> Ford "Fairlane" small-blocks were at least as bad as Chevys; and with more inclusions in the iron. That brings up an interesting point about how just a few changes to the basic design can result in a much longer lived and durable engine. The Ford Fairlane V8 engine (also known as the Windsor after the Canadian town in which they were manufactured) started life as a 221 in 1961 (competing with the Buick/Olds 215) and evolved into the 302 and taller block 351W. In the 1980s, the 302 was marketed as the 5.0L. Though the basic engine architecture was the same, the 5.0L HO got better metallurgy, a steel hydraulic roller camshaft, fuel injection, revised water pump and forged pistons with thin (metric) low tension oil rings. In 1987, I purchased a new Ford Mustang GT with 5.0L HO that served as my year round daily driver. At 163,000 miles, I decided to pull the engine. It ran great, got good fuel economy, had good compression and oil pressure but I wanted to do some hot rod upgrades and was curious to see what it looked like inside. My Mustang spent its time was operated in the Midwest with cold winters and hot summers and had seen many hard miles by which I mean everything from driving the car for extended periods at triple digit speeds (e.g. drained a full tank with the cruise control set on 105 MPH one night when I was dating a woman 3 states away), using it like a truck (hauled two complete Ford 351C V8s in the hatch from San Francisco to St. Louis running most of the time at 90 MPH), a year of short trips where the engine never warmed up, daily bursts to 5500 RPM, etc. In my defense, I did allow the water temperature to stabilize before hammering the throttle and it got regular oil changes. For the first 40K miles, I ran conventional oil changed at 3000 miles, after that I switched to synthetic oil changed every 5000 miles (in retrospect probably too frequent). The Mustang is the first and only car I've owned since new, so I was curious to see what it looked like inside. Previous to the Mustang, I had a 1979 Buick Regal V6 as a daily driver that was purchased with 70K miles showing on the odometer. When I opened it up, it was evident the previous owner didn't change the oil on a regular basis. The oil pickup screen was completely clogged (only the bypass hole was pulling in oil), the bearings were in bad shape, the timing chain was flapping in the wind, and there was carbon build up everywhere. My Mustang's 5.0L HO was at the opposite end of the spectrum. The inside of the engine was completely clean. When I ran rifle cleaners through the oil passages, they came out as clean as they went in. The only build up was a slight amount on the tops of the pistons and the exhaust valves. The valves, guides and crank were still within the tolerances for new parts. The roller cam and lifters were fine. The cam bearings were like new, in fact they were a bit on the tight side and the roller timing chain was still tight. The block showed no wear whatsoever with no ridge and the original honing cross hatch marks were still visible. I didn't even have to hone the block for the new rings (just cleaned the walls with solvent and rings seated just fine). I had heard the 5.0L roller cam blocks wore quite well but I was surprised to see how nice the engine looked inside. I was expecting some wear due to the fact I was running a K&N air filter which probably does not filter as well as a good paper filter. Also, I spent a year in the Mojave desert and, upon my return, noticed the air inlet tube had come loose and had a gap at the bottom that allowed unfiltered air in. My dad rebuilt his first engine before WWII (while he was in high school for his Model A) and has built everything from 4 cylinder Crosley COBRAs (COpper BRazed Aluminum) and Vegas to Ford 427 side-oiler strokers to Jaguar and Lincoln V12s. In all his years of engine building, he had never seen anything look so good, especially given the hard usage. Strictly speaking, the only thing the engine needed was a valve job (pitted exhaust seats, though they could have gone many more miles without issue) and a throttle body cleaning (later versions got a Teflon coating, mine was an early one that was uncoated aluminum). I assume a number of things contributed to low wear: fuel injection, overdrive transmission, low tension oil rings, short crankshaft stroke (low piston speed for a given engine RPM), synthetic oil, etc.
You just described my 1998 Riviera, that I sold last June. Had 212,000 miles on it, engine was never apart, original transmission, regular fluid changes. I sold it because the rust underneath was getting really ugly. Was the Supercharged 3800 V-6 though, not a V-8.
