Man O War 1991 Ford Mustang GT Engine - Hooligan's Last Stand - Tech

Anytime your car blows up, you instinctively open the hood, thinking it's nothing major. At first, you'll look at a few hose clamps and maybe check a few wires, hoping it's a simple repair. So when we noticed the distributor was loose, we asked ourselves, "I wonder why the water pump is leaking?" It would normally stop there, but we quickly followed up with, "Why are the intake manifold bolts loose?" After spewing coolant and oil out of the front half of the engine, we already knew it was a broken block. So, instead of trying to avoid it, we admitted to ourselves that our cheap way out of using a stock block for our 10-second buildup finally caught up to us. It said "Peace Out" while we were still expecting to hang with all our homies.

Nowadays, there are plenty of ways to build up a Ford Windsor without using a single part from Ford (not counting Ford Racing Performance Parts). The aftermarket is so huge that you can literally build and run a Ford 302- or 351-based engine with components sourced from an online catalog. It was certainly hard to choose which way to go, but in the end, we went with a World Products' Man O' War block. Why? Well, we're sticklers for the newest in foundry and manufacturing processes, and this block was particularly interesting for many reasons. So, instead of rambling off its press release, we'll talk about some things that are not listed and that you may not know about.

World uses CNC-machining from start to finish on all of its engine-component castings. This eliminates issues with stacked tolerances, which is when you go from one machine to the next. For instance, if each tool used to machine the block is off by just one-ten-thousandth (0.0001) of an inch, by the time you're done, all the tolerances are added up and stacked together for a poorly machined chunk of high-nickel cast iron. CNC-machining the block in one station eliminates this. Another thing that World does is to make sure all castings will accept a huge stroker crank with just about any aftermarket rod swinging from its hip. It may not matter for you 347 or 408 guys, but once you put in some serious amounts of arm into that crankcase (up to 371 inches for an 8.200 block and 470 inches for the taller 9.500 version), you're talking some serious room that the original Windsor blueprints simply did not take into consideration. Because the World block is a proprietary design, it has many key features put into it from the very moment the CAD engineer started his/her first rendering.

So now you know a bit about the block, but what does it all mean? Well, it means we can go racing again with the added confidence that our block will never be the source of our next breakdown. We'll probably step it up a notch with more boost and maybe some more cam. But one thing at a time-we want to first get the car running back to its former glory. All we had to do was transplant our engine internals from the busted short-block and pop it into our 4.030-bore Man O' War (PN 087110-4030.)

Two things should be noted about the Man O' War block:-head-bolt size and hydraulic roller cams. If you intend to reuse your old head bolts, you'd best forget it. Aside from utilizing 11/42-inch threads, it has deeper bosses than any factory Ford block, so you'll require longer studs or bolts. For the exact part number you'll need, you should contact World about the head you'll be using so you get the right one. Secondly, for those intending to use the factory-style hydraulic roller camshaft setup, you'll have to modify the lifter alignment bars to clear bosses that are cast into the block. These are minor details, but worth noting.

After putting our new engine back together, we took it out for a quick run. Hooligan lives again, and hopefully it'll still be around for future testing. Thanks to our new reinforced engine, we can now step it up several notches in our quest for more power and speed.