50vert wrote:

Sounds like you have the correct heads.
The vin stamping should be on a pad in a similar location as a SB.
All the KRs were built at Metuchen before going to A O Smith. Some Metuchen cars had the number stamped on the back of the driverside head.

I'm going to have to concur.  No other FE heads have a casting number ending in "N" that I can find, so they must be 428CJ heads.

The key on that VIN stamping is that its "some".  I guess they wanted to continue to make the correctness of the FE hard to verify. 

You could pull the pan and check the crank number but this link may help.  On CJ's, the harmonic balancer/damper is neutral balanced and only the crank is 28 oz-in.  On the SCJ, the damper does not have a weight also neutral balanced but the damper spacer has a weight - according to some.  The link below has some nice info on size differences.  Quick check is to look at timing marks.  The CJ goes from 10 ATDC to 30 BTDC.  the SCJ goes from 10 to 46.  Steve Crist's Big Block Ford book is still a pretty good reference for FE history.

https://www.428cobrajet.com/id-balancer

SCJs had a weight on the spacer, because they used heavier duty connecting rods that were heavier.  These were SCJ specific rods, and Ford didn't want to have to produce a separate crank to account for the weight difference, so they used a weighted spacer instead. 

The crank casting number is another one of those FE things that can rule out an incorrect part, but not verify a correct part.  428 cranks can have 1UA, 1UB, or no number at all.  The problem here is that since its the same crank used in the Mercury 410 engines there's no guarantee that a crank so cast is in a 428CJ or 428SCJ.  It would seem unlikely that a previous owner swapped a 410 engine into the car topped with correct 428CJ heads, BUT stranger things have definitely happened to vehicles over a 50 year lifetime.  If they windowed the block and couldn't locate, or afford, a 428 short block its not unthinkable that they yanked a 410 out of a junked Merc, plopped the good 428CJ top end on it and pressed the car back into service. 

The dipstick housing doesn't go all the way in to the flange.
There was a TSB calling for 7 quarts, 8 with an oil cooler. I think all KRs had a cooler, could be wrong. There was a revised dipstick as part of the TSB.
What part # is on your dipstick?
https://www.428cobrajet.org/    should be at the top of your bookmarks.

Last edited by 50vert (10/24/2019 6:30 PM)

Its dictated by the hole in the mounting bracket
But even without that, it won't physically go much deeper any way.
Edit,  because of a lip/step, inside the hole.

Last edited by 50vert (10/25/2019 12:36 AM)

Regular 428CJ cars did not get an oil cooler; it was used on all 428SCJ cars.  It was in fact the same cooler used on the Boss 302/Boss429/429SCJ.  Ford and their parts bin, right?

Now, starting in '69 if you ordered a 3.91 or 4.30 gear in the rear end you automatically got the coil cooler with the 428CJ.  The reasoning was that it was really hard to keep the oil cool in testing with these ratios due to the RPM the engine was spinning.  Ford engineers were seeing oil temps of 300 degrees or more, which is dangerous now, let alone with the oils of the day. 
 
Also, cars with AC can't have the coil cooler, because it takes up part of the space needed for the condenser.  So if you ordered the 3.91 or 4.30 rear gear you could not also order the car with AC. 

Oil capacity was changed by Ford via a TSB to 7 quarts due to issues with oil starvation at higher RPM.  If the car had the cooler it was supposed to use another quart, for a total of 8.