281cu Vs. 289cu ???
 

hey
Been doing a few things on line and found a bunch of motors for the 4.6L that say 281 cubic inch and also 289 cubic inch? can anyone explain to me the difference of them?
I know it is a noob question but i can't seem to find a real answer!

289 is a motor that is no longer used. It is a motor that use to be in the mustangs before the 302 (both were push rod motors). After the 302 came the (modular) 281 that has been in mustangs from 96-present. Now there are variations of the 281, including the 2V (in GTs from 96-04) w/ NPI or PI heads, 4V (in cobras and mach 1) and the 3v (in current 05+ GTs)

EDIT: NPI=Non-Performance Improved & PI=Performance Improved (basically the PI heads flow much better and therefore create more horsepower)

You may also be bale to find a lot of answers to your questions in the thread in my sig.

Unless you've read of some body boring a 281 motor out to 289, but i don't see why they would want to do that. Just to clarify some mistakes tws said, the 281 (more commonly called 4.6L) came after the 302's in the 1996+ mustangs, with the variations of it just as tws said with 4v,2v,3v. 289 was also first pushrod v8 in the stang as 281 overhead cam is now their latest v8, so they are very different motors.

by the way out of curiousity, where do you reside in south central pa, tws?

Thanks for pointing out the error, I'm writing a lesson plan and messing around on here, so I am a little out of it. I fixed it though.

And I am from the East Berlin area. Do you go to the ford events in carlisle?

And as pointed out by silverstang, the old 289 was always referred to as such, but with the 302 and 281 it can be more common to hear the engine referenced in terms of liters. So it would be 5.0 and 4.6 respectively.

Yeah I go to them every year, that's funny you live in East Berlin area, I was just doing a visit down there for Valentines Day yesterday. I wouldn't know much about the old 289, 302's, and 351's if it wasn't for my dad, brother and a few close neighbors all owning pre 1973 mustangs. But yeah when they started the roller 302 i believe that's when they started calling it 5.0 rather than 302, I wonder why the displacement names overtook cubic inch names for common motor description nowadays.

This is just a thought, but it may have been linked to the whole global push for the metric system.

Do you ever race at south mountain (aka quarter aces)? I am up there most weeks with my dad.

if you want to get real technical, the 281 was first introduced in the crown vic/gran marc/towncars in 91. It was brought into the mustang in 96. 96 motors were npi. The early(91-95 motors) were super slow npi motors and anything after 98 were the PI motors with anything after 03 being the PI heads with the extra threads in the heads.

Thank you very very very much. I just won a bet! :)