351C into 66

The valve covers will hit the lower shock towers. No go.

Windsor, yes. Cleveland, no.

Thanks for the replies. After I did some looking around, I came to the conclusion it wouldn't work.

Gary in NC

A 351C will not fit between the shock towers in a 1966 Mustang.

Actually, other than keeping a car original - there is no benefit to be had from using a Cleaveland engine. They were built for only 4 years, so parts and cores are getting scarce, you can now buy heads, intakes, cams, etc for any of the Windsor engines and they will easily outperform the Cleaveland.

Hemmings recently did a story about the sb Ford engine, (Windsor series) and it was an interesting article. The sb Ford engine is superior in a lot of ways to the sb Chevy engine (almost 100 lbs lighter being one), so rather than beating the shock towers to shoehorn an artifact in your car, you can pick up a sb engine and do anything you want with it and have great performace with reliabilty and resonable gas milage.

FYI: The 351C engine was build in Cleveland, Ohio hence the name 351

*Cleveland*...

I see the point here as the Cleveland outperforming the Windsor if you are retaining the stock castings. BTW, there are new-age aluminum Cleveland heads coming out.

CobraJet

"gcroix" wrote

I guess I'm too late, then, but here are some pix of a Clevo happily sitting in a '65:

As far as I can tell those shock towers are un-altered.

180 Out TS 28

I was going to reply to all the other "will not fit" replies, but didn't want to seem like an uninformed poster.... ;-) My first car was a '66 Mustang that originally had a small block in it. I sold it and the purchaser put a 351 Cleveland in it. It was a tight fit, but it did fit. The car was street raced for about a week before it got wrapped around a tree. After seeing the first photo of yours, I wanted to say that a cross-brace was needed, but I see you put one in. The fenders will squat together on an early Mustang. Maybe all the people who measured theirs have their fenders being pushed in, who knows? BTW, 20 years ago there were several companies that made headers for the 351 Cleveland/early Mustang swap. They looked like a snake pit, but they were selling them. Thanks for your post. I thought I was losing my marbles......

snipped-for-privacy@kansas.net (Kruse) wrote

That's a short lifespan but a long race.

The very same thing happened to a 340 Dart a friend of mine had. He sold it to some other kid and within a week the kid had piled it up, although as I recall his adversary was a bridge, not a tree.

To clarify, this is not my car. Just some web photos.

Well here's a stroll down memory lane:

Sometimes I'm TWICE 180 out, which means on the money.

180 Out TS 28

Perhaps, but it looks like this engine is sitting higher than stock to me. I smell custom mounts.

This was a popular idea back in the 70's, and I don't recall anyone pulling it off without hacking the towers.

But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. I would suggest emailing this guy and asking him about the engine mounts and whether the Flaming River box allowed extra clearance.

CobraJet

The 351 Cleveland does extend about 1 inch (depending on the oil pan used) lower then the 302 from the mount point on the block to the bottom of the pan. Some cars that means nothing, sometimes as in the Fox Body application, you have to lift the 351 Cleveland by about an inch...

The trick to putting a 351c into a 65-6 mustang is using the correct motor mounts and the correct headers.

For mounts, you can either use custom solid mounts (terrible idea if you want regularly drive the car) or you can use 64 falcon mount (also used in early 65 mustangs) This are a 3 peice mount (pictured here:

) There are 2 companies that make headers that work in this installation:

1. Tubular Automotive - these are the spagetti headers refered to before -
   formatting link
   these are just TERRIBLEheaders in my opinion, they hang way low and delete the front x-memeber sowhen I bought the car I threw them away.
2. formatting link
   - makes a nice set of headers. There are a very tight fit but with a little puzzling I was able to get them in. I 'bumped' a couple of the header tubes just to ensure clearance but my friend from CA with a 65 coupe put them in with no problem.

The Flaming river steer box is physically the same as a stock box so no additional clearance was gained there, and none was needed.

There are no shock tower mods done to this car -

its just a nice tight fit. Now why would you want to do.

Well I don't want to start a windsor cleveland pissing contest but here it is in my opinion in a nut shell having built both type of motors:

Stock C vs Stock W - C wins

Stock C vs Mod W - W wins

Mod C vs Mod W - anybody's quess - EVERYTHING you can do to a W you can do to a C. The next phase of the arguement is that parts cost more for a c than a w. Feel free to pull up my spreadsheet on my site. I have a 408 stroker, total cost for parts is the same or slightly less than the price for a same performance level w stroker....why....simple...I didn't have to buy aluminum heads. I could have if I wanted to, but I didn't HAVE to in order to make my performance goal of a VERY streetable 10.6:1 motor that gets 12-15 MPG and has 400 RWHP. I have a mild (under .6 lift) hydro flat tappet cam and a power band to die for :)

The advise I give to everyone, is build what you have. If you have a

351w, build it up. If you have a 351c build it up. Once you figure in cost for sourcing a new block and other parts that don't transfer, it will cost you more to build what you don't have. If you have nothing to start with, build what you like/want.

I started with a 351c in the car, so my choice was easy. Its also so much fun to open the hood and prove to all those people out there that say with no reservations "A 351c will not fit in a 65-6 mustang with out shock tower surgery".

Nick

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

The trick to putting a 351c into a 65-6 mustang is using the correct motor mounts and the correct headers.

For mounts, you can either use custom solid mounts (terrible idea if you want regularly drive the car) or you can use 64 falcon mount (also used in early 65 mustangs) This are a 3 peice mount (pictured here:

) There are 2 companies that make headers that work in this installation:

1. Tubular Automotive - these are the spagetti headers refered to before -
   formatting link
   these are just TERRIBLEheaders in my opinion, they hang way low and delete the front x-memeber sowhen I bought the car I threw them away.
2. formatting link
   - makes a nice set of headers. There are a very tight fit but with a little puzzling I was able to get them in. I 'bumped' a couple of the header tubes just to ensure clearance but my friend from CA with a 65 coupe put them in with no problem.

The Flaming river steer box is physically the same as a stock box so no additional clearance was gained there, and none was needed.

There are no shock tower mods done to this car -

its just a nice tight fit. Now why would you want to do.

Well I don't want to start a windsor cleveland pissing contest but here it is in my opinion in a nut shell having built both type of motors:

Stock C vs Stock W - C wins

Stock C vs Mod W - W wins

Mod C vs Mod W - anybody's quess - EVERYTHING you can do to a W you can do to a C. The next phase of the arguement is that parts cost more for a c than a w. Feel free to pull up my spreadsheet on my site. I have a 408 stroker, total cost for parts is the same or slightly less than the price for a same performance level w stroker....why....simple...I didn't have to buy aluminum heads. I could have if I wanted to, but I didn't HAVE to in order to make my performance goal of a VERY streetable 10.6:1 motor that gets 12-15 MPG and has 400 RWHP. I have a mild (under .6 lift) hydro flat tappet cam and a power band to die for :)

The advise I give to everyone, is build what you have. If you have a

351w, build it up. If you have a 351c build it up. Once you figure in cost for sourcing a new block and other parts that don't transfer, it will cost you more to build what you don't have. If you have nothing to start with, build what you like/want.

I started with a 351c in the car, so my choice was easy. Its also so much fun to open the hood and prove to all those people out there that say with no reservations "A 351c will not fit in a 65-6 mustang with out shock tower surgery".

Nick

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Great! Thanks for giving us the insight on this swap. One question: did you happen to measure the distance between shock towers? I'd like to compare them to my '64 Fairlane and '65 Comet.

CobraJet

I never measured. It is however, very close. I added a torque strap to make sure that I didn't get any movement on the motor. One of the things I was going for was a sleep look for the motor...so no scoops were allowed ;) so limiting upward movement was important...with my xcelerator intake,

3/8 spacer and 1.75 drop base and 14 x 3 filter I have 1/2 inch to the hood.

Nice !!