Reply to "Jack Roush Race Engine"

"Ready to Assemble" to me means this is not an engine, it is a box of parts.

If it were an assembled and running engine, AND there was documentation that it was "recently" assembled by Roush's shop, i.e. a new or refreshed engine, it "may" be worth the asking price.

Since it is a box of parts, it is worth no more than the sum value of the parts, which I can guarantee you is far below $15K Canadian. This is a box of used racing parts, refurbished at best. If the parts are truly parts that were once used in a fully assembled Roush engine, each part will be identified (engraved) as such.

If this was once a Roush engine I can guarantee you the connecting rods were not originally part of that engine. They stick-out like a sore thumb, they're out-of-place. The reciprocating parts look mostly like stuff from the 1980s, except the Probe connecting rods. Its an old school crank, old school crank damper, old school pistons. I'd expect to see old school name rods too like BRC, Crower, Carrillo. Was the original set of rods ruined?

Is the crank an expensive, US made, fully counter weighted forged or billet crank, or a lesser crank? I Googled XH10089 cranks and seemed to see the same picture of the same crankshaft every place I looked. Like that same crank has been bouncing around the internet. Is there a problem with it? Or is this crank a different one?

Is the Australian racing block a "real" Ford SVO version with uniformly thick cylinder walls, or is it a block pulled from an Australian automobile and 4 bolt caps added? The difference is the amount of core shift ... the cylinder walls were too thin in places for Ford SVO, so the block remained in Australia and was used as a 2-bolt production engine. The only way to know is if the wall thickness of all 8 cylinder walls has been sonic checked. SVO blocks will have walls thicker than 0.200" everywhere, even after they've been bored. So is that sonic check report available?

Notice the part about "Aussie block with stud girdle". Since when does any Cleveland block require a main bearing cap girdle in a naturally aspirated application?

"Freshened" A3 heads are "used" heads, which have hopefully had a valve job and new guides. What's the valve recession look like? It can be pretty bad with A3 heads. Valve recession (the sharp edge around the valve seat) is a flow killer.

Since you're familiar with the FE engine, I'll explain the A3 head this way. The iron 4V head was a racing head with a high port, as high as production limits allowed. Similar to the FE medium riser head. Both heads have the same ramp in the floor of the intake port, which improves flow; the ramp gives the head the flow of a head with a higher port. In the case of the medium riser FE head, it performed as well as the high riser FE head, but allowed the induction system to fit below the hood of production cars; NASCAR had banned the use of high riser heads for the 1964 season because Chrysler had complained that an engine with high riser heads didn't fit below the hood of a production car unless a "bubble" was installed.

During the 1970s racers discovered the ramp in the floor of the 4V port was throwing fuel out of suspension at ultra high rpm (above 8000 rpm), therefore a few horsepower could be picked-up by eliminating the ramp, grinding the roof of the port to make it as high as possible, and opening-up the port beyond the ramp to give the port a more consistent shape and cross-sectional area. They ended-up with a port of about the same volume they began with, in the range of 250cc when the valve pocket is opened-up.

The A3 head was the first aluminum racing head for the 351C. NASCAR rules limiting induction system height had been lifted, mostly because all teams were using the new high rise single plane spider type intake manifolds. Therefore the ramp was removed from the floor of the A3 intake port for the reasons explained above. The port was raised a small amount, about 1/8", to increase air flow and compensate for removal of the ramp. Removing the ramp from the port floor raised the floor, thus making the port opening smaller, but the port volume is about the same as the iron 4V port (240cc before either is ported), they are tuned for similar rpm.

If by modern heads you were thinking of products from Trick Flow and Edelbrock, well that's kinda apples and oranges. The 4V head, the A3 head, and all subsequent Ford SVO heads were high port racing heads which flow very well with high lift camshafts opening the valves 0.700" off their seats or higher. In terms of street performance, where the valves aren't opened more than 0.600" the CNC Trick Flow heads acquit themselves well, considering they are a 2V (low port) head.

The A3 heads have the lowest intake port of any of the aluminum SVO racing heads, and it lacks the high swirl combustion chamber topology of the Yates heads and later heads. The cool thing about the A3 heads, the port location and port dimensions should allow the SCM intake manifolds to bolt-up, so you have some manifold choices with good availability, although expensive by the time they're shipped to north America.