Ford 390 FE - Build A Low-Buck Street/Strip FE

The factory oil pan shown on the right is not ideal for performance use. The baffle contacts the bottom of the pan near the back of the engine, and there are open spaces at the contact point, allowing oil to pass under. On hard acceleration, the oil races away from the pickup, causing oil starvation. The Milodon pan is superior due to the tight-fitting baffle positioned farther forward in the pan and should be considered a minimum for any serious performance use.

Restricting oil to the rocker shafts in an FE head is a simple matter of dropping a drilled orifice into the oiling passage in the head. For the Edelbrock heads, you can spend $5 on a restrictor kit from Precision Oil Pumps or just take some 3/16 round brass stock and drill a 0.070-inch hole through the middle before dropping it into the oil hole. The rocker assemblies will still get plenty of oil, and more will be available for the mains and rods.

The primary function of the factory windage tray, shown here installed on our engine, is to keep the extra quart of oil in the pan away from the spinning crank. Always run at least 6 quarts of oil, even in a 5-quart pan. Mark your dipstick tube accordingly. You can find more info at 428cobrajet.com.

The rocker-shaft end stands from Precision Oil Pumps provide support on both sides of the end rocker on each shaft. The factory stands do not provide this support, leading to frequent shaft failures with higher-than-stock spring pressures. The rockers are the factory adjustable units, and the pushrods are also factory 3/8-inch ball/cup units. This valvetrain is good to at least 6,500 rpm with a solid cam and spring pressures up to 400 pounds.

Installing the intake is a tricky part of FE engine assembly. After setting the intake down on the engine with the gaskets in place, temporarily install the distributor and move the intake fore and aft to get the distributor lined up with the distributor hole in the manifold. Now scribe a line across the valve cover rail on the intake and the head on each side so you can reinstall the intake again later and keep this alignment. If the distributor hole in the intake is misaligned with the distributor, it will leak oil.

Now you can put in a couple of bolts to cinch the intake down into position and measure the difference in height of the valve cover rail. In this case, because the block was decked, the intake rail was 0.040 higher than the head rail. Anything more than 0.015 or so is too much and may result in a leak or the pushrods hitting the holes in the intake. We removed the intake and machined 0.025 off each head-mating surface to make the fit acceptable. On final assembly, make sure you check for pushrod-to-intake interference through the range of valve motion before bolting on the intake for good.

The headers for the street engine are DynoMax truck headers designed for a 390. The emissions-era FEs have the exhaust ports positioned lower on the head than 427 or 428CJ engines and, of course, the Edelbrocks. These headers were designed to fit the lower ports, so to avoid a major port mismatch, we slotted the header mounting holes so the whole header could be shifted up 0.250 or so. We also took the opportunity to clean up the port inlet with a bur. The photo shows the modified port on the right and the port as received on the left.