oil it down and keep it dry (thick plastic bag) and it will be fine for a while... on a long block, i spray the cylinders and turn the motor ever so often...
alright, Greg at Total Performance got it done real fast. Looked really clean. It's a complete short block!! I'm pretty excited. After speaking to Greg he said I should go with some fancy shmancy head gaskets that are like $80 each, don't remember the name. He also told me to get the heads serviced. According to him he doesn't think the AFR's are that well built. Probably another $300 for servicing the heads . . . we'll see.
picking up where I left off . . . unwrapped the short block: beautiful dished pistons: my AFR heads: cleaned the surface cleaned the block surface and installed the gasket and placed the heads on to installed the heads we used ARP bolts, were told to put permatex on the threads and ARP assembly lube under the head of the bolt and the washers while trying to install the cam cover plate i stripped the crappy bolts that came with it. we soaked the roller lifters in oil here is the timing chain installed, still have to degree the cam here is the spider & dog bone installed
Nice work I've heard nothing but good things about total performance! did you get a port job done on the AFR's?
well they already flow great out of the box my TFS heads are barely going to see these numbers with a full port job!
more progress made, we pulled the engine out of hibernation: we installed the harmonic balancer ($27 for a HB bolt) so we could put on the degree wheel. bryant made a pointer that we installed onto the heads and the wire was bent so we can read off the numbers and mark them. we installed 2 rocker arms on the intake and exhaust valves of cylinder #1 so we can get TDC. We brought the #1 piston to what we estimated to be TDC, which we figured out by using a micrometer. We turned the engine over so as both valves were fully closed. It was a little tougher to do since we had hydraulic roller lifters. But bryant bottomed them out which worked well. So with the piston #1 at TDC we turned the crank a little counterclockwise to be able to screw in a piston stop into the #1 sparkplug hole. You have to turn it counter a little otherwise the piston being at TDC won't leave any room for the piston stop. A piston stop is basically a longer sparkplug which physically contacts the piston so you know when the piston comes up on the stroke. Here is the one bryant made, it worked better than the actual piston stop that he had in the shop somewhere. Now we turn the engine over clockwise until the piston hits the stop, we marked it. Then did it again counterclockwise, marked it and this what we got. if the estimated TDC location was correct then you will have equal degree marks on each side of the 0 degree. Bryant got it right on so we had to make no adjustments at all. now we were going to figure out the lobe centerline. the cam card had that information (107 degrees). we installed the micrometer again. we rotated the engine to get maximum lift. We then zero'd the dial, and turned the crank to get 0.05" before max lift and we marked that. Then we continued to turn until 0.05" after max lift and recorded that as well. We added those together and divided by 2 which gave us 108 and we were aiming for 107 so that's pretty close. We are all done with checking the cam, we could have went further and checked to make sure that the valves were closing and opening at the right time as indicated by the cam card but we didn't think that was necessary. time to install the rockers. we installed the rocker after the push rod was placed in. then hand turned the nut just until it grabbed the push rod and then turned the nut another 3/4 turn. After that we tightened the allen screw inside the nut. We put a little yellow paint on the tip of the valve stems to see whether the roller rip of the rocker was in the right location. after removing the rockers we ended up with this. The top of the screen is where the intake goes and the bottom is where the sparkplug goes. I showed that to our machinist and he said it was perfect. So the rod length was ideal. We finished the rest of the rockers up. Finally, we installed the timing cover. We had to run out and get some bolts. We used the gasket provided and still used a little RTV. I got to use the sandblaster to clean the valve cover. LOVE that machine.
went to the junkyard with bryant and we pulled an alternator bracket for all the front end stuff. he has a nice edelbrock waterpump I'm gonna buy off him and so we are pretty close to being done. Next time we'll sandblast the bracket, tap a hole for the oil dipstick and install a blueprinted oilpump. I still have to get that but we have a good local source at Total Performance. Still need a distributor but there is one that we can make work which will save some money.
here are the cylinder heads I got off bryant, they look like they are a perfect fit, we gotta find baffles for them, they are missing those.
331 Build Your progress on the 331 seems to be gg vry well. I love those pix's you attach - You do a great job of it. Anyway, it's unlikely I'll ever build an engine but appreciate those who do. As a long time hobbist in RC Aircraft I can appreciate the time, attention to detail and care it takes to get it right. Gud luck w/ the project and following ur progress.
Love this build. You will love those heads even more. I have a set on mine. Are you going to dyno the engine before installing it?
man your set up is close to what i'm about to build,whats your comp and what supercharger you gonna use?
I'll ask bryant and see if we can dyno it before installing it, should be doable. The compression is 8.7:1 With Erick's help looks like I'm gonna go with a vortech supercharger. There are several models to choose from so I'll see if I'm getting a new one or hopefully I can find a used one. The Vortech V1 headunit is a really good one and can go a little over 10lbs of boost which on a low compression engine I should be able to get up to. The V3 is their newer headunit and would run me around $2800 new since there isn't too many used ones out there.
