Reply to "Boring 351C"

4V,

Old post, new question, good answers thru-out...!

First, the idea of talking about a strong block and a 351C in the same sentence is sorta futile. This was a "thinwall casting" from day1 and never really meant to be a dragstrip queen! Albeit the Boss 351C was very strong on the strip!

Drag racers I have spoken with said that at the strip, a 2bolt main block was just as good as a 4 bolt, because you never really were at a speed or RPM more than a couple of seconds AND if you scattered something, you could pick up a 2V block out of another station wagon in the junkyard!!

Well, not so much any more!!!

There are other tricks to strengthen blocks.....half-filling the water passages with "block fill" but you still need some water for cooling the heads etc....

Adding a block girdle on the main caps can help prevent twisting the block....

Sleeves might possibly be furnace brazed in place...but that introduces other issues potentially....unplanned for shifts....more machining!

BUTTTTTTT, you are talking about EXTREME racing....not bench racing or drag racing in your daily driver.

If you are a racer, likely you've moved on to modern castings.......

If you are a preservationist, then sleeving a block will not hurt anything, providing you are not doing 8 cylinders! One or two, perhaps even three shouldn't be an issue in a car meant to hit the backroads. Done properly, a sleeve should never move and could provide more strength combined with the original casting....newer metal in the sleeve....

Honing to a next size with custom pistons rather than immediately jumping to +.030 still stands as a wise thing to do. +.010 and +.020 pistons are still available, and guys like Tim Meyer would probably get you anything that you could get rings for! But it will cost you.

Another thing you numbers correct guys forget, is that there are casting number and date codes on these blocks! Most people are oblivious, but if you showed up with a pushbutton car with a D2AE-CA casting and a 3A25 date code, I'd tell you that your numbers correct expert should be strung up! Not a bad block to have in the car......just not "numbers correct"! (So what else has been faked......?)

Cheers!
Steve