About the weight issue, the FE is heavier, close to 700 lbs in it's all iron glory, around 50 lbs over the 460's. Kinda a moot point in my opinion. Thats not a big difference. I sold my "crate" 460 to a buddy who weighed it before dropping it in his car, complete but no carb it was 518 on a 'load beam' scale.
>The way I see it from a back yard mechanic point of view,ford center oil block,ford rods and crank,eldebrock heads,good cam and intake set up,thats an easy 425-475 horse power balanced and properly assembled with a 6800 rev limit is bullet proof,In my experience you cant say that about any other engine to come from detroit.
I'll beg to differ with that too. My "crate" 460 was screwed together at home from a bone stock for a 77 Lincoln 19k mile remanufactured engine that was .040 over and filled with recon'd rods crank and cheapo cast pistions.
Since the engine was done the money I would have spent on basic machine work went for the SVO aluminum CJ heads, C460 cam (.588/.614) which I had Fast Times do a 'little' clean up work on, Performer RPM port matched, with a Holley 950 HP double pumper. The similarities with your FE build up above...Ford block/rods/crank, aluminum aftermarket heads, good cam and intake. No 'power balance for my 460. That combo pushed my 4300 pound with driver Galaxie to 11.6-7's at 116+ with best shift points coming at 6800. Bullet proof...never a problem in the 10k I had it or several thousand my buddy had it before he pulled it to go with a stroker crank and much better rods. This would also pull to 7000 easy, probably more but times started going down. After changing to a 3.00 rear end I took it twice on a 600 mile each way road trip, drove it regularly (except for 'salt' season) and would idle down to 750 in gear and pull away from a stop (driving lawfully
) smoothly.
Your right though, you cant say that about any other engine from Detroit as the 460 would trump the FE by about 100 hp under the same conditions.