I have not been looking forward to starting this thread, but it had to happen eventually. Having posted recently about how reliable my car was, I had dropped a morsel too sweet for fate to pass by. And so she littered I-40 with my crank and rods in a scene that would have made Michael Bay proud to direct. Like a kamikaze Zero blasted out of the sky in a World War II epic, with great sound and fury my engine met a death fit for a Viking warrior to hold to his head high at the gates of Valhalla... In short, it was metal as f#$%. Those of you who would delight in my misfortune, feast upon the scrap I have thrown you from my table. Savor and enjoy it, post something insulting so you can feel clever. This is my gift to you. (...or you could, you know, not?) Anyway, what had happened was... Last year I bought this 351w for a little too cheap, and although if you followed my build you would think I went over the whole thing with toothpicks and a magnifying glass, you would be wrong when it came to the shortblock. I made a fool mistake and have now paid the price. I took the man's word that it was a good engine, never even popped off a main or rod cap, just meticulously cleaned it all up, bolted up my heads, put a cam in it, and drove. My reasoning was I had never been into a rotating assembly before, and I didn't want to risk messing it up... But it wasn't long before I was learning! Soon after it was all together, I got to install my first set of rod and main bearings, on my back! That taught me how easy it would have been to do it on an engine stand, and how stupid I was for not doing it. It also taught me that I really should have had the crank turned or bought another one, but no matter. It all went back together and the oil pressure was good, so onward I drove every day until about three weeks ago, when something suddenly let go and sent the whole thing to hell. We'll figure out why at some point later when pull the engine and post carnage pics. So far all I can tell you is it looks like the back of my oil pan took artillery fire from inside. I'm actually not as bothered by this as I might be. Ever since I rolled in those bearings and realized how tired that block and rotating assembly really were, I've been waiting for this. My first inclination when it happened was to sell my Ranchero and use the funds to build up a nice, fresh, zero-mile engine, but I'm thinking if I can keep the cost of this down below, say a grand I won't have to. I really like that Ranchero. So I went and got an engine at Pull-A-Part, crossing my fingers and hoping I might score something that didn't need expensive machine work. What I found was a '74 block with '94 exhaust manifolds in an '89 truck with EFI that said "5.0" on top. Well that ain't original. Little bit of blue peeking out from under the valve covers betrayed the Felpro Perma-Dry gaskets and I thought, "eh, there's a good change this engine's been gone through and maybe they didn't half-ass it." So I pulled it thinking I could always bring it back for another one if it turned out to be junk. It was encouraging when the transmission's input shaft fell to the ground as I lifted the engine. I thought that could be a clue as to why the truck was scrapped... As a tore it down I found some things out... One, all the bearings and the crank journals look great. Doesn't matter, it's getting new ones. Crank is turned .010" under, bores are .040" over. Bores look great, still some cross hatching. It has a double roller timing chain and some pretty decent pistons. H336P - hypereutectic flat tops with valve reliefs. Bearings had a date code from 5/01 so I'm dealing with a 10 year old engine at worst, and not a 38 year old engine, which is nice... So the plan is to get a set of rings, bearings, full gasket set, figure out the compression ratio and pick an appropriate cam. I have a couple of choices on heads. Leaning towards using my 58cc D2OE heads since I know they're in good shape and they make good power for what they are, but I need to make sure they don't put the compression too high with those pistons. While I'm pondering that and waiting for parts to come in, I'm soaking each piston overnight in carb cleaner. Wonderful stuff. And here's the block all cleaned up. I wire wheeled it to bare metal and then went ahead and painted it to prevent rust. I honed out the cylinder bores, wiped down the lifter valley with an oily rag and put assembly lube in the lifter bores. The block cleaned up pretty easily compared to last time. It's all ready to assemble once I get the parts together and decide exactly what I'm doing. I'll update this thread as I go. Anybody know, or know where to find, how many cc the valve reliefs in these pistons are? I'd think true flat tops might put me over 11:1 with 58cc heads, but those are big valve reliefs...
Looks great so far man, are there any part numbers on the bottom side of the pistons? You can usually look them up and find the dish specs,etc... But that's only if they came with numbers, my engine I tore apart recently didn't have any numbers, just had a set of generic replacement pistons. EDIT: I should have clicked on the pictures first to see the numbers lol Also what Ford Blue paint did you use? The only one I can find is too light.
The hole in the piston has a tendency to lower the compression, is that one from your old engine or the one you are working on installing
Autozone stocks two slightly different Rustoleum engine enamels in "Old Ford Blue." I can't tell the difference unless the two cans are next to each other, but this is the slightly darker one. I'll get you the UPC code when I get home if you want. As for the pistons... Found 'em: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SLP-H336CP40/ 12cc, which according to Summit's compression ratio calculator should put me right around 10:1 or just a hair over. Looks like these will do just fine with my heads.
Nice, but sad all at the same time...that 351 was nothing but trouble since you started with it. Looks like a good score. I'm always surprised by the pick-a-parts, those engine hoists are pretty cool. Around here they wouldn't let you do that on your own.
Yeah, I think this one will be good. Lesson learned. At least all the hard stuff is done. This should be a simple[ish] R&R with a lot less to figure out.
More important, what were you doing when it cratered? I have no problem with mine tossing a rod while doing a burnout, hard launch, 130 mph driving, etc. But if idling in driveway or just cruising, I will be upset.
Not really, I kinda knew what was happening once the party got started, just put my turn signal on and tried to see around the smoke. I was doing at least 80 down the interstate, so I guess there's some glory in that... I should have just stood on it during the few seconds I had between the loud knock and the actual destruction.
Not too bad...Sorta the reason I want to add that 150 shot of nitrous to mine. Some O'Reilly guy built my short block, and I hammer on it, and I KNOW it will give up the ghost sometime. When I hear it start to fail, I will hit the NAWWWWSSS and let er rip, and then brag about how I over-NOSed it.
"Not really, I kinda knew what was happening once the party got started, just put my turn signal on and tried to see around the smoke." Were you at Daytona this weekend? I saw some smoke there too. Rick
Got my bearings and gaskets ordered... Now I'm just agonizing over a cam choice. I feel like this is an opportunity to do something more interesting than my Comp 268H, but if I get too interesting I'm going to need to get the heads machined for screw-in studs. Guess I should look into pinning the studs or something.
With those flat tops and heads, the 268H is not the cam you're looking for, unless you like feeding it nothing but 93 octane premium. Go ahead and put something wilder in it, you'll need to bleed off some cylinder pressure at 10.5 to 1. You're basically building a 69 4 bbl Windsor motor here.
