Music City Trucks Featured Projects

Music City Trucks Builds

Parts Used In This Episode

Summit Racing
Quick Time Bell Housing
ARP
ARP Bolts
The Industrial Depot
Tools, Hardware, Shop Supplies

Episode Transcript

(Marc)>> You're watching Powernation!

(Marc)>> Today on Music City Trucks we're bringing back our 1964 F-350 flatbed shop truck.

(Brandon)>> We get a new engine from Engine Power.

(Marc)>> We'll tear out the one along with some other odds and ends.

(Brandon)>> Plus we have a little fun solving a major transmission issue.

(Marc)>> Then we'll bring in a new clutch and put it all together.

(Brandon)>> Sounds like fun! [ Music ]

(Brandon)>> Welcome to Music City Trucks. I'm Brandon Burke. (Marc) And I'm Marc Christ, and as you can see, we're not in our shop. We're actually right next door in Engine Power. Pat, Frankie, thank you guys for having us.

(Frankie)>> Any time.

(Brandon)>> Well the last time we had our dually in here I think you guys had just as much fun as we did playing with it, and so I figure give you guys the honor of laying out some options for us for engines.

(Frankie)>> Yeah, we've got a good amount of Ford engines in stock. We've got a couple of different ones here. Each of these engines are unique in application and power levels, and we've got an FE, a Windsor, and obviously our inline-6 Ford 300.

(Marc)>> I'm glad that they're all blue oval engines. I appreciate that, but I have to say I'm partial to the Windsor just because I've got more experience, knowledge about the Windsor, and I know this particular one is pretty spicy, right?

(Pat)>> That's a great engine. That engine is 408 cubic inch. It's got a 225cc Trick Flow High Port on it. The engine is very powerful as far as high specific output. That engine makes 618 horse, 537-pound feet of torque, but that thing also, if you keep going, that engine is still making over 600 horsepower at 7,000 r-p-m.

(Marc)>> So if we were building a drag flatbed dually maybe this would be the engine.

(Pat)>> That would be the heat.

(Brandon)>> We'd have to take some gear out of that truck.

(Marc)>> Among other things.

(Frankie)>> Option number two, 445 cubic inch FE. This thing is no slouch either. It makes 586 horsepower, 566-pound feet. It's got this cool nostalgia hot rod type look. We've got the Trick Flow dual 41-50 manifold with dual FiTech throttle injection. This thing ran great on the dyno and makes great power. It's a stump puller for sure.

(Marc)>> I think if you open the hood of this truck and this thing was sitting under there definitely has the wow factor. It has the right look with the FE valve covers, and of course it doesn't hurt that they're chrome. It's got dual quads, and they're e-f-i, but still cool. Great engine! What's bad about it?

(Pat)>> Well there's nothing particularly bad about it. It is setup to be a nostalgia muscle car engine, but still, it makes power in the upper r-p-m range. This thing makes peak torque at 5,000. Nothing wrong with that, but in a truck if you're looking to pull stuff at a lower r-p-m maybe not the right application. If it has a stick in it anything will work, right, but this is setup more for something that's a little bit lighter, not as much setup for a towing application. It does have a hydraulic roller in it, but I'm not saying it's the perfect operation for that, but we do have something that might in our opinion might be just what you want, and that is our turbocharged 300 six. Now this engine itself, this was a pretty fun build. We built this so you could do these modifications to just about any 300. If someone has a 300 they can do this thing and achieve the same power. This thing has a 72-millimeter turbocharger on it. This thing still has a flat tappet cam, an aftermarket head, but the nice thing about this, this engine kinda beats the crap out of both of these in torque. This has diesel level torque. It makes 597-pound feet of torque at only 13 p-s-i. We can turn it up higher, but this thing also makes 522 horse.

(Frankie)>> And it does it all below 5,000 r-p-m. So that's that low r-p-m stump pulling torque you're looking for.

(Pat)>> So if you want to adjust the power you can't really adjust the power on these unless you just crank a bunch of timing out of them and stick a rag in the top of one of them. You could actually dial the boost down by a spring, by your boost controller. So, the engine is very versatile, it's very durable, and I think because there was a six banger in it already you could put this in and it would be perfect. You could just take the old one out, put this one in, you're good to go.

(Frankie)>> It's also very swappable because the back end is the same as a small block Ford. So, transmissions, flywheel, stuff like that really easy to get, really easy to swap in.

(Brandon)>> That's kinda the problem with the FE is you kinda have to have a specific transmission and setup cause it's an older bell housing style.

(Frankie)>> So depending on your guys' transmission, transfer case. Whatever application you're doing. If it's four-wheel drive or two wheel drive you could run into some problems on this one just finding parts that will work.

(Pat)>> Transmission wise that bolts in the same place that does. The commonality is there. I just think this was the right application and this will be the right choice for that truck.

(Marc)>> What else were you gonna do with this thing?

(Pat)>> We may or may not have had plans for it, and we may or may not parts already in stock for it. Put it in, get it running, and when you want to raise the horsepower level at some point give it back and we can tune you up on that.

(Brandon)>> What you're saying is we can borrow it.

(Pat)>> Yes, borrow is the key word.

(Brandon)>> Until we need a bigger drip.

(Pat)>> That's about the size of it, yes. I think this would be pretty fun to do. I would love to see it in a vehicle. I think this is a great application.

(Brandon)>> I'm partial to the straight six.

(Marc)>> I'm down for that. I'll just say this. It looks like we have an engine.

(Brandon)>> Up next, we're tearing down our county truck, and pulling out the engine and trans.

(Brandon)>> Well now that we know what engine we're gonna be stabbing in this old pig it's time to remove all the old stuff, and that's gonna start with this hood. [ drill humming ]

(Brandon)>> Got help?

(Marc)>> Got some help.

(Brandon)>> Take her away. Now that we know what engine we're running we're excited to be jumping back on our flatbed shop truck.

(Marc)>> Going up! [ mechanical humming ]

(Brandon)>> And just for funsies we thought we'd see what it looks like to live as a socket. [ drill humming ]

(Brandon)>> Cool right? [ drill humming ]

(Marc)>> Well let's take a look under here and see what we're working with and get a plan.

(Brandon)>> Well the biggest question is transmission. What are we gonna use? Are we gonna get a transmission that's gonna fit with he 300 small block bolt pattern, or are we gonna try to adapt the T-98 to the small block, which they have an adapter bell housing. It does old Ford pattern on the bell housing and small block on the block.

(Marc)>> There's a lot of transmissions out there that we could get to bolt to the 300, but if we could use this.

(Brandon)>> If we could use this transmission and keep everything from the trans back stock that'll save a lot of work and it gets us a turbo 300 in this truck.

(Marc)>> And we can always swap the trans later. Even if we are gonna reuse this transmission, I think we should still pluck the engine and transmission out together.

(Brandon)>> Take it out as one unit.

(Marc)>> We can fit the trans with the adapters and all that to the engine outside of the truck, save a lot of hassle.

(Brandon)>> Stab it back in and be done with it. Drain fluids and disconnect the eight different things that hold this engine in the truck.

(Marc)>> I'll get the drain bucket.

(Brandon)>> First thing we need to do is get all that old oil and coolant out of the way. Marc leaving me with the hard stuff. [ Music ] Yeah, there we go! [ Music ] Saw-zall time, tossing all that old exhaust. [ saw buzzing ]

(Marc)>> Let's get this driveshaft out of here. [ Music ] [ drill humming ] [ Music ]

(Brandon)>> Now it's time to access the top of the transmission by removing the transmission tunnel. [ Music ]

(Marc)>> It's just a little puzzle.

(Brandon)>> This is what I like about Ford floor pans is you can take the trans tunnel off and access the transmission, disconnecting the brake lever, undoing the shifter, and then getting this engine and transmission out as one unit. [ Music ] So that's your shifter. It's just this ball and socket. Voila! Well now that the transmission's completely disconnected, everything on the engine is disconnected, both of these can come out as one unit and make room for some big power.

(Marc)>> Let's give it a try. This thing takes up a lot of real estate.

(Brandon)>> Let me pop that driveshaft completely loose. Swing it right. [ Music ] There we go!

(Marc)>> She's out! That was tight!

(Brandon)>> Ambitious to try to take this out in one swing. We did it! Now that we got the engine and trans out of the truck it's time to divorce them for possibly the first time in 60 years.

(Marc)>> Ever! [ drill humming ]

(Brandon)>> Ready? [ Music ]

(Marc)>> There it is!

(Brandon)>> Wow, look at that rat nest. [ Music ] That's awesome! [ Music ] Now that we have our engine out and transmission divorce let's do a little comparison between our original six and our 300 we're putting in it. Now this is a 223 cubic inch Ford second gen inline, and this engine shared a bunch of parts with the Y-block family, and subsequently had the same lubrication problems as them, but that's really the only downside. One way to identify between the two is that the intake and exhaust is on the driver's side and the distributor is one the passenger's side. Now moving on to our Ford 300, they made this from 1964 to 1996, and this is considered their fourth gen inline. Now this has the intake and exhaust on the passenger's side with the distributor on the driver's side. The one thing that makes these engines a little bit more desirable than our original one is that they put them in a bunch of vehicles. It's got a gear driven timing set and seven main bearings. So, this is a really indestructible engine. So, you can tow with it, you can abuse it, throw a turbo on it. Those are the main reasons why we're throwing it in our truck, and we had it. Up next, our transmission situation didn't turn out quite like we planned.

(Marc)>> Well since we're reusing our T-98 four speed here there's a few things we need to do to get it ready. One main thing is this bell housing will not bolt up to our 300. So, we're gonna be unbolting that, and as you can see it's got a bunch of dirt, and mud, and grime built up over the decades. We want to go ahead and get that cleaned up the best we can and get this thing prepped to get mated to our 300. [ Music ] I think we need a new parking brake shoe. [ Music ] Scrape coat! [ Music ] You can see it working too. [ Music ] Well, we've got our old T-98 all cleaned up, and it's actually in really good shape. Inside looks really good, and we could probably use this transmission, which is a great relief, but the only way to get this transmission adapted to our 300 straight six is gonna be with this QuickTime bell housing that we got from Summit Racing. It's made to adapt to the old Ford four speed top loader transmission. It's got several different patterns here, and then also it's got the bell housing pattern for a small block Ford or a 300 straight six. Now the bore on this is the exact same size that's gonna fit our input bearing retainer here, which is great news, and then the top bolts line up perfectly. However, down low here the holes don't line up at all. Now we can probably adapt that. It might be a little difficult, but then once you go inside here you can see our input shaft. This is kind of an oddball size. It's like inch and three-eighths, 10 spline. In order to get a clutch that'll work with that input shaft and our 300 straight six practically impossible. Nobody ever made anything like that. So really at this point, although this is a nice bell housing, we might be able to use it, we really need to go back to the drawing board and go with a different transmission.

(Brandon)>> Well that's how it goes sometimes. Mix matching old Ford stuff. Sometimes things just don't fit, and that T-98 isn't going to work for our 300. So, I'm at a place that has a bunch of Ford stuff. Transmissions, transfer cases, pretty much anything, and we're gonna try to find a T-19 or a T-18 for this thing. [ Music ] Well, we've got some different options for some transmissions. T-18, T-19, MP-435. This truck right here has the T-18. You can tell by the shift pattern. Two-wheel drive truck. This would work for us if we wanted. It's behind a 300. That might be a candidate for us. Keep looking! [ Music ] Here's our solution to our transmission problem. The pinnacle of automotive engineering.

(Marc)>> Well it looks very similar.

(Brandon)>> It's similar. It's a T-19. So similar to the T-18 but this one is fully synchro 'ed. This one, no synchros first and reverse. Full synchro 'ed, and this is out of a diesel or a 460. That means it's got a higher first gear. A four-to-one instead of a six-nine-to-one. So, it's gonna be better on the street, better for our horsepower. Still just as strong as our T-98 or a T-18, and the best part about this one is it's got a 10-count input shaft and our small block bell housing will fit to it. All we really need to do is put the bell housing on, make a cross member, and drop it all in. Let's bolt stuff together. Ooh, that is a premium fit. [ Music ]

(Marc)>> Nice fit!

(Brandon)>> It's like it was made for it. We made quick time of this bell housing install.

(Marc)>> Yeah, we did! [ Music ]

(Brandon)>> Up next, we drop in our turbo 300 and marry our transmission.

(Brandon)>> Now that we got our engine precariously placed in our engine bay it's time to address motor mounts. Now just because this is a straight six doesn't mean it mounts the same as our original straight six did. So, we're gonna have to make a little bit more traditional motor mount pedestals.

(Marc)>> See the problem with the 223 straight six that was in our flat bed here is that it used this bracket here, which are bolted to the front of the block, and the balancer would have been somewhere in this area, and then it bolted to the crossmember that was basically underneath the radiator. Now the rest of the support came from the bell housing here. This would have supported the rear of the engine as well as the weight of the transmission, and you can see that they're splayed. So that would have also kept the engine and transmission from rotating during acceleration and decel, but because we're replacing both the engine and transmission with completely different family, we've got to put all this stuff in the scrap bin.

(Brandon)>> So this is what we came up with. This inner plate is gonna get welded to the frame, and then we welded some flange nuts on the inside. That way we don't have to use a wrench on those, and then this outer plate gets sandwiched with these four bolts. Then we're gonna weld a tube that goes to the engine. That way we can take this engine in and out pretty easily. [ welder crackling ]

(Brandon)>> I'm gonna just push it. [ welder crackling ] [ mechanical humming ]

(Marc)>> Well we've got the engine mounts made. The engine is hanging in there. We got the truck back up in the air because we're getting ready to install our transmission, but before we do that there's a major component we need to address, and that is the clutch. So, we went to our local AutoZone store and got this brand new Duralast clutch set. All of these parts are precision matched and tested to provide outstanding performance and durability. Now this friction material is engineered to meet or exceed o-e specifications. Not only does the set come with the disc. Obviously it comes with a brand new pressure plate as well, a clutch release bearing or throw out bearing, the alignment tool, a little bit of spline lubricant so it goes in nice and easy, and then of course can't forget this one, pilot bearing, which Brandon's gonna install first.

(Brandon)>> Now I'm kinda back woods. So, I just use a socket to drive the pilot bearing in. And remember, it's got to go in straight. [ Music ] They don't make those things light. [ Music ] Got these ARP flywheel bolts. I'm gonna put some of their assembly lube on the head of the bolt. Not too much though, and then some thread sealant thread locker on the end. Now there's certain times when torque sequence and ensuring you got all the bolts tight is crucial, and the flywheel is on that list for me. That's why I put witness marks. Now for the clutch. Torquing a pressure plate's a little different than the flywheel. You want to cinch them down slowly. That way it goes evenly. [ Music ] Draw it in slow. Make sure they're all snug. It is gonna be a little easier getting the transmission in there just to do the bell housing first.

(Marc)>> For sure, especially since this crossmember's still here. [ drill humming ]

(Brandon)>> A T-19 in a one ton?

(Marc)>> Pretty close right there. Alright let's just figure out what we need to do for a crossmember and it's in there.

(Brandon)>> In there like swimwear. About 33.

(Marc)>> Yeah, 33 oughta do it.

(Brandon)>> This is what a turbocharged 300 inline six with a four speed looks like in an F-350 flatbed.

(Marc)>> I don't mean to rain on your parade but there's no turbo there.

(Brandon)>> In spirit!

(Marc)>> We'll get to that next time. We'll get the turbo in there, all the plumbing for it, cooling system, fuel system. We've got plans for a cool e-f-i kit on this thing, and then we'll take it out and do some donuts and burnouts maybe?

(Brandon)>> We need to get Pat and them to let us use the dyno again.

(Marc)>> The chassis dyno, yeah! Last time was... This thing definitely needs some redemption.
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