Hello im new to this fourm, so thank you in advance for any information. A few years back i bought a 1955 customline with a 272 3 speed. The motor is original to the car and only has 23,000 original miles on it. But it never seemed to run correctly. Enough to move under its own power but not all cylinders. Car sat for 6 years before i got it. Being young and dumb i believe it was my fault from the begining. But i believe it has a burnt valve. Atleast thats what many people say it seems like. I also was recently just givin a 292 that is suppossodly another low miles motor. Now my question is, would the heads from the 292 if in good shape go right onto the 272? Or if the motor is good would it be best to motor swap and hold on to the 272? And if i did that would my 3 speed bell housing still work on the 292 or is there just a mess of parts i would need to aquire to make it work? Any info or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

The 292 heads will bolt on to the 272 block but there may be issues due to combustion chamber differences. The complete 292 will swap to your car; the blocks are the same casting, and your trans will bolt to your bell housing. If yuor 272 only has a burnt valve that's easy to fix at a machine shop.

what part of the country was it stored. hear on the west coast, most likely stuck valves and bent ,or out of place push rods.easey job to remove heads and clean up the stuck valves etc. re the 292  basically the same engine ,just larger bore.  57,59 bigger  valves beter distributor.but all parts  inter changeable. good luck

For the most part, Y-block parts interchange between all of the variants.  272 to 292 will be no problem at all.  One thing to remember, however, is in the 62 years since this car was new, anything could have been changed.  This means that the first step is to identify what you have so you can make informed decisions about replacement parts.

This is a good place to start http://www.ford-y-block.com/technical.htm 


Lawrenceville, GA

Thank you both and the car is an east coast car. It had the problem with the valves sticking very bad and bending push rods. My dad and i ended up getting them all unstuck and moving correctly and stop bending rods. It was a thought about possibly have bending the valve slightly due to being stuck open. We just never pulled it apart. Would it be worth putting the 292 in compared to the 272 on power? Or is ot not much of a gain.

And yes i understand sir. Im the third owner of the car the second was a neighbor of mine that bought the car all original. He got it back in 2002 i believe and i was about 6 at the time. I have all the paper work from the original owner and the second of ecerything that he had done. The mechanic that did all the work was also a good friend of my dads. Thank you for the information it all helps!

Welcome to the site.
 
I’ll suggest first checking the valve lash to insure you don’t have a valve that’s simply set too tight.  Then perform a cranking compression test to verify what the cylinders are actually doing.  You’ll need to check all eight and not a random few.  When performing the cranking compression test, make sure that the throttle is in the wide open position.  If the numbers are abnormally low across the board, then add oil to the cylinders and recheck.  The numbers from the lowest to the highest should not vary any more than 10%.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)