Good morning, back from a Chicago business trip and working on a nice cup of coffee right now. I saw Howard's note and tend to agree. If you have a running 427 you know several things about the motor. Firstly, you know you don't have oil in the water stream, which is indicative of a cracked block as Charles Fouquet in Martinique discovered. Secondly, you know the crankshaft and connecting rods are in reasonably good condition, and not catastropically damaged, due to the way the oil pressure gauge reads. You don't necessarily know about the cyllinder wall bore dimension unless you have the history, or the condition.
I contend that many of the big Fords don't really need a bore job. Those phosporous reinforced iron blocks (many say nickle, but the alloy is actually reinvorced with phosporous) are so hard, you can sometimes see the ORIGINAL cross hatch hone marks in the bore at the time they are torn down for a rebuild. I would CLOSELY check the bore dimension and only do a nice light hone job if thats all really required.
You may be lucky enough to reuse pistons with new rings, never know. If new pistons are needed, they'll have to be custom, but people do it all the time every day. They just dont keep them on the shelf for this motor.
The big iron crankshaft is a very fine piece of work, and it actually won a ton of NASCAR races, itself. Later they used a steel crank for competition but you will probably never have a crankshaft failure in a Ford 427 regardless of what it is, unless you are abusing the motor far in excess of what David Pearson did at nearly 200 MPH for 500 straight miles.
The heads are rebuildable or replacable. They are very fine heads by the way, suitable for larger valves and porting for big power, but in marine form Ford was wise to provide smaller valves that actually help produce more torque. The big cast iron intakes weigh in at 80 pounds all by themselves, and the ports are truck-like, again, for max torque.
The 427 NEVER had ANY problem producing power. The potential is there for whatever your wallet can stand, with versions of the block now available from Shelby rated to 1000 horsepower. Torque is the magic ingredient and the 427 is better than any other V8 motor I've seen, at developing a RELAXED (yawn) 300-hp without breaking a sweat, but also producing an incredible 438 footpounds of torque at a VERY LOW 2900 rpm right were you can use it in a boat.
Compare the torque with anything else available on the market, you'll see the ole "27" is still king, in many instances. Yes, there may be a new computerized megabuck out there that can match or beat the torque, but not with the same cubic inch displacement, new or old.
Therefore, if you have one running and you know the condition, it's money in the bank with regards to it's ability to be economically rebuilt and put back into service. If you buy one that is not running, all bets are off, because you don't know as many critical elements.
That's my take anyway, and I plan to warm up my pair of big dogs later today after lunch when the weather breaks a little warmer. It's going to be nice, we are taking some friends from Michigan out for a boat ride. They want to hear the big dogs bark under the tin roof marina, ha!
I do too!
Regards,
Paul