coolclassiccars wrote:
well the car is so correct except for the motor that i wanted to keep it as close to correct as possible but still have some meat on the bone. my mechanic is 32 years old and has a 85 fox body 5.0 and is cranking 600 hp out of it. we can make it pop a little but i am still a purist at heart. i do understand that today everyone wants restomods with all the fixins vs pure car. i am retired and doing this for fun and make a few bucks.
thanks everyone for your inputs. now have get the motor and trans out and go from there.
Jerry
If you're looking to make money on the deal just run with what you've got. There's no money to be made trying to get the "correct" engine in it. I'd drop a decent intake and carb onto it, go with a flat tappet hydraulic cam that's got a bit of rumble to the idle and pocket port the heads. Beyond that you get into spending a lot just to build the engine. Aftermarket heads are in the $2,000 range, headers expensive and complicated, and a roller valvetrain awesome but also costly. Set your goal at about 350-375HP. Its going to make a lot of low end torque, so it will feel faster than the HP number would seem to indicate. I'll also caution that you and your builder do your research. The FE is not a 5.0, and can't be built like one. There are several good books on the topic, and I would do a lot of reading before machining or buying anything.
On the trans I'd just keep what you have. Again, trying to change this isn't going to net you any more money because its "correct". The thing that would bring more money would be if it had a modern overdrive trans allowing highway cruising. But, the nature of that swap to an FE is costly because they were never bolted to such a trans, so you don't get the bolt in availability of the small block guys.
When you "restore" a car for profit the usual motives don't apply. It doesn't matter if its how you want it, just what will sell for the most money with the least amount of cost spent. That's tough because we're all car guys, and its hard to separate the emotion from it. When I was first restoring my car the market was as close to showroom stock as possible, and that's how I restored my car. That's not what I want anymore, and its not what most people want anymore. The problem with showroom stock is that the cars are no longer as versatile as they once were in that condition, and people have gotten used to driving newer cars with all the conveniences. When I was 15 I'd have looked at the guy putting a hot rod non-factory engine in his car as an idiot. Now I'm like rock on, how fast is it? Don't let the Barret Jackson and Mecum auctions of the world fool you. Those are frequented by a tiny subset of classic car buyers, and the level a car needs to be at to command those kinds of prices is absurd. The average guy, with the average car is nowhere near that, and the cost to get there is likely twice what the car would be worth. There's always going to be the GT500 selling for hundreds of thousands, but the more mundane offerings don't fetch anywhere near that. The market right now is still strong, but its also unpredictable.
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