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A friend of mine changed the 352 in his 68 F100 to a 1969 390 2barrel out of a Galaxie station wagon. The new engine was in very good shape, with fairly low mileage and the 352 was pretty tired. They also replaced the clutch while they had the engine out and had to come up with a pilot bearing for the 390, since the station wagon had an automatic. The F100 with the 390 was like a different truck. I would guess it took half as much time to reach 60 mph as it had with the 352, and it got several miles per gallon better gas mileage--clear up to about 12! We decided that what must be most different was the camshaft and maybe the heads. The car cam must have been a lot hotter than the pickup engine cam. My friend's son drove the F100 to high school and later rebuilt the 390 into a much hotter engine, with an aluminum intake and 4 barrel, as well as headers and somewhat higher compression and aftermarket cam. It really ran hard then, but was unusable in slick weather and was really hard on back tires. If you are getting everything on your list for $1300, I think you are doing really well, that is a lot of parts. Fords had a number of heads on the FE engines, and some were much better for performance than others. I doubt that your 360 heads have very large ports. I would look for heads with the larger ports and then do a performance valve job on them. Or if your budget will handle it, the Edelbrock Performer aluminum heads are really neat, and then you wouldn't need to do the valve job, just lap the brand new valves in. Neat! Will you get much better gas mileage? If your 360 is in lousy shape, it may improve some with the rebuilt 390, but I would feel very impressed if you get 12 mpg. But much more go-power? You bet! Good luck with your project.
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