Rebuilding my engine!

[DarkoNova]

So a few weeks ago I decided I would get a new oil pan gasket and rear main seal for my 350 just to stop the oil leaks. Then I got an awesome deal on some Edelbrock Performer RPM heads and thought "since I'm already tearing the motor apart, why not go all the way?"

So now I'm going to pull the engine to replace the rings (not only does it leak oil, it burns oil, too!) and the main bearings (try to boost the oil pressure).



I'm starting this a little early since I only have the heads right now and I haven't even pulled the engine, but I just have some questions and I'm hoping to get some help.

The heads have this weird looking spring inside the valve springs. Not sure if it's a dual spring setup or if it's a damper spring or what. It's like thick and flat compared to the outer spring. I can get pics if needed, just hoping someone will know what I'm talking about.

Also, I wanted to use this opportunity to go to roller rockers, but I don't feel like paying $250+ for a set. What do you guys think of these:

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/CCA-17002-16/

I'm basically going to use this thread for random questions for the next couple weeks until I can find someone who will let me borrow an engine hoist and get the engine torn apart lol. Then it will really become a rebuild thread.

[WS6]

You'll be fine using a stamped rocker with roller tips if you don't want to spend the money on a full roller. You can spend money in better places than with full roller rockers. There's nothing wrong with them so if you want them go for it. I'd just make sure you don't cut a corner elsewhere to get these rockers.

The part inside your springs are not springs like you'd fine in a dual valve spring. I honestly don't know the official name for them. I believe they prevent coil bind.

Good luck with the build. It was smart to start this thread early. Take your time on the engine and do it right but don't get caught up in all the hype as you build and blow your budget. You don't need the fanciest parts to build a great and durable motor.

[DarkoNova]

Yeah, I know I don't need the full roller rockers, but I figure for roughly $200, why not?

Anyhoo, I finally managed to get an engine hoist yesterday and got the engine pulled. I started tearing it apart today and found some pieces under the valve cover. Looks like one of the inner springs (the coil bind things, whatever they're called) somehow exploded. I've only found two big pieces, and none of the springs look damaged so far (but it was kinda dark outside, so maybe tomorrow I can get a better look). One of the pushrods was also damaged on the passenger side head. The tip under the rocker arm somehow like...folded in on itself? There was no oil hole at the top. I'll get a pic tomorrow, but I'm actually glad I decided to pull this thing. The engine wasn't making any noises or running rough, which is pretty miraculous.

All the cylinders actually still have crosshatching on them, too. I want to say I put about 60,000 miles on the engine since I bought it from my friend, so I thought that was pretty amazing, lol.

Anyway, question time. I bought some used Edelbrock Performer RPM heads on ebay. The guy said he had them milled for higher compression. He doesn't remember how much, unfortunately, so I'm going to have to buy a CC kit and figure out the size of the chambers. But my question is, since the heads have been milled, will I have to do anything to my intake manifold or will it still bolt on ok?

[theRG]

The 351w in my '69 Mach 1 came with those rockers and i really liked them, low maintenance, didn't bind, or hit the stock height valve covers.

Those valve springs are singles with a dampner. If your going with a new cam, just get the matching springs or have a machine shop test the springs on the Edelbrock heads to see if they are suitable for your application and also for the price a machine shop cc'ing your chambers will save you some time and money. Unless they angle milled the heads big time the intake shouldn't have any problems bolting up.

[DarkoNova]

Well I was trying to avoid having to go to a machine shop since I don't have a car right now and I have to bum rides off of people. Here's a pic of the heads from the ebay listing showing the combustion chambers.



I've never milled heads before so I don't know if that's "extreme" or if that's typical?

Summit sells a few kits for CC-ing heads for around $100 or less, so I was just going to get one of those and do it myself. If I can find a local shop that doesn't charge too much I might just take the heads down and get em checked out.

Anyway, I got the engine torn down to basically just a long block and I'm wondering if my way of measuring is going to be accurate enough. I have a 6" inside/outside caliper, and I was basically just going to pull the crank and pistons out and then measure the outside diameter of the pistons and the inside diameter of the cylinders and compare the two. Same thing for the crank journals. I know in school we used these little telescopic "T" shaped tools and we measured the cylinders more towards the center/bottom.

Will the calipers be accurate enough? I figure it's more accurate for the crank journals than just using plastigauge, but I want to be sure.

[Jims78elky]

I think it would be very smart to take the heads to your local shop to have them checked out, just to be sure,maybe have them shaved just a little to be sure there clean and no issues, Iam sure there OK but for a $100 bucks or so on your new build its just good sense, also have you seen these guys? great prices on parts that I have got from them and good shipping,check out the price for these roller rockers in the $200.00 price range, keep up the great work!

https://shop.enginekits.com/osb/itemdetails.cfm?ID=1000


-Jim

[WS6]

calipers will not be enough to properly measure the bore of a cylinder. You could only use calipers to give you a quick answer to whether an engine has been bored out or not.

Let the machine shop do the CCing of the heads. They should be able to tell you from that how much the heads have been milled. If the heads have truly been milled for compression, then the intake will need work as well most likely. However, people sometimes refer to decking the heads as milling. Decking is done to ensure the heads are flat so they seal correctly. While the process is very similar to milling a head, milling is done to raise compression not ensure the heads are flat or true. CCing the heads will answer all these questions accurately.

[61ragtop]

Well I was trying to avoid having to go to a machine shop since I don't have a car right now and I have to bum rides off of people. Here's a pic of the heads from the ebay listing showing the combustion chambers.



I've never milled heads before so I don't know if that's "extreme" or if that's typical?

Summit sells a few kits for CC-ing heads for around $100 or less, so I was just going to get one of those and do it myself. If I can find a local shop that doesn't charge too much I might just take the heads down and get em checked out.

Anyway, I got the engine torn down to basically just a long block and I'm wondering if my way of measuring is going to be accurate enough. I have a 6" inside/outside caliper, and I was basically just going to pull the crank and pistons out and then measure the outside diameter of the pistons and the inside diameter of the cylinders and compare the two. Same thing for the crank journals. I know in school we used these little telescopic "T" shaped tools and we measured the cylinders more towards the center/bottom.

Will the calipers be accurate enough? I figure it's more accurate for the crank journals than just using plastigauge, but I want to be sure.

Maybe it is not as it seems but to me it looks as if the deck surface in that pic could be porous....... all those little black spots look like they could be pin holes.

Again it could just be the pic and it could be gasket left behind from the tear down but it caught my eye cause I just went through having porous heads on my 383ci sbc and it took for ever to track down where my internal coolant leak was till I had the heads pressure tested.

[DarkoNova]

Well, due to problems with my job, I had to hold off on doing any work to the engine. I finally dropped the heads off at a shop a couple weeks ago and I'm going to pick them up tomorrow. I guess Trey was right, they weren't actually milled. Most likely just decked. The shop said the chambers were still 64cc. I'm actually kinda bummed, I was hoping for an easy way to bump the compression, lol.

So, back to getting this thing rebuilt!

Is it possible to figure out my compression ratio without pulling a piston and measuring piston height/rod length? Like can I just get the engine to TDC and measure how far down the piston is?

[CanyonKiller]

Do your calipers have the depth rod on the bottom of it? If so you can put the engine on tdc and use that to get your ballpark compression.

[DarkoNova]

Yup, that's exactly what I was planning on doing.

[DarkoNova]

Alright, so I finally decided to pull the engine out of the garage and try to measure how far down the hole the piston sits. It was kinda hard to do accurately since there was so much baked on carbon (any ideas on how to get rid of that?), but I got the #1 cylinder to TDC and used a section that had no carbon on it to measure. I got a different measurement every time, ranging from .014 to .020. The bore is 4.030 and I'm assuming it's a standard 3.48 stroke.

Heads have 64cc chambers. So is it possible to figure out what compression ratio I have or do I need to pull a piston?

[Pro Stock]

You were probably getting different deck heigths because the piston was rocked in the bore, if you checked it several times and the measurements stayed consistant you should add .014 to .020 and divide by two, .014+.020=.034 divided by two=.017. you should really wait until the short is torn down and cleaned up before you start measuring things. You can clean the tops of the pistons by glass beading (tops only) Scotch Brite or wire brush. If the block has carbon at the top of the bore clean that up before measuring, calipers will be close enough to tell you if it's a standard bore or not.

Alright, so I finally decided to pull the engine out of the garage and try to measure how far down the hole the piston sits. It was kinda hard to do accurately since there was so much baked on carbon (any ideas on how to get rid of that?), but I got the #1 cylinder to TDC and used a section that had no carbon on it to measure. I got a different measurement every time, ranging from .014 to .020. The bore is 4.030 and I'm assuming it's a standard 3.48 stroke.

Heads have 64cc chambers. So is it possible to figure out what compression ratio I have or do I need to pull a piston?

[DarkoNova]

I thought about using a wire wheel on an angle grinder to clean it off but I was afraid it would be too abrasive and scratch up the piston. The pistons are flat tops with 4 valve reliefs by the way.

If the wire wheel won't scratch the pistons, I can go ahead and try to clean off the carbon.

[Chevelle598bb]

If you are going to use a wire wheel make sure it is made of brass. A steel wire brush will tear up the pistons.

[Pro Stock]

If you are going to use a wire wheel make sure it is made of brass. A steel wire brush will tear up the pistons.

Brass is good but steel will work as long as you keep the speed down, use a brush that you can drive with a drill motor and stay off of the ring lands and skirts, they also make Scotch Brite wheels that can be mounted on a bench grinder that work great.

[DarkoNova]

Would one of those wire brushes that look like toothbrushes be better? I can go pick one of those up tomorrow if it'd be better. All I have is steel wire wheels. Do they make brass toothbrush style brushes?

[MonzaRacer]

With flat top 4 eyebrow pistons and 64 cc heads, 4 cc for std flat top 4 eyebrow pistons, average or 0.015 piston down in cyl at tdc, and palin 0.039 thickness Felpro gasket you get 10.06 compression, fin on street with aluminum heads and good cooling system.
Bored 030 ups compression to 10.17, Zero deck the block would give you 10.42/std 10.55/030.
If your leery of fuel quality and all even with aluminum heads use later model "metric" dished and beveled heads to drop compression.
But honestly with the aluminum heads your good with higher compression as long as you run moderate cam over super low duration cams which build too much cylinder pressures.
If you have a local Ford dealer call and price a spray can of Motorcraft Spray Carburretor tune-up cleaner part number PM-2, it softens up and makes carb darn near wipe off, great for cleaning throttle bodies and carbs too. soakem down let sit few minutes and scrub with tooth brush. As for small stainless toothbrush wire brushes they wont hurt if you are careful.

[DarkoNova]

Thanks Lee. I just spent a few hours cleaning all the cylinders and they look awesome now. I remeasured and got .015 and .019 every time. I also googled the part number stamped into the cylinders but couldn't really find any info, other than they look like cheap pistons for rebuilding. This isn't my pic but I found it while googling and it's exactly what mine look like:



The part number on the pistons is P1534.

I already have Edelbrock heads with 64cc chambers so I'm not worried about a high compression ratio. I have a TKO-600, 4.10s, and the rear tires are 245/40/18's. I'm not really worried about low end torque because of the gears, and I definitely want that muscle car sound, so what would be a good cam to run? I dyno'd it a few years back and it made 265hp and 330ft lbs to the wheels, so I'd like to get a good 100hp more if that's possible. I have a performer manifold, but I was either going to get a performer rpm or a victor jr.

[Pro Stock]

I have made hundreds of pulls testing Small Block intakes and this one always seemed to be the best overall:
[Chevrolet 262-400 Small-Block V8
RPM AIR-GAP (1500-6500 rpm)
The Original... Our Proven, Race-Winning Air-Gap Design in a Dual-Plane Manifold
Designed for 1955-86 262-400 c.i.d. Chevrolet V8s, the award-winning RPM Air-Gap incorporates the same race-winning technology that's used on our Victor Series competition intakes. The air-gap design features an open air space that separates the runners from the hot engine oil resulting in a cooler, denser charge for more power. Includes rear water outlets, two distributor clamp locations and nitrous bosses. Accepts all 1976 and later alternator and A/C brackets for the street. The heater outlet boss is angled for proper fit over the valve cover. The temp sensor boss clears all waternecks. For square-bore carburetors only. No provision for exhaust-heated chokes and no exhaust crossover. Not for 1987 and later cast iron heads and will not fit under stock Corvette hood. Available with standard finish, polished or EnduraShine for a look you've got to see to believe, see optional finishes.


If you have the room it usually worked best with a 1/2" four hole spacer.

Dale




QUOTE=DarkoNova;872151]Thanks Lee. I just spent a few hours cleaning all the cylinders and they look awesome now. I remeasured and got .015 and .019 every time. I also googled the part number stamped into the cylinders but couldn't really find any info, other than they look like cheap pistons for rebuilding. This isn't my pic but I found it while googling and it's exactly what mine look like:



The part number on the pistons is P1534.

I already have Edelbrock heads with 64cc chambers so I'm not worried about a high compression ratio. I have a TKO-600, 4.10s, and the rear tires are 245/40/18's. I'm not really worried about low end torque because of the gears, and I definitely want that muscle car sound, so what would be a good cam to run? I dyno'd it a few years back and it made 265hp and 330ft lbs to the wheels, so I'd like to get a good 100hp more if that's possible. I have a performer manifold, but I was either going to get a performer rpm or a victor jr.[/QUOTE]