can also tell you that I NEVER lost to a Chevy, and that done by two cars, one was a 1973 Dodge Charger Magnum 440 that had some mild work done showed 430 hp on a dyno vs 410 before the mild work was done; and the other was a bone stock 72 Mercury Cougar (ram induction) solid lifter 429 SCJ dyno'd out at 435 horsepower. Supposedly my understanding was that the 429 SCJ could be bumped up to around 500 hp with nothing more than a 460 crank! With that 429 I was beating Chrysler hemi's! Not by much but I was winning and that's all that mattered. There was a guy I ran into on the street with my Charger that had either a Barracuda or a Challenger (I can't recall) that spent a fortune (if I recall I think it was 10 grand) on a 426 wedge and it had to run aircraft fuel that could pull 9 second quarters...obviously he beat my car, heck I never had a car run 9's but nor did I have 10 grand to spend on an engine.

The beauty with my Chrysler and Ford products was the reliability they had over Chevys, I knew plenty of people that blew engines at the strip and about 80 percent was Chevy engines, now granted Chevys had the largest showing but that 80% was considering the ratio. In addition to that was Ford and Chrysler required far less tinkering in the line (except the multi carb jobs) to prepare for the next run then Chevy's did. But like I said before, performance parts were cheaper for a Chevy and that's why people liked them.

 

 

Of all the cars I've ever owned they all had their personalities. The best looking car I've owned over the last 45 years was a 59 MGA twin cam, but my god what a pile of electrical/mechanical nightmare, I like cars with lots of curves. The fastest car I owned was the 72 Cougar with the 429 SCJ ram induction but it handled poorly. The best all around car that I owned that handled great once the front end was dropped an inch and koni adjustable shocks adjusted to the max firmness which I could make that car dance, plus it was among the quickest where I lived. The most fun car I ever had though, and I always look back to that one as the one I enjoyed the most, while it wasn't among the fastest or handled all that great, was the 67 Galaxie 500 convertible; I wouldn't mind buying another someday and maybe mildly increase the HP.

 

Yep, I used to be a Chevy guy because the Chevys were fast and they catered to the hot rod market. I liked the Mustangs but they were not fast enough until the late 60's. For instance lots of Chevys in the 60's came with posi-traction and Fords with a posi was as rare as hens teeth. Back in the early 60's you could put a 300hp 327 Chevy Impala against a 300hp 390 Ford Galaxy and the Chevy would blow the doors off the Ford. And then put a 325hp 396 Impala against the Galaxy and no comparison. But now I'm fairly brand neutral. Fords won me over with their reliability but I think they've lost it with their high tech stuff. They can't seem to build a diesel that's in the same class as the Cummins for longevity. I drive my 2002 F150 and my 2005 Dodge Magnum with the 5.7L Hemi. My wife's car is a 2013 Infiniti EX37 that has a 325hp 3.7L V6 backed by a 7 speed auto and it's quicker than my Magnum. If I bought a new vehicle now, I don't know what it would be.

 

In today's world Ford still has the reliability over any other American manufacture, plus their fit and finish is better then the others as well. While Chrysler has the fastest cars they're only good in straight line, either the Mustang or the Camaro would beat the Demon...in fact they pitted a lowly Mazda Miata against a Demon on a road track and the Miata won! of course the Demon was charging down a straight away but once the curves got going it was all Miata.