Stronger Block Years?
 

I am new to the forum as well as engine rebuilding. Everybody on this site seems to know what they are talking about.
I would like to rebuild a 351w, possibly a 418 stroker. I am having trouble finding out if there were years of the block that were stronger then others and will handle the power better. If there were, what year block would you reccomend? I plan on producing anywhere between 425 to 475hp.
I would also like to know what preperation needs to be done to this block at the machine shop in order to prepare it for such horsepower. I'd greatly appreciate any help.

Kyle;

From 1969 to 1974 were the best blocks (IMHO),in 1975 Ford changed the casting somewhat and made them a little lighter in the bottom end............

If you plan on doing a stroker,I would have it bored/honed with deck plates and have the mains line honed also, re-surface the deck,along with a good vatting before hand,pull out all of the oil galley plugs and make sure they run a wire brush thru them in the cleaning process and re-install the pressed-in oil galley plugs with screw-in NPT plugs.........

As a side note; a couple of weeks ago I brought my 1971 302 block to the machine shop for boring/honing/etc.etc.,to build my 331 with,the machinest was putting a 1990 302 block on the boring bar to bore,we turned over both blocks to look at the bottom of the cylinders and the webbing in the bottom and it was very evident with the naked eye the bottom end of my 1971 block was "beefier" than the 1990 block........the machinest even said there was quite a bit of difference in the lower cylinder wall thickness........

David

I may have a 73 block if you are interested. No charge.

David,
The information you provided really helped alot and was very useful. I now know what to look for and what to research.
Thanks Alot,
Kyle

Sal,
I am highly interested in the 73 block. I live in Seaville Nj and it would not be any problems to pick it up. I look forward to hearing from you again.
Kyle

blocks
 

anyone in Georgia have a good 351w block looking to get rid of of similar years.

the very bst is the 69 351 the deck height is shorter and there is more meat around the web and cylinders.The next would be the 70-72 model ones they are the same as the 69 but not ans short in the deck I think something like .01x taller.sTan

If you use a 69/70 block it has a 9.480 deck height. The later blocks have 9.503 deck. Pistons do'nt interchange. Something to think about.

Different deck heights
 

From 1969 to 1973 the deck height was 9.480 and it changed in 1974 to 9.503, a difference of .023". If you use an earlier block you have to be sure to order pistons to match the deck height or you will have insufficient piston to valve clearance or you will need a machinist to cut eyebrow reliefs into the piston tops.

Also castings up to 1974 (D4 casting prefix) tend to have greater material thickness. These earlier blocks are good to use if you are considering converting to four bolt mains. The later castings would probably not be able to withstand the extra strain of the four bolt mains.

Nonetheless, even using the later castings, you can build a 400 or 500 horsepower plus engine.

I have also read that the 289 Hi-Po's and the Mexican 302's had main caps with thick chins.

A few good reference books that I use are:

Ford Windsor, Small Block Performance by Isaac Martin and
How to rebuild Small Block Ford Engines by Tom Monroe. They are both HP Books published by the Berkley Publishing Group.

There is also a book called How to Build Max Performance Ford V-8's on a Budget by George Reid, published by Brooklands Books, Ltd., a British company.

All three books are available online, just do a google or amazon search.

Whether you're planning on building the engine yourself or not, these books are very informative and will give you some great baseline knowledge about the Ford family of engines.

Everybody,
The information you provided is great. Thank you for helping me out. Tony,,thanks for naming those books as i will look into some of them
Kyle