Thread: 429 or 460 and best way to rebuild?

Tweet

What I have is a 1959 F100 styleside with stock rear end, stock drum brakes all around, C6 tranny, 17" cragar SS rims, 429 or 460 DOVE-A motor, DOVE-C heads, Iron intake DOVE-9425. The only thing I can find on the crank is on the piston caps C9AE 6210-B on one side and CF7 the other. First I would like to know if its a 429 or a 460?

The trucks body, paint and chrome were done by the previous owner. The motor runs great! No leaks anywhere. The body and paint are beautiful and turn heads everywhere I go. After dropping the pan off and looking underneath it has that never been rebuilt and all original mileage discoloration inside on the block, pistons, crank and cam.
I am not interested in racing the truck. I do want the engine and compartment to look and sound as good as the outside. I pop the hood and this nice truck and there is this big war dog motor sitting there.
I want the rumble of a big block on a budget. Prefer to run 87 or 89 octane until they drop the price.
Thanks
John

i dont really know anything about the 385 series of big blocks you might wanna try posting this in the 429, 460 section of this forum. if your looking for a good sounding motor that will run on cheap gas then just do a basic rebuild, hone or bore(if needed) new rings new bearings have you heads rebuilt (you need hardened valve seats for unleaded gas) put in a cam and an intake as well as headers. just get a small cam...nothing crazy you should be ok then. im sure some of the guys in the 460 429 section can help you out more i have never really looked for parts for a 385 series but i do know that they are easier to come by and pretty cheap

Don't have a book with numbers here, best I could tell you is measure the stroke, then look up the engine specs. The 429 has a shorter stroke then the 460.. The DOVE C heads are not the best, but still plenty good for a stock pickup especially seeing as how you want to run regular gas the compression should be low enough to make it ok. Again, once we know which engine it is for sure there are specs to tell you your compression ratio.

As for the rebuild, a good bore and hone, hypereutectic pistons, quality rings and bearing and a 3 angle valve job should do just fine... Is the intake a square bore or spread bore? If it's a square bore, use it. If it's a spread bore you can still use it but you would need an adapter (Edelbrock makes a nice one) to run a square bore Holley or Edelbrock carb. Stay with something mild on the cam. You would probably want a hydraulic flat tappet cam that is rated for making horsepower from idle to 5,000 RPM. When you pick a cam, get a high quality double roller timing chain and gear set, too. The stock Duraspark ignition should also be fine for street usage. A set of block hugger or long tube headers would be nice, ceramic coated for longevity. They cost more but IMO are worth it. They look 100% better then plain headers with chipped and burnt header paint and rust showing. Finish the exhaust system with a set of 2 1/2" pipes and a good pair of turbo mufflers. Should run strong and look great.

Everything Dave said plus....use a dual pattern cam. The exhaust ports on a Lima motor are notoriously lousy and need all the help they can get. I'd use premium quality equal-length headers and minimum 2 1/2" tubing to the rear with a "H" or"X" connection right after the collectors and before the mufflers.

You can build a 9.5 to 10.0 motor that will run on junk pump gas by minimizing the piston to head clearance to 0.035" to 0.040" and tailoring the camshaft to the exact static compression ratio.

There are a lot of smart people on this board, so once you know what you have for a motor, post here so we can help you zero in on the components needed to do it right the first time.