Cleveland 2v heads

In my search for a good, inexpensive block, I found a short block advertised as free located about 50 miles from my house. Advertised as a 351w, I could see it was a roller block as the spider and dog bones were obvious. I asked if the owner knew why it was torn down and laying in a covered carport. The answer was "blown head gasket".....so I picked it up. Turned out to be a roller 351 with very little wear....I need to get it on the engine stand for a close inspection, but it looks like a hone job + bearings will fix it right up. The tentative plan is a 3.85 crank and the Clevland heads. I need to mock up a few scenarios, But I think I can build a 387 clevor with about $1,200 to $1,400 in parts. Finding an Edelbrock 7183 would simplify it, but Price Motorsports still makes adaptor plate kits to use Cleveland heads on a Windsor block with a 351w intake. I talked to Bill Price on the phone, so I know they have their stuff at the moment.

Ricky is a prophet and see's the future, lol. Eagle sells that 3.85 crank for around 350 bucks, and I need to mock up the motor and head as is to see what the clearance is, and would be with the piston riding .35/2 higher. With the massive 19cc dish, my compression calculator says 10:25 ish but the pistons will need to be notched. It is an idea at this point, and I need to do more research to convince myself to throw the cash at it.

 

Update....After discovering a 79 F250 at my local P&P with what appeared to be rebuilt heads(351M), I decided to pull them off and buy them to harvest the valves out of them. I read a few too many horror stories of Ford Cleveland valves coming apart as they are allegedly two pieces welded together. When it came time to remove the exhaust manifolds, I found that almost every bolt was seized; so I pulled the heads with the manifolds attached. I wheelbarrowed the whole mess up to checkout to discover that the price of heads nearly doubled, that they were charging extra for the rocker arms, and all told they wanted 400 for what I had. I asked the day before how much a block and heads would run, and was told 300. A bit perplexed, and not wanting the heads to begin with, I went back to the yard and pulled all the valves out, and went back up to checkout with two valve covers filled with all the valves, springs, rockers, stands, head bolts, intake bolts, and one used head gasket for a little mock-up. The other checker looked at it, and said, "two valve covers and a bunch of bolts?" I said "and rocker arms too." I dont think he knew what they were....and he just said...."35 bucks." I just kept my mouth shut cuz they never listen to what I say anyway, and paid the man.

So now I have better than stock valves (?) and all the hardware to bolt my ported heads to the block. I will upgrade the springs before final head assembly....but that is a little ways out. These images are looking down a junk 302 block with a 4.00" bore. The edge of the combustion chamber that can be seen in the first pic is removed in the second. I have access to a used 3.85 stroker crank for mock-up purposes, and the added stroke will push the piston up into the chamber that now has clearance for it. Preliminary guesswork, considering the 19cc dish in my pistons, will yield about 10.35:1.It is approaching final "discovery" stage to see what is possible, then depending on parts I can actually get, I will know where to go with it......I hope!

 

Most of the people that work there won't know an engine from a spark plug if you dropped it on their foot. Good score.

 

AAHHH......the old classic clevor. stock stroke crank,289 rods,351 c pistons milled .050. choose your camshaft. exhaust port tongues. youll need to either find intake manifold spacers[about 3/4 inch thick] or make a set to adapt a stock small block intake to the heads. this has been done for decades!

 

I have not updated this in a real long time. 4 months ago I bought a complete 98 explorer engine for the short block. I sold the heads and some other stuff, so I have very little into it. I decided to use it in the clevor build, and put the 351 on a 4 wheel dolly and stash it under my workbench. The 302 is in very nice condition. I got a boss "3v" 8.2 deck dual plane manifold from Summit, cast in China, and the ports are equal to the 2v Cleveland port and line up better than I hoped. It was only $320, also was the only one with 2v sized ports I could come up with.

I mocked up a 289 rod and piston into #1, put it at TDC and had .065 above the deck. The 302 pistons were at deck height, so the longer rod on them will put the piston top at the same spot. I placed a head with checker springs onto the block without a gasket, and measured how far the valves open before piston contact. Intake was .110 and exhaust was .290 . I plan to take .050 off the heads and use a .040 gasket, so as it stands now, without any valve reliefs, there will be .100 clearance at TDC without a camshaft. I need to do this exercise again with a camshaft involved, but I was anxious to see what kind of clearance there was.

All these gyrations with the open chamber heads will net a static compression ratio of about 10-10.25:1 depending on what I have to do for valve reliefs. That is with an 80cc chamber. I cc d it after all necessary chamber mods to enable piston intrusion. I would never recommend anyone try this foolishness at home......but I have to do it as a learning exercise and hopefully have some decent grunt when its done.

Camshaft will be a factory mustang GT roller. I want the mellow ramps, and the 115 LCA I think will be ideal for the canted valves and small effective chamber size. The lift will be relatively low, but the stock Cleveland rocker ratio is 1.72. I am hoping for nearly stock valve train survival up to 6000 ish RPM. I may revisit this and actually put some money out to get 6800-7000. I think this combo might breathe well enough to get there....maybe not, but if it can I want to have a plan to support it.

I also picked up a set of tubular automotive swap headers along the way.....so I may actually get this thing cobbled together. We shall see.

 

Yep sure did back in 1992 and Drag racer it and drove it for 10 years after doing it. It is actually still being raced even now by a new owner back East.
I'm doing another one now with everything I ;learned from the first one and much more stuff available. 460 fits using the V-8 or 4 cyl K-member. You can use a 6cyl one, but just have to modify the motor mounts some. I use used a new tubar AJE K-member/A-Arms and Coil overs which shaves 70 lbs off the front end. AJE and others make mounts for the Cleveland and other engines. No cutting is required even using the factory K-member. Weigh and increased accessibility is worth the cost of the Tubar stuff. Big time difference. It's a bolt in with only 4 bolts on each side holding it in. I went from the old suspension to the new one.

 

Ricky, did you put headers on that or just run manifolds? I cant remember if you put headers or just manifolds on your cougar. BTW, did you ever run that cougar (recent build) down the strip? I should bite the bullet and do a 460 in something someday, but will probably do a 351 cuz I take baby steps....

I got my 40 buck HO roller cam out of a 90 mark 7 yesterday. @.050 duration 210 & 211, .445 & .445 lift, 115.5 LSA. The valves use alot of degrees to go from .006 to close. about 60 degrees. I forgot how softly these close valves.

 

Crites headers. Haven't run it at the strip. I know it'll smoke them up from a stop light and bark them going into 2nd. I have run it up to 140MPH@6000rpms, with 3.50 gears. I have a a set of 2.75 gears if I really want to buzz it up there.

 

My other toy, 66 Stang, 331 stroker, C-4 8" 3.55 posi.

 

This is the joy of dragging one across the dirt to load it on the trailer. Have good tires if you can when you recover one. Fortunately the TQ boxes aren't rotted out.
I know it's not a Mav/Comet, but I've found this on them and others to. My 68 was just as bad and required a pass front floor pan and front TQ boxes. Garaged makes it so much nicer when you find them. Let alone the mice condos.

 

Below are a few pics of block prep and head prep. Front oil galley caps getting converted to plugs, sharp edges in the main saddles and lifter valley got radiused. Cylinder bore bottoms radiused for air to follow piston easier as it travels up the bore. Oil drainback passages got a little work done to them too. Head porting mostly consisted of turning the short side radius from a cliff to a turn. The port is much quieter that way, and flow does not drop off after it peaks @ .35 lift. They move more air at .25 lift than all the windsor heads I have messed with will move at their best. Once I hone the cylinders I can wash the block and put the crank back in. Then mock up final piston and rod choices to measure clearances. Pistons will be .o65 out of the bore and the heads will be milled .040-.050 in an attempt to get 10:1 out of the open chamber 2v heads, 302, flat top pistons. Even with all that crazyness, I most likely will NOT need valve reliefs....but final mock-up will be done on all cylinders with clay before I know for sure.

 

I picked up a set of old trw forged standard bore Cleveland pistons....used, but very nice shape. They will get put on 289 rods. Total piston height is now .085 out of the hole, and I will be able to manipulate a final compression ratio of anywhere between 9.5 and 10.75, by milling the heads. I will do a final mock up to determine it once I have a final piston/rod assembly. Heads are getting new guides before final valve job, and new steel valves with single groove keepers. Junk open chamber 2v heads are gonna rip in this thing.......I hope.

 

What's the final clearance going to be between the piston and the spark plug boss? Not a lot of quench area, but I still think this is a very cool experiment.

 

The first thing the piston will hit, if allowed too much travel into the chamber will be the spark plug strap. I think @ 10.5:1 I am about .070 from the spark plug boss, and .035 from the strap. I may back off to 10.25:1 which amounts to about .005 less milling on the head. I will pick up the pistons tomorrow and can see what I need to do to match the weight of the original piston/rod assembly after I weigh a piston. I will have to wait a bit to get the heads back, and that will be when final mock up, measurements, and CR ratio determination will happen. Then the heads will go to get the correct amount milled off.

The machine shop is owned by a guy in his 70s who still puts in 8 hour days. He wanted to know all about the project as he is a Ford guy and has done quite a bit of drag racing....he called it a "mini-boss" on the invoice, and told me of a racer back in the day who set a record with a max effort version of what I am doing. He was there for the tear down, and said he knew immediately what was up when he saw the pistons out of the bore by 1/4 inch, lol. I told him I have only raced on a dragstrip on 2 occasions for a lifetime total of 11 passes. He showed me around the shop, and brought me into the side warehouse where his personal parts stashes were. The guy has a 65 mustang and has all the parts to build a 4v boss and was just waiting for his car to get moved there. I spent an hour there, lol. The last shop I visited to discuss work tried to talk me out of it, and said "You really should just build a windsor." I discussed this build in other forums where they called it an "abortion." When the smarter than me guys pressed me as to why.....I finally realized the only reason for all of it is that I find it interesting.

So you are absolutely right. It is my experiment! When all is said and done, I will know if a shallow open chamber with a volume of about 63-67cc (this is an amount between the piston top and chamber top as the gasket volume is not part of the chamber volume) will evenly mix and churn mixture as well as a much deeper wedge chamber + quench area. I suspect it will burn as efficiently as a wedge and the amount of timing it tolerates will prove or disprove. A wedge chamber is 4" across at its widest, so why would a 4" circle (open chamber) of the same volume not burn at the same rate? In fact, I would imagine WITHOUT quench pads, the cylinder pressure should be closer to equal across the entire chamber instead of the quench squeeze just as the bang is getting lit. I hope anyway.[/QUOTE]

 

I love the Windsor motor. It's well-proven, works great, is fully scienced-out, and is reasonable on the pocketbook. That said, it's the "belly button motor" of the Ford world, as ubiquitous in old cars as the small block Chevy. I say this not as a criticism, because it works and belongs in any Ford. But different is interesting, and that's an equally good reason to choose an engine.