Well heres the story. I bought this 80s roller block from a machine shop just a few months ago. He said it had been hot tanked and magniflexed. He did all the needed machine work to it so it was ready for me to assemble. I got a lot of it assembled and decided to paint it. As i started painting I notice a small crack. The pictures below show the crack. Where it seems to end in the picture is where it actially ends. The question is would this be a big concern? If so what might be the potential problems? In the picture it is hard to tell where on the block this is. Well it is on the driver's side. The crack is on the bolt hole threads facing the outside of the motor. The crack does not lead into any ports.
cracked Wouldn't use the block. It won't hold a tight bolt. And that looks like the water inlet top hole for the timing cover. 15 PSI and you'll be sprayin water. Also won't put much trust in a machine shop that missed that crack. Gee did they miss any others? Would be my question.
Sure it isn't a line cast into the block when it was made? Don't know...just shooting for another option.
if that is a crack, how the hell do you miss that? I spent 4 years in a machine shop, and I had to polish out a lot of tool marks, that crack should have been picked up by the first person to handle that block, but it should be repairable
Yeah .. gotta question some of these shops. I had a set of 289 head built for my car. Bolted them on and when I went to put the intake on I found an intake bolt broken off in one of the heads. Luckily it came out gracefully with an EZ-OUT ...
if it's a machine shop that you do business with, i'd think they would fix it for you. give them a call and see what they say.
get out the torch, heat it up for a while, then add some brazing rod. It'll fix it where it'll hold a bolt just fine. Just don't quench it in water, and I like to use the torch to SLOWLY cool it over a period of 15-20 minutes. We welded a 351w block this way at the pan rail, and so far it looks good. Also welded dad's 9N shifter rail that way, and it's still holding just fine. If you're REALLY concerned about it, put a stud in it & seal the stud threads up. That being said, machine shops miss that kind of stuff once in a while. They're human and when you've got 20 people wanting their stuff by the weekend and you can only get 5 of 'em done, this sort of thing happens. It's called human error, we're all guilty of it. Now, if he had bored one hole off-center and into a water jacket, then installed a sleeve to cover his mistake, that'd be different (been there...done that). It's just a water pump bolt hole...heck I've run with only one bolt per side, and they hold just fine, even on my ol' 460 that consistently ran 240-260 in traffic (broken water pump impeller...last thing that I thought of) for years. Don't throw away an otherwise good block just for that. Heck, if you decide to chunk it, let me know!!
