Thread: 534 Ft

Tweet

Hi there, anyone have any experience with a 534 truck engine.
I bought an old RV thats powered by one and am looking into improving performance, ie pulling power/mpg. Are there any perfomance parts available for this engine.
Thanks for your help in advance.
Doug

534 FT? That's a new one to me. Plus that's huge displacement for a FT engine. You sure it's a 534?

Oh yeah FFR...they even have a bigger displacement size. Usually found in large dump trucks and water wells with deep pick up tubes, 300-500 feet deep. A lot of ingenuity bound minds found that putting a 428 or 390 style FE motor to push or pull behind the 534 was a good way to get it through the cold months and saved oil consumption on the big cuber. Lots of history behind these things. Just a torque monster and not much for RPM's.

And they are based on a FE series block? What bore and stroke are they?

They're not based on the FE, they are larger all around. The Cat 1150 or 3150 diesel was based on the same Ford block. Never heard of any aftermarket hop-up stuff for them.

I think I'd swap in a 7.3 International diesel, far more parts available. If you can get your hands on a power stroke,even better,but far more complicated to wire. Hank

hey doug, never heard about that engine but you can always do the basics,better free flowing exhaust(either custom headers and big rear tubes and good mufflers) or do some basic porting on the stock manifolds and same a real free flowing exhaust.
if just points upgrade the ign to a newer durapsark if they will work on the unit
the compression is probably low on the industrial style engine so if in good shape one could do a basic valve job and take a good wack off the heads to get the comp up a bit and some mild porting.
do these even have a 4 bbl carb or were they run with a big 2 bbl.
one can do the same here if no good intake avaliable some port work can help there too.
from my experience which isnt much, minor things on a big cubic inch engine get good results just due to plain big size of them.
i agree with half tanked that a 7.3 may be the way to go but how big is this unit? manual or standard? cause a non tubo 7.3 is no powerpack

7.3 is a viable way to go. Budget constraints will put the Kabash on the project because the expense of the adaptation has gone sky high. Valving on these things was and is very restrictive. Open them up and utilize the stock manifold with whatever carb is selected. This alone will bring life to the motor. Want a bit more useable punch? Turbo! He has a good exhaust system that will work. These things were designed primarily to work at 1500 rpm's all day long, and were put into service in big dump trucks to move big loads of dirt around job sites at low rpm. Get it to breathe, and even with the stock camshaft, it will come alive.

its amazing how much you can do just with a little bit of basic machine work, that most decent shops can pull off, will do to a motor of that size..... mild porting and a better carb alone would make her a little more happy, if your budget is large enough you could even go for custom pistons to bump up compression a little and a custom cam grind..... but you definately wont find any off the shelf products that'll accomplish that for you.... a turbo definately would be an inexpensive way to add quite a bit of power as well.....