351 Windsor Swap

Ok, so a simple tower notch, stock mounts possibly with 3/8" spacers, and the headers ought to go in with no further mods to the car and minimal pounding of the tubes. Can I possibly be that lucky? I guess we'll see...

 

Heads are drilled for 1/2" bolts. It was slow going, but really not too bad. It was easy to keep the bit straight, because it would bind if I didn't. Like I said before, I believe it would've been impossible to drill the holes wrong, off center, etc. with the tools I have. I just used a $10 Black and Decker bit from Wal-Mart. I put it in my air drill at first, ran it slowly, dipping it in 10w40 every 30 seconds or so. After the first couple of holes I could tell by sound and feel when it needed oil. The bit stayed sharp. It's still sharp, I could do another set of heads with it right now! When it got a little too late in the evening to be using air tools, I finished the last three with an 18v cordless drill, which also had no problem doing the job.

Now, what does suck is all these metal shavings everywhere. I have a lot of cleaning to do. Compressed air got rid of most of them. That freaked the dog out hardcore for some reason...

 

Started cleaning up the heads. I'm amazed at how much carbon had accumulated in the chambers. These had less than 30k miles on them. I'd been periodically spot-checking spark plugs whenever I change the oil. I hadn't seen this kind of crud. The plugs looked beautiful a few months ago, so I believe this is pretty recent. Probably a result of burning oil?

I don't know, doesn't matter now...





I am having a hard time getting that "shadow" of the gasket off. Any suggestions? I don't want to use anything harsh enough to make the surface uneven. This is really more of a stain than leftover gasket material.

 

Brake cleaner and a red scotch brite pad is what I usually use.

 

I usually polish off the gasket shadow with that black rust removing disk i mentioned earlier. Won't cut into the metal and leaves a nice polished finish. And of course hit it with brake cleaner before installing them.

 

What you see in the pic is the result of a copper wire wheel on a drill and some Easy Off. Guess I'll pick up one of those discs later and see how that performs... I'm just wondering at what point "being thorough" becomes "wasting time."

 

If there is no gasket residue left and its just a shadow its wasting time. jmho

 

I use a metal bar and 80 grit to brighten the surface of the head and engine. I use solvent as a lubricant. When both surfaces are bright you have no problems with gaskets sealing.

 

I put a shine on the combustion chambers and valves last night, for whatever that's worth. Now I just need to hit the heads with brake cleaner and compressed air to make sure all that grit from the drilling and wire brushing is out of there and they'll be ready. Started to clean up the deck surface in preparation for bolting on the heads. That was actually going a lot more easily until the battery gave out on my drill. It was too late at night to switch to air tools so I considered that a sign that it was time for bed.

Currently, my garage looks like this:



...That's actually right where She Who Must Be Obeyed normally parks. She's being disturbingly cooperative about this, so I'm kinda afraid.

 

She's up to something. And the longer she puts up with it, the more expensive its going to be.

Looks like you are getting close. I'll be doing about the same thing this weekend. Going to help my brother swap on some Trick Flow heads and finish putting the 302 roller in his falcon.

 

Affirmative. Staying vigilant.

Cool! Good luck with it, hope it goes well.

 

Went ahead and shined up the piston tops. Probably no point, but it makes me happy to know they at least went into the car clean... Heads are bolted on. But what a time to notice my damn torque wrench only goes up to ~85 lb/ft.

So I'll finish torquing down the heads when I borrow another tool, and after that I can paint them. Don't want to do that until I'm through messing with the bolts.

Rocker geometry looks perfect. They feel snug but not tight when the valves are closed, so the pushrods I've got should be good to go...

Now there's just the timing cover, balancer, water pump, flexplate, oil pump, oil pan, intake, fuel line...

 

what brands of gas and oil are you using? alot of deposits are caused by the additives in fuel or cheap fuels. im always interested in what was used in a motor and what condition the motor is in when taken apart.

 

It's got to be the oil. I almost always run BP or Chevron, and always 93 octane. My car has never seen Wal-Mart or Kroger gas. As for the oil... When it started burning and leaking I started using Lucas. I always ran 10w30 Castrol in the winter, 10w40 in the summer, but when the problems started I began experimenting to see if I could slow it down. I ran 20w50 Valvoline, 15w40 Rotella, and finally I just started topping it off with whatever they had at the gas station for the past few months. Same weight, 10w40, but various brands.

I need to decide what I'm gonna run in this one and stick with it...

 

Pics!






Those are Comp Magnum 1.7 roller-tipped rockers. There's a good reason I'm using them instead of the SVO full rollers, and that should become apparent later...