I've got an old 383 mel out of a mercury turnpike cruiser and I've been wondering what the hell I should do with it ! I will be reading posts and so forth for the next little bit and hopefully I can figure out how to do this thing !

...engine? LOL. Street, strip, moderate, radical?
If you get started soon, you'll have a good chance to get fresh info from my usually bad memory. I can give you some info on this and that I guess. You might educate me as well.
Here's a short run down of what I've done so far with my customers low budget. Guess how he became a millionaire $$$$ !!

Hot water pressure washing the block.
Disassemble the block.
Remove ALL oil gallery plugs (cup type)
Washing the bare block. Same procedure as above plus using engine bruhes and brake cleaner to remove all the fat and residuals.
Wire brush the block to bare metal for a "like new" look and give it some mora right down on the flora.
Replace all the cups
Remove rings from the pistons, cleaning up the ring lands and wash them.
Install new rings
Disassemble the cilynder heads and rocker assy. Checked valves and seats o.K. Gave them.....(Ouups!!..any German around? Whatz "Ventile einschleifen"???) Hmmm!!
Removed all plugs from the rocker shaft and removed tons of gunk. I wonder if there was any oil passng through them anyway.
Wire brushed all the rockers, to a near.....yeah I got carried away a little LOL.
Anyway, everything is cleaned up and painted FORD green. Prepared to get back together once the main bearings arrive.
The guy insists to keep the old oil pump and chain, and I'm too tired to discuss things with millionaires. I'm not religious but I guess I'm gonna pray for him though.
I suspect the rocker assy to be 100% identical w. the FE assy, but will give it a closer look soon and tell you.
What I'm mainly trieing to say is that there's basically no difference between the MEL and other internal combustion engines.
Only thing is the weird c. chamber that might give you some brain work on how to insert the pistons w/o breaking the rings.
Good luck and stick around.





Theo
The man with the bad memory (Germany)
All stock 62 T-Bird, with resto-mod style engine bay. Mildly warmed up 390.
birds@freenet.de
Check out The (MEL) 383, 410, 430, 462 Engine Forum at http://www.network54.com/Forum/257364

to flow the heads and see what kind of potential they have , and if they do have potential HOT ROD IT ! That crazy super wedge combustion chamber can't be the most efficient , I'm wondering how much comp ratio the thing can tolerate ... anyway I'll get back to you on those rings I've fooled with a couple of shivvy 409's before and the deck is at an angle on them too but I can't remember what we did about it . I'll make some calls and get that straightened up.

It would be nice to have available the port and valve sizes as is readily available for the FE. I would imagine the early heads (58-60) would be the best for performance.

(You aren't going to believe this but I was going to put head cc's in there too. How far can I shave this head to up the CR? DUH!)

....why would you do that?

Theo
The man with the bad memory (Germany)
All stock 62 T-Bird, with resto-mod style engine bay. Mildly warmed up 390.
birds@freenet.de
Check out The (MEL) 383, 410, 430, 462 Engine Forum at http://www.network54.com/Forum/257364

When I was describing the head spec sheet, I started to add the cc's of the combustion chamber in the heads. I just barely caught my mistake before posting.

nm

Theo
The man with the bad memory (Germany)
All stock 62 T-Bird, with resto-mod style engine bay. Mildly warmed up 390.
birds@freenet.de
Check out The (MEL) 383, 410, 430, 462 Engine Forum at http://www.network54.com/Forum/257364

Have rounder intake ports, similiar to the 385 Series. Can anyone confer or expound on this? Has anyone actually done any flow testing on early or late cylinder heads?

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