sethalot

http://www.460ford.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119213 they may be heavy but its cheap power, and if you dont plan on road course time i could care less if the car is nose heavy or not

67mustang302

Yeah, the Fox's don't handle so well without a ton of work, they're quite nose heavy. Short wheel base, no weight in the back end.

And being nose heavy also affects braking distance. More weight in the front means more braking in the front(which usually has tire width limitations due to the need to steer)....less utilization of the rear wheels under braking. That's why the better weight balanced cars not only handle better, they stop better. And cars like Porsches that are rear engined and slightly heavier in the back have better load distribution under hard braking....Porsches are famous for their insane braking capability.

Just things to consider.

Norm Peterson

Well, I found the Car Life reference. The Ford engine weights are broken down more finely than most places give and more than most other mfr engines in that table. They may be a little on the "heavy" side, or they may include exhaust manifolds, I really don't know. The SBCs were all listed at 593 lb, if that helps anybody.

289 2V . . . 470
302 2V . . . 475
302 4V . . . 480
390 2V . . . 615
390 4V . . . 620
428 4V . . . 625
429 4V . . . 665
462 4V . . . 670 . . . this was an MEL engine, neither an FE nor a 385, and I think the 462 was for Lincoln only


FWIW.

Couper

COOL,...thanks!

Couper

Right,...so with the 460 if you deduct/account for aftermarket heads/headers/intake vs stock heads/exhaust/intake and battery relocated in the rear, how much more do you think we're really talking in weight diff?

TommyK

Not a whole hell of a lot.

With a 460 you end up steering with the throttle anyway.

Couper

All you ever read/see is the talk about a BB 67/68 being nose heavy, steering like an ark, etc., but not much is made of the 390 being nose heavy, why not, there's not much diff between the 390/460, according to this.

Obviously the BB from SB swap adds a more weight, but the diff can be doable for a straight line street car. You just don't don't see that swap very often,...hence the more reson to do it.

67mustang302

The 390 is a big block. 390/427/428 are same engine family, FE. The 429/460 are the same engine family, 385. Both families are big blocks.

The 390 was a factory BB option in Mustangs.

Couper

Correct, my point exactally, you don't read the non-handling posts about the factory 390 in a 67 - 68, but talk about dropping in a 429/460 and all the nose heavy, non-steering post pop up,...why?

Norm Peterson

I think the assumption is that when the factory does something like install a much heavier engine into a chassis that they have done a little more "homework" than the average Joe with a come-along, a tree branch, and visions of blazing acceleration. I have a paper that was written by a Ford engineer somewhere back in the 1960's, and it identifies quite a few more factors than come up in most of even the more technical forum discussions concerning handling. There are several pages of mostly equations . . . three different coordinate systems . . . etc.

Whether it's fair to today's engine swappers or not, a heavier engine swap like that done today is viewed against the knowledge that cars have significantly better cornering and handling capabilities than was the case 45 years ago, and in the absence of any discussion about crutching the weight/weight distribution matter the individual effort will look worse comparatively as a result. IIRC, 0.75 lateral g was pretty much a top-shelf number in 1966; nowadays every soccer-mom minivan and toy sport-ute has that sort of performance available if you're feeling sufficiently mean toward them and can turn off the stability control.


Norm