The engine is out and mounted on a stand. The 460 is nothing but a beast. I’d painted my block Ford Red (less common but my Lincoln was also red and I wanted it to match). Aluminum Edelbrock Performer RPM Heads, Intake, Carb. Lots of aluminum plus the trademark MSD distributor and ignition box red. It looked great…once.
Then the car sat in a gravel driveway for almost ten years. It was parked in Montana, which isn’t very humid and doesn’t have a lot of moisture (besides snow), but a weird sort of corrosion had developed on the Milodon oversized oil pan that couldn’t be removed. The engine had accumulated that gross layer of grime from being outside, plus lots of mouse poop from the vermin turning my Big Block Ford into their private playground. I spent hours trying to carefully hose down and scrub the block–all the vital ports were blocked off to prevent water from getting in…but I just couldn’t get it clean. Besides that, it was leaking. From the water pump, from the intake…from pretty much anywhere that had a seal. It had issues.
I quickly realized that if the exterior was in this condition, what had happened inside? Rust? Corrosion? Did a creature crawl inside looking for a 1970’s era nest? I soon determined I’d need to break it down and go through it.
New Vision for More Power
If this were the Zombie apocalypse and I needed an engine immediately, I could have made it live. Maybe go through the top end, new water pump gasket, new vacuum lines, screw the paint, call it a day. But a lot had changed since 2007. My original build was for a 500hp 460BB because I wanted a “fast” Lincoln. This was back when in the same year a ‘07 Mustang GT came equipped with a 4.6L mod motor making 300hp. Five hundred horsepower was a lot! Over 150 more than the motor produced new.
But like everyone who has ever caught this awful speed affliction understands–you can never have enough power. It was now 2020 and 500hp wasn’t all that impressive anymore. Especially not for something with that many cubic inches. I needed more.
One of the easiest ways to get more power from a 460 is to stroke it. It’s basically the same as having it rebuilt to stock, you’re simply buying a kit with longer connecting rods and possibly changing out the crank. Even if I kept everything else the same, I knew I could increase my horsepower/torque rating, and I was already planning on the rebuild.
If I had done my research earlier, I would have had it stroked the first time. Another live and learn moment.
Ready for a Rebuild
I wish I could say that I ordered a stroker kit and assembled my engine in my garage. I didn’t. 500hp is still a lot of power, and with more power, there is a lot of room for things to go wrong. I was hoping for more than 500, and I didn’t want a mistake to come from me when I could send it to the professionals who do this for a living.
So after loading my engine into a truck, I hauled it off to the machinist with theses specifications: I want it stroked to 545 cubic inches, and I want it torquey at lower to mid RPM’s because it is going into a Lincoln that needs help off the line. The builder nodded in appreciation. He had a reputation for making unconventional builds fast: in his case a 70’s era Ford LTD that runs 12’s on an ported iron-headed 460.
Little did we realize that Covid was about to rear its ugly head, and everything we knew about material and product availability and shipping would spiral out of control. I wouldn’t be reunited with my engine for a year. But in the meantime, I had lots to address with my Lincoln…