Short of tearing it down an mic'ing the parts, there's no way to know how much wear it has. If you connect a battery to it you can crank it over and check the compression, if that's in spec you have a pretty good shot.

Before you spend a lotta money on modifications, stick it in the car and drive it. You may find out you like it just fine with the iron heads and stock 4V, in which case you'll save yourself $2000. If you don't like it, you can just as easily add that stuff later on.

The 385 engine weighs 720 pounds, about 100 more than a 390GT/428, which was stock in 67-70 Mustangs, but simply by changing to an aluminum intake you can drop that to weight nearly identical to the 390.

 

Aluminum intake and that much weight?

 

A 390 intake is around 90lbs if I remember right. The 429/460 intake is a large chunk of cast iron too, I dont have one laying around to throw on a scale, but I would bet they are close to the FE intake.

I take a look through engines I get that arent running before I do more than turn them to see if they are stuck. I'll pull the main/rod caps and check the bearings, sometimes I'll pull the heads if the compression test has a big variance between cylinders to see if its valves or rings and what shape everything is in. Might as well throw an oil pump in it while you have it apart on the bottom. Usually they end up being cores that I build later because I dont want to go through the effort of stuffing it in there and having a death rattle or lots of blow by.

One 4V Cleveland I got in trade was freshly rebuilt, but the kid put in a cam he had run previously and just put the lifters in any bore. I think two of them werent flat. He also had some of the rod caps mixed around and on the wrong rods. Its a good thing the cam went south or he would have thrown a rod in it for sure. Its a 4 bolt block and someone punched it .040 over, so it might end up with a stroker in it because the crank it had was done from the rods being screwed up.

 

Im seriously considering a 429/460 for the 71 now. Aluminum heads and intake, headers, mild solid roller cam.... mmmm... stupid power easy... real easy. Stupid power because you can get incredibly stupid surprisingly fast.. stupid and sideways.

Only downside is the weight. Massive weight...

 

The wheelstand cars were 302-equipped, but the street scenes were done with a car equipped with an iron 429.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYCjjlOO5Dg

 

Wow, it looks like the Mach actually survived the jump! With the aluminum heads and intake you can knock off well over a hundred pounds and get in the area of a 390(<> 20lbs). The street scenes you can see how the front is pushing thru the curve. And also don't forget about the springs, you will need the BB coils up front.

 

The 302 jump car did not survive the film. The 429 street car still exists today.

http://freenet-homepage.de/pony/bond.htm