534 Super Duty MEL engine question.

[Schurkey]

Getting even further off the Super Duty topic, Ford called out their FE-based truck engines as 361" and 391" to differentiate them from the passenger car versions.

Jack, going even further off the Super Duty topic there was also a 359 and 389 version of the FT series, same size as the 360/361 and 390-391 but apparently built for rental trucks..
Here's some U-haul info from Ford Truck Enthusiast website...


Thanks
Randy



""359FT and 389FT were special fleet engines. U-haul was pushing to reduce costs, so Ford defined a low-cost formula for creating FT engines in special fleet applications sometime around 1973. The result was an engine with a cast iron crankshaft instead of the FT steel crank, and a governor installed (on all?) which reduced the redline about 500RPM below the governed 361FT and 391FT engines to prevent any opportunity for warranty issues resulting from the less robust crankshaft. The lower RPMs resulted in less horsepower output and longer life. U-haul bought them in quantity, and the rest is history.""

Yep, the FE was supposed to stand for "Ford + Edsel" even though they were also installed in Mercurys. I suppose it should have been called the "FEM", but that's hardly a manly name for an engine family. FT was "Ford Truck". I knew that Ford played games with the displacement call-out when using the same internal dimensions, but until now I didn't know about the U-Haul cast-crank FTs

For example, Edsel got a 361 FE, which had the same bore 'n' stroke as the Ford pickup-truck 360 FE, and the medium-duty 361 FT and the 359 FT. The Edsel 361 didn't get the extended crank snout of the FT version.

MEL, of course, stood for Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln.

The FE/FT, the MEL, and the Super Duty were all released for model-year 1958. Can you imagine a modern automobile/truck company engineering three-and-a-half new engine families at the same time?

[Schurkey]

Please explain to me how the great big gas truck engines got such poor gas mileage? . . . Is it because they ran governed, "wide open", at something like at 2800 to 3200 rpm at their max torque spec's?

Two factors were lots of internal friction, some with 4-ring pistons and pulling against the vacuum of a small carb.

Underpowered, so they needed deep gears to get the load moving, then under-geared so the engine RPM wasn't brought back down. I think they ran above peak torque on the highway. Running foot-to-the-floor, they had little vacuum so the power valve was flowing fuel--and no vacuum advance.

[Truckedup]

50's GMC's used the Olds 370 in larger trucks and it was claimed to be quite the engine.

When they weren't using the Buick. Both the Buick and the Olds were a substantial increase in horsepower when compared to the 1930s-vintage GMC 6-cyls. Same again, the GMC was designed as a truck engine and choked down so it couldn't injure itself easily.

The Fords were good runners but very few made it 100,000 miles without excessive oil consumption...The IHC's lasted longer but about half were done at 130,000 miles.

Again, the FEs were converted car engines and were pretty sturdy. The IH V8 was designed as a truck engine, big and heavy as the hubs of hell and drank gas like it was free, but as stated, they lasted longer in commercial applications.

Buick nailhead was used in Chevy trucks not GMC... The IHC's do have a huge block and gear drive cam. In the 5 years I was there very few IHc engines need mechanical repairs. The FE's were reliable except for a tendency to suck in the intake intake gaskets. Was no fun pulling the huge intake...
The gas engine school buses got about 4 MPG...In 1980 new IHC chassis buses came with the DT466 and a 5 speed manual. they got about 6-7 MPG.
10 wheel dump truck with a large gas V8 got closer to 2-3 MPG when it was working hard with the engine on the governor most of the time.

[numboltz]

"...No doubt, but did that driver know the mean time between overhauls on both? The 413" Dodge was a converted car engine and thus had the ability to breathe and RPM to make power; the Super Duty was designed with a truck-duty bottom end and intentionally choked down with small port heads and a tiny cam, thus able to run forever at WOT..."

Good point. At one time I was seeing large numbers of then-new Mopar shortblocks that may have died for some reason. Every time I had a 361 or 413 truck short, the local big mass rebuilders were always real happy to look, and they always examined the main bearing- cam tunnel areas very very carefully for cracks. If that looked ok, we had a good day.

[jed]

When I had my machine shop in Independence Mo we had a drag race customer that drove one of those 534 ford
dump trucks. He said he was constantly was being out pulled by the other dump trucks and wondered if we would
Freshen it up and give it more power. I don't think. There were any performance parts but we did the usual
"Balance and blue print" cleaned up the ports a good valve job. Cleaned up the intake manifold best we could.
Put it back together and gave it back to him. He got it running and run it did. He could out pull any gas engine dump truck in the area.
So my suggestion is do a basic blue print and balance. Do all you can to the heads and intake and it will be fine.

[My427stang]

So, this would be an interesting build, but tough

The block will be heavy, but certainly could be cleaned up a little, it won't every be light though. Additionally, a modern set of rods and pistons, as well as cutting the heck out of the crank and rebalancing with a lighter flywheel would also lighten things up

The issue of making power though comes from crappy heads, you could make a sheetmetal intake, but the heads are made to run 3000 rpm all day. If you had the patience to port the heck out of them, I don't know, but would expect them to hit water before you got where you wanted.

That being said, I can only imagine that it would be a towing machine if someone took the time and used high performance street-type components to lighten things up