Re: 351 w swap
Re: 351 w swap -- 74 maverick	Post Reply	Top of thread	Maverick Message Board

Posted by: Grabber71 01/26/2002, 19:17:10

has anyone done this 351w swap into a mav? if so what did it take and what headers are you using??? many thanks in advance joe At the time I started to replace my 302 with the 351, I had a almost new set of Hooker headers. Being that I had just spent a small fortune on the upbuild, new headers were on the back burner. I figured that I would get next to nothing for my 302 headers, so I would not lose to much anyway if I modified them somewhat. The problems I ran into were numerous, to say the least. The first problem was that the height of the engine puts the exhaust perfectly in line with the A-arms, so notching the towers would have little effect. What I did was to cut the ribs on the towers where the headers would go, and tap them in as far as I could with a ball peen hammer. This was done until they would go in no further, at which point I smoothed it out as much as possible and welded the cuts closed and repainted the towers. I them focused my attention on the headers. I used a body hammer to tap in the headers, each time trial fitting them. This took almost the whole day. The reason I used a body hammer is that as the headers push inward, the also will expand sideways so the overall size of the tubes is not effected as much as using a regular hammer and mashing them in. If your uncertain as to how this is done, ask someone you know who does bodywork and they'll be able to explain. The next obstacle was under the car. Being that the headers are now up higher in the engine bay, the headers are now up against the floor. I pulled them off again and using the same techniques I tapped them down and flat until they cleared. The final obstacle was the steering. Once I had them to what I thought was what I wanted, I raised up the front of the car and let the wheels dangle. I then rotated the steering from one side to the other only to find that they would only go partway. On further investigation, I discovered the problem to be the steering arm hitting the header as it turned. The headers had a nice jog in them to clear this obstacle when used on a 302, but on a 351 it's it the wrong spot. To get by, I taped in the header in that spot until the steering cleared completely. Unfortunately the tube was now tapped in almost halfway, which is a tad much. When I got it running I drove down to the local muffler shop and had them align the exhaust pipe with the headers and cut out the one tube and reroute it. Guess what, it works great! But it was a lot of work(its not easy putting headers on the car once, let alone 100 times to check for fit) I have a Car Craft mag from about 2 years ago that list custom headers to fit a 351W Maverick, the company was Total Performance. The advertise in car mags all the time so give them a call,or if they have an web address maybe someone could post it. I'll probably be ordering a set closer to summer. Anyway the car runs 12.78@111mph in the quarter with a mild 351 and is street driven daily, so I guess it worked. PS: I recently sent this note to another character who e-mailed me for advice. Hope this helps!

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