Canadian Hot Rods V14, Issue 13: Stroker FE

Our '62 Ranch Wagon soon to become Ranch Mayhem courtesy a 431-ci stroker motor

Photos and story by Terry Denome

Back in our April/May issue we mentioned we were going to get started on building a stroker FE motor for a 1962 Ford Ranch Wagon we'd picked up at the Portland Swap Meet. I even sold a couple of cars (my '65 Ford Country sedan wagon and 1966 Plymouth Satellite) to help the project along. But then I did a dumb thing and bought a 1970 Dodge D100 and got really into making some changes to it. You know, so I'd have something to drive while I worked on the '62 Ford wagon. Yeah, right. 

Well, starting in January we're getting back on the wagon project and we'll finally be assembling our motor using a SCAT rotating assembly kit (part # 1-47710) which turns a 390 into a 431ci torque  monster. It includes a Scat forged steel 4.125 stroke crank and Chevy style 6.700" forged I-beam connecting rods. With a standard .030 overbore (making the final bore 4.080) you get 431-ci inches. The kit also includes Mahle premium forged dished pistons, Mahle main bearings and rod bearings. We're bolting on a set of Edelbrock RPM Performer aluminum heads (part # 60054 72cc chamber, 170cc intake runner.)

As you can see from the above photo it's going to have a '62/'63 Ford vintage tri-carb setup and in the summer I scored a set of the rare 406/427cast iron factory headers. Heavy as hell but cool as hell. Behind this beast we'll be bolting up a Gearstar Performance Transmissions, Inc. 4R70W automatic transmission and to make that possible we got in touch with Bendtsen's Speed Gems (transmissionadapters.com) and picked up their FE to AOD-style transmission adapter (FO1000201). So pick up the April/May issue for more on this project.