Need your help on this build in an 1960 kustom bird. Built it about 30 years ago and its been parked for about 20 and its time to get it back on the road. It now has a healthy 415ci try power all forged rot bottom with 11.5 cr and pulls hard to 6,800 with a built C6 & stall convert. Its been parked as its not pump fuel friendly and the cam is on the big side for a daily. So i could lower the cr to 9 ? with new pistons and milder cam and install a single plane intake like an edelbrock Victor Jr & add efi with a turbo of coarse or pull them and install a 5.0 & 6r80? all from an 2015 F150 i have and also turbo. I know the 5.0 is lighter and cheaper to do atleast for me but i am old school and like that Fe sound & tork ci matter. So can the little 5.0 be turboed and have close to the same tork and be as street friendly as the Fe after making it milder as above. Oh and run on pump 92

Thank, Rick

 

What heads on the FE? The 5.0 makes good torque for a 300 cid engine, but it's definitely at a higher rpm. The 5.0 likes to rev so the real fun part of the rpm band maybe 3500 rpm and up, where the FE won't need to rev, and you'll have an abundance of torque at lower rpm. Neither are a bad choice, just depends on your particular wants. The Coyote is a cool engine, but if the FE has decent heads I would definitely consider it.

 

The other thing to consider is the trans, the FE will allow a pretty good cruising gear, but it's tough to beat a od/lock up trans if you plan to drive it a lot. Tough decision.

 

I had sort of a similar decision recently, I ended up going coyote...

Transmission: The 6r80 and its ratios are far superior for a daily or cruiser, the 6r has a 4.17:1 first gear; c6 has a 2.46 that will mask a bunch of the torque deficiency and get you up on the RPM band much sooner. The c6 and 6r80 are both incredibly robust, The coyote pickups have a GCWR of something like 19,000 lbs.

Efficiency: I know gas is cheap right now, it won't be after the Saudi's kill off global oil production and then jack the prices up again. My turbo BBF was getting me mid single digit fuel economy, I expect the coyote combo to be high teens. Its partly the trans, the ECM controls are really sophisticated, the engine itself is incredibly efficient, and losing 1/3rd displacement really helps here as well.

Availability: Want FE parts? Good luck, go to the local shop and see what they have. Check the junkyards: this stuff is getting rare... you won't be able to keep from tripping on coyote parts on your way out the door.

Weight: Coyote: 421 lbs 6r80 : 215 lbs total 636
Fe in Iron trim: 650 lbs c6: 140 lbs 790

So your saving 150 lbs, probably a lot less if you have aluminum heads and intake but moving a bunch of weight further back in the car.

Sound: Nothing sounds quite like a big block, but a coyote with no cats at full chat 7200 rpm makes a beautiful noise! Plus you can ghost cam a coyote, lose no drivability and still have that raucous idle.

Ultimately my decision was based around longevity and my goals. For turbocharged applications at 600 whp or so on a daily driven car the coyote is an obvious choice. If you start getting into 4 digit power requirements the big block wins out pretty fast.

 

Thanks, The Fe has a good set of early mid rise 427 heades c5ae and cast iron so they might need to be replaced with aftermarket alum. Also on the Fe there is not to much room for the exhaust and i am looking at the center dump 391 truck manifolds flipped up but not sure if they will flow good. They are like a sbc ram horn but shorter

 

Thank you Ben, My fe has early med rise iron heads with alum intake and water pump so taking 140 / 150 off up front will be a big plus in handeling. I am going to pull the fe to test fit the 5.0 with trans. I have always wanted to move the fe back about 10" anyway so if the 5.0 is to wide i will do it and make more room for the turbos up front

 

There’s one other option is to make the FE turbo ready and put a 11 and up 6r80 behind it. All the grunt plus 3 more gears.

 

Hey thanks everyone, Ok if do go with the 2015 F150 5.0 what is needed to do to the truck 5.0 to handel about 650rwh as a driver on 92 pump. I guess at min forged pistons with a lower cr, forged rods and stronger valve springs

 

It’s good to go, nothing else needed at this power level. Next step is the oil pump gears which you could do as the stock ones fail at higher power levels than what you are looking for. Stock is good for 800+ easily except the oil pump gears should be updated.

 

So a stock truck 5.0 only needs a better oil pump to make 650rwh on pump 92 as a driver ? If so that makes the 5.0 looking better than the old fe. Might be able to sell off the 66 fe & c6 to someone restoring an early mustage or cobra and put the money on the turbo install and have some extra $$ we done

 

If cost is a factor then 5.0 6r80 all the way. The oil pump gears are a no brainer do it while it’s outta the car and your good to go.

 

Another vote for coyote and 6R80. I did a truck coyote all stock with long tubes, blower cams and holley efi, made 470 rwhp. So your 650 with boost is cakewalk. The trucks had lower comp than the stangs by about 1/2 a point.

 

With the FE parts getting crazy, it makes all teh sense in the world to do the Coyote and sell the FE parts off to fund it.

 

The 15 coyote came with boss rods standard, and better oil pump gears than gen 1. For 650hp you would be better off to run an ATI balancer than change the OPG; its the harmonics that kill them... doing both would be ideal. The ATI balancer is not a lot more expensive than gears and is the route I will be going. You will also want to change out the crank sprocket.

If you are going to use a frpp control pack you will need to change all 4 cams, the truck changed firing order (same crankshaft) for 2015. The 15 also has Gen 2 heads, improved intake manifold and a few other small changes.

650 on these seems to be a reasonable limit for a daily driver. But a stock 50's chassis is going to be useless at that power level anyway. You will get there on 9psi

 

I have not been paying attechion to there value as i built this one in the 90's when parts where fairly cheap and avail everwhere. Wonder what the value is on the fe. Its an 65 66 truck 391 thick web 2 bolt with a griddl, 428 steel crank .10 .10 int ballanced , hp stock rods shotpened & polished and arp bolts, 11.5 cr Trw forged pistons .30 over, 66 med rise heads ported & polisted & SS valves think i have to install a smaller exhaust to fit the bore, Babe Erson solid cam / dual valve springs & tit retainers, Stock adj rocker and shafts with spacers & shimmed, Manton push rods, Tri power setup but do have a edl rpm perf with an 850 dp also but never ran , alum water pump, none stock ballancer & flex plate, Had an msd dist but that died a few years back so now it has an stock ? dual point. Put about 3k miles on it and parked 20 years ago after i moved but it but do fire it every 3 to 4 months. So what do you think this fe is worth today as it was a low buck back build back then ?

 

Cleaned up and marketed correctly I bet its a $7000-ish piece. Especially if you can find a cobra kit car guy. Might take a bit of time to sell, especially if money goes tits up here in the next few weeks.

As far as what engine to use out of the 5.0 or FE there is no question in my mind. I'd go 5.0 in a heart beat. With Variable cam those engine still break 300 rwtq by right around 2700 rpm stock and with the aforementioned gear splits in the trans the torque at the tire difference is not as big. And if instant TQ is really important to you, run a PD blower and enjoy.

You would have to really convince me to give up 3x the fuel economy, not to mention 200K+ reliability, wrecking yard availability, and overall affordability.
That is just to many "ilities" for me to shrug off for the FE "cool" factor.

I used to work at machine shop that did a ton of fe's. All we did was Ford engines so the FE was a big percentage of our business where most ended up in the CSX chassis cobras and I gotta say, until you got into aluminum blocks and heads, billet and roller valve trains and some really high dollar stuff, they never impressed me compared to a 351w or a 385 series. Even still most of the fe's we did landed in the 15k-ish range out the door.

I echo the comments of pro-sc, 91, Ben, NX, and Disney as far as engine choice.

 

Thank you everyone. So dohc 5.0 experts i have a 2015 F150 engine with 115k and is running good in the wrecked truck and had planed to use. A frined loaned me an 2011 5.0 with 135k that he told me it needs to be rebuilt and if i wanted it for $500 it yours and it comes with the 4x4 trans i cannot use. The 2011 engine is complete but he does not know whats wrong with it. It turns and has compresion by turning it by hand so i was thinking of rebuilding the 2011 with forged pistons & rods and GT cams and sell the 2015 5.0 and use its trans. Is the 2015 engine any better than 2011 ? Oh i can not belive how cheap the F150 5.0 can be had for if you know where to look

 

The 2015 has better heads, better rods, bigger cams. In stock form the gen 2 can take around 200hp more than a gen 1, which wont matter if your building it. The 2011 is cheaper to use because you only have to change out the exhaust cams to make it compatible with gen 1 mustang ECM systems including FRPP control pack, it doesn't have the variable intake runners to dick with. Gen 1 and Gen 2 truck engines run a different firing order, same crankshaft.

 

Thanks Benn, Ok i am going to pull the 11 apart and ifs solid to rebuiuld that is probally the one to use. I have an Cobra jet intake the one with twin tb i was going to try to use on a lincoln 5.4 build. Do you know if that intake will fitt on the 11 and is it good with a turbo ? I also have a must 16 gt 5.0 intake my friend will trade me for his 11 engine and the corba intake.

 

Is it a cobra jet intake or a boss intake? And if your friend wants 2 intakes for a junk stock 15 intake, that's not a good deal.
You don't have to change the cams for the control pack to work. It'll work fine, however for a hot rod, the holley efi is a better route to go imho.