351 Windsor Swap

It's called a pilot reamer - not a drill!
Find a local machine tool retailer and tell him you need a .530" reamer with a 7/16" pilot. Get some cutting oil while you are there. Use it with a SLOW 1/2 inch drill motor (200 rpm).

 

Interesting tool, thanks for the tip. I don't suppose .467" would be quite enough, would it?

 

Do any of the head bolts go through water jackets on these engines? Should I put any kind of sealer on them?

 

The lower corner bolts go into water jackets. But I have never used sealer on the bolts and never had a problem.

 

So, do nothing to the bolts other than clean them up, maybe dab a little oil on the threads and torque to spec? Does "spec" change with the overbore, gasket material or thickness? Any recommended surface prep for the mating surfaces of the heads and block other than being utterly clean and dry?

 

When I clean up heads and blocks I use those black disc things they sell at the parts stores for paint and runt removal. Works great for removing old gasket material and dosnt score the metal.



If you are using stock bolts then I'd use the stock torque specs. ARP has their own torque specs that I have seen are different if using their bolts. It wouldnt hurt to put some liquid teflon thread sealer on the corner bolts just in case.

 

Cool. The heads came off the 351 very cleanly, almost no gasket material was stuck to the block. We'll see how that goes with the 302...

I'm about ready to tear into it. The plan is to pull everything off the Maverick and assemble the new engine before I go much further, so it's ready for me when I'm ready for it. If there are any surprises I want to encounter them now instead of later.

Only thing holding me up now is an upcoming visit from the in-laws for a few days. I don't want to put the Maverick under the knife until they're gone. Need to be able to move it around, or if for some reason I find myself needing to leave the country, run from the police, etc. I should probably have something relatively fast ready to go...

 

The heads may have come off clean but i'd still polish them up real quick. the FelPro head gaskets i use always leave behind a blue imprint of the gasket. I polish that off with the pad i mentioned. Actually when i got a long block apart i use that stripping disc on all gasket surfaces to clean them up real quick before paint. Makes quick work and much more fun than scrapeing with a razor blade. Make sure you blow everything out with compressed air when done.

 

Ok, will do. Should I bother cleaning the soot off the piston tops when I do this, or is that just overkill?

 

I always do. Just saw my dad doing this exact thing on a 390 for my sisters truck. Use a cup shaped wire wheel for the pistons though. The Rust removal disc is too big.

 

So, new deck height means new distributor. Time to retire the old one... (which still works great.)

This is for the HEI haters...



...Accel Street Billet distributor! It may or may not end up dressed the same as you see it now though.

 

I like the new coil location. Should help make a big spark.

 

Oh yeah!

Hey BTW, speaking of that... It's an oil-filled coil. Does it have to be mounted upright, or can it be sideways? I've seen Ford do it both ways on the OE coils.

 

More pics!



This took some work, but not too bad. I used some stripper, but what really worked great was wiping it down with plain old brake cleaner.




All done!




...And I don't know whether my choice in paint will stand up to the heat and keep the rust off, but I know theirs won't, so nothing to lose there. Anyway for now they look nice:

 

You can mount coils vertically or horizontally...If you mount it horizontally, mount it with the wire terminals horizontal not skewed up or down. The windings attached to the terminals must be submerged in the contained oil to keep em cool.