After pulling my heads for leaking head gaskets due to my own mechanical
undersight.... I decided to go with Aussie heads, the Street Boss
aftermarket intake, and a bit more camshaft.... I mean, it's almost all
apart anyway!!!
The ZF trans was already out to get a new front seal while I was pulling
parts.... and my clutch was oil soaked so in need of replacement.....
I could have replaced the cam in the car, but hey.... I was only a couple
of bolts.... AND A REMOTE OIL FILTER ADAPTER (aaargh!) away from pulling
the shortblock.... so I did.
Once on the stand, it was good that I did. I found some slight cylinder
scoring, but it will clean up with a little hone work. Re-polish the piston
skirt and it will be fine. Hey, it's a street motor.... not Nascar. Found
one siezed up #2 ring but it freed up easily with some solvent. Have a
couple of rings that have some surface rust on them from the latest round
of water pumping.... but these will clean up easily too. IF I was boring
it out (already at +.030" so that's not happening either!) then I would do
new rings.... but these are low mileage.... and it's a street motor.....
Crank is absolutely fine! It was ground under sized and Hard Chromed back
up, however the buttheads stopped at .002" undersize on the mains!!!!!!!!
The bearings all looked sorta OK with minimal buildup of the babbit
materials, but I decided to replace them anyway.... HOWEVER, finding .002
undersize mains turned out to be a small challenge. Finally found them in
Federal Mogul, but ended up paying about twice the price.... no discount
house here!!!! Why they didn't hard chrome back to a stock stinking size is
beyond me!!!!!
Dates on bearings indicate a 75ish time frame. So, engine had to have been
put together by J.B.R.E. (still can't find this place...) around this time.
Previous owner bought the car in about 1980, so the car was only driven
perhaps at most 7 years before it was parked.... prev owner put only about
2K miles on it before the speedo adaptor gave out... but he only had it two
years. Wear on bearings and other bits, looks low mileage... ie no ridge
in cylinders...
Rods appear to be an early Carillo of some sort. Stock Ford size bearings,
actually had C5FE (GT40) bearings in them!!! Capscrews-12pt. Pistons are
Venolia! Still need to measure the rod length to see if this was a long rod
build up.... as the pistons seem sorta short..... at least compared to 428
pistons......
Main caps were dowelled in place. Crank was balanced apparantly to zero, as
the flywheel has all of the Detroit "imbalance" taken out.... More parts
that don't fit anything else.... nor can I "easily" replace them out of my
Ford stash!
When I pulled the cam, I found a couple of surprises. Lobes all looked
great. Certainly a serviceable Erson TQ20 cam. Same exact cam I have in my
Cougar!!!! However, the #3 cam bearing turned out to have some sort of
erosion on it!!!! Appears as a black garpy spot on one side oriented
towards the top. Looks like babbit is eroded away.... very strange. Will
know more whenst I pulls them out tomorrow!!! Second surprise, was a small
piece of what appears to be bearing material. Like a piece that was punched
out of one of the oiling holes!!!! It fell out as I pulled the cam out and
I lost it for a while but located it a day or so later. Looks like it has
been riding on something that was turning (probably the cam...) and is
non-magnetic. What a bunch of yahoos this engine builder(s) were!!!
New cam is a Comp Cams 270H. Gets new Comp Cam lifters and a set of Crane
1.7 roller rockers up top.
Ordered a stock pressure plate from Ford. Three finger version. Should be
more than adequate for this app. Centerforce version would have required a)
new 10" disc, down from 10.5" or b) new flywheel and rebalancing to zero...
and a new disc for 10spline 1.125" shaft... AND custom machining on
backside (front?) to clear pilot bushing. and c) a lot more cash.....
Pilot bearing turned out to be another builder screwup. Instead of using
sintered or oiled bronze, it appears that they just machined some brass up
and stuffed it in the "adaptor" that holds the pilot bearing out to engage
with the shorter ZF-1 input shaft.... sticks out of the crank about an
inch..... Had about .064" of SLOP!!!!
SOOOOOO, I have a new piece of oil-lite bronze that will be machined to
proper size.... I could have gone with the needle bearing, but I don't
like the design of the stock bearing and the ability to retain much needed
grease.... If it was a wet envireonment, no problemo.
Clutch disc will be a new 10.5" Chebbie version with kevlar on the flywheel
side and hirev facing on the PP side. Will have to machine the hub on the
flywheel side to clear the extended pilot bushing too.... Will put it all
together and then get out the precision hammer (just kidding!!!) calipers
and spec it all out to get the proper dimensions to cut.... Plus make sure
that the throwout bearing clearance is OK too!!!
My oil pan turns out to be a road race version already, however, the baffle
may be a bit short.... I was experiencing loss of oil pressure under severe
braking, ie stoplites! So, I may build up that baffle a bit to meet up with
the windage tray.... I'll also pressure test the pickup too...
Interesting note, was that due to this pan, starter removal is not possible
without removing the pan. period. Unless you consider pulling the ZF, the
bellhousing, the flywheel and then the block plate a suiteable option!!!!
aack! The pan has a bit of a protrusion on each side that prevents the
starter from just dropping straight down....
Oh yeah, the builders must have forgotten to install the block plate, that
goes BEHIND the flywheel, found their mistake, and rather than pulling the
hole ZF/bellhousing/flywheel off to install it, they just cut it off so it
would cover the exposed part of the bellhousing and ran...... duh #4 at
least! Luckily this piece is in my Ford reserves....
HV Oil pump pickup bolt hole was stripped out toooooo. Perhaps one or two
threads at the end... This will get a helicoil and reused.
Engine mount bolts are too long. Could they have bought any longer
bolts!!!! I think I had to run a bottoming tap in all the holes to get
these to tighten up..... I guess I didn't have any shorter ones either....
but will!!!! These are at least a half inch too long...and bottom in the
holes just about the tight point. Could stack washers up but that is tooooo
funky in my books.
Axle flange bolts are not of the proper stepped variety. There is a short
step, but not enuf... Will deal with this on another day. They work for
now!! Plan would be to obtain bolts with the proper step amount, and then
machine off the excess threaded portions....
Rear trans mount will be sent out for chrome stripping. I need to push out
the rubber bushings first. THen it gets a piece of reinforcing welded to
the rear face, to fix the crack that has been developing, and then it gets
rechromed.
I'm mentally infighting the urge to chrome or go powder in some silver
color..... either goes good with the medium blue metalic.... and all of my
chrome is garpy in one way or another.....
Still need to fit my jackshaft to the StreetBoss and the Aussie heads, but
the latter is the lease of my worries as they have the same
holes/dimensions as US heads... just the intake to deal with!!! However,
this time, I can do it all OUT OF THE CAR, and then remove, dump in the
motor, and then put it back on.....
I also plan on servicing all of the spherical ball joints that make up the
front of my trailing arm suspension. These are a real bugger to get at with
the engine in place, so may as well do it now!!! Clean and grease them (or
replace as needed) and put on a nice new soft rubber boot! Old ones are all
hard from oil and grease exposure....
Did I mention that I also found NO ground strap on my engine/trans assy!!!!
Screwup #5...... could explain oxidation (from excessive voltage potential
in the cooling fluids!!!) on my aluminium parts!!! and difficult to loosen
fasteners...
If any of the engine bottom end screws up again, it will ALL be relegated
to my "Ford inventory" pile and will be replaced with a crate motor or a
roller 5.0L shortblock or something..... if I have to pull it out............
Steve Liebenow
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