Blueprint uses their own line of Muscle Series aluminum heads that are cast specifically for them. All of the machine work happens at their headquarters in Kearney, NE. These well-designed head are part of the secret to the strong power band of Blueprint engines.

Though our 408 uses a roller cam, the rockers are standard stamped steel. We may upgrade these to roller tip later on, but for now they’re perfectly fine. Note that all of the head bolts used are ARP.

The roller cam swap uses dogbones on 5.0 style roller lifters and a retaining spider that bolts to the valley. Kits like this can be retrofitted into most none-roller V8s.

When assembling a longblock, the most common place that many non-professionals end up making an error that comes back to haunt them is installing the intake manifold. It’s just so easy to accidentally create a vacuum leak, but there is a way to prevent it. To start, lay a smear of RTV on the block and let it dry. When we’re ready to drop the intake on, a large thick bead will be laid over this.

The gaskets get the same treatment, but with a different goo. We liberally spread Gasgacinch on the side the faces the head and let the gasket material soak it in. The paper will soak must of up, so when we’re ready to drop them on the heads, they’ll get another coat.

Make sure to cut off this invasive little bit of gasket. If not, it’ll likely end up in your cooling system eventually.

Another simple trick that is a great help in dropping the intake into place easily and without disturbing the seal is to use guides. We made these just by chopping the head off of some 6-inch bolts. Wala, instant guides!

The guides make it possible to drop the intake down square and even, and without any movement side-to-side. It’s even more helpful if you use a heavy cast iron intake.

Edelbrock’s RPM Air-Gap intake is one of our very favorite all-around street performance intakes. Despite being a fairly tall dual-plane intake, it will fit under the hood of classic Mustang, though will require a deep drop base air cleaner. We also picked up an Edelbrock bolt kit that uses small 12-point heads that fit in the tight areas around the runners nicely- plus they look good.

A good harmonic balancer is a must for any engine, especially high performance ones. Summit Racing’s bracket racer dampers are affordable, but they have also been spin-tested to 12,500 rpm and carry an SFI-18.1 rating.

Edelbrock is most known for intakes and cylinder heads, but their aluminum water pumps are our go-to choice for better cooling on street and race engines. The quality is second to none, we’ve always noticed greater cooling capacity under hard use, and we’ve never worn one out.

Speaking of bolts, we can’t say enough about how nice it is to have specific bolt kits for your project. Mustangs Etc had a water pump bolt kit in stock, which came in handy when we discovered a couple rusty bolts while removing hardware from the 289.

Clearance was quite tight between the Edelbrock water pump and the balancer, which required a tiny bit of clearancing of the pump’s backing plate.

Another thing we love about the Summit Racing balancer is the deep engraved timing marks that make reading the numbers easy. Some dabs of metal marker at the 10 degree points will make it even easier to read when dialing in the timing while the engine is running.

The oil pressure sending unit and log were pulled from the 289, cleaned up, and bolted into the 408 with zero modification, though we did give the threads fresh teflon tape.

Since we have an aluminum intake now, we went with an aluminum thermostat housing too. The Milodon thermostat is a 180 degree. Note the little dab of RTV on the housing; two 180 degrees apart each side will hold the thermostat in place as it is fitted to the intake.

Our plan is to reuse all of the accessory brackets from the 289, but to do so with the wider heads and taller deck of the 351W requires this offset bracket. Summit carries these under Scott Drake’s products.

Our new 1-wire Summit Racing 140 amp alternator bolts up without issue, but the post hits the head. To fix this will require re-clocking the housing.

To do so, we have to pull the retaining nut and fan off so the housing can slide forward. An impact wrench will be needed for the nut, but the fan is just a snug fit.

Not all alternators are clockable, but with four equally spaced bolts holding the housing together, the Summit Racing one is.

Only move the two halves of the housing far enough to be able to rotate them; do not pull the alternator all the way apart. Doing so will likely result in brushes falling out and having to take it to a specialist.

Now the re-clocked alternator fits perfectly with the original brackets from the 289.

Our 289 did have one upgrade already in the form of late model remote reservoir style power steering pump from Unisteer. These are great, cooling running pumps that have less drag on the engine than the original style. Summit Racing has several versions of these at very affordable prices including ones, with attached reservoirs.

For the distributor, we went with a drop-in vacuum advance model from MSD Performance. Some roller cam conversions requires a bronze gear, if they use a billet steel core. Our cam is cast, so we will stick with the cast gear included on the distributor.

MSD includes heavy gear break-in oil that should be liberally applied to the gear (you can the green stuff sticking out a bit.) The white lithium grease is just to ease sliding the o-ring into place.

MSD always ships these distributors with very conservative heavy advance springs, which may work fine for stock engines, but are very poorly suited for performance ones.

To aid in tuning, MSD does also include an assortment of spring and bushings so you can dial in the curve needed with the aid of a chart. The advance we want uses one silver and one blue spring paired with the blue bushing.

Fortunately the distributor was shipped with the bushing we wanted, so simply popping the springs off and replacing them with the lighter ones was all the was needed.

For the last touch, we bolted on the freshly blasted and painted crank and water pump pulleys from the 289. At this point we’re pretty much ready to prep the engine bay and drop our 408 into the Mustang and finish bolting on the last bits. We’ll save that for next update!