[olddog]

First the balance on these cars, front to back is excellent, even with an all iron FE in them. For all out competition sure a small block might handle just a tab better. If that was the only goal, an all aluminum 5.0 block with 4.155 bore and 3.4 stroke would be best..... but that is bench racing, sitting on a bar stool, talk. For the average hobby guy this is a non issue. It only clouds the mind. Forget about this.

A 351 W stroker is a great reliable engine that will make more than enough power to get you killed. It will work just fine, but it is not an FE. I will never be an FE and it will never be the engine family that came in a 427 Cobra. That's facts.

A 390 is not the exact correct engine, but it is an FE, which is the correct engine family. Since you feel that some guy who is interested in your car with a lot of questions and opinions is a "douchebag," obviously it will bother you if you do not put an FE in and said "douchebag" mentions it would have been perfect if only it had an FE. So admit it to yourself, other people's opinions matter to you, even a "douchebag's" opinion. Yep you will be kicking yourself every time, if you go with the Windsor. I'm only analyzing you based on your self admitted rant.

So now that we have established that you should go with the FE, what about reliability. If I were to go on what I have read on this site, yes FE engines tend to have more things go wrong. That does not mean every FE engine has problems. If you think about it, Ford made millions of these engine on assembly lines for decades, and they were assembled by hung over, union folks with axes to grind. Yet this was a very reliable engine from the factory.

Now this will pi$$ off some, but the FE is a terrible design, from a put it together point of view. There are a bunch of little things that you just have to know to assemble this engine properly. People who work on an assembly line who only have to do a few items properly, get real good at it. A shop who builds a few a year or an individual who is only going to build one, has to know everything about the entire build and remember it all. The point is, millions of FE engines were extremely reliable, when assembled properly, but it is harder to do, the smaller the operation. That not to say a small operation cannot do it. They just have to be better at it.

Today there are fewer and fewer builders that are good at assembling them, and a boat load of the parts today are made by someone other than Ford. Yes there are more risks, but I believe if done right you can build a better FE than Ford did. It boils down to an attention to detail thing. A great FE is possible, and it is done all the time.

There is one exception. The rear main seal was designed for a rope seal and Ford blocks are a crap shoot with today's seals. Tolerances were sloppy, because with rope seals, it didn't matter, and they drip by design. So, the likelihood that it will mark its territory on the garage floor is high.

So sell all the Windsor parts to finance the FE, and your Cobra will be worth more money and you will be happier.