I got the machine shop to deck the block, line hone for main studs, hone the cylinders, install ARP rod bolts and resize the rods. I put it together. The pistons are the same as the 1969-70 351W 4V flat tops. They will bring the compression with my heads to around 9.2:1 instead of 8.3 or so with the dished pistons. I think it will run great with the 11R heads. Nxcoupe and others have mentioned that some of my problems spooling the turbo are from the 1 7/8" headers on the TFS R 206 heads, this will have 1 5/8" primaries so it should be a lot better.

 

This is how the backup engine looks now. All the parts are cleaned and ready for reassembly. The only thing I am debating is whether to use the head studs that are in the other 351W or use the ARP head bolts that are sitting on the shelf clean and ready to install. After this difficult decision is made I am hoping the engine will be at least a long block if not complete and ready to drop in tomorrow evening.

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The list of lessons from engine building continues. I put the oil pan, heads and valvetrain on the 351 today. I put 5 quarts of 5W30 break in oil in the pan and started to prelube it. The engine reminded me that I had not put a plug in the oil pressure port by spraying oil across the garage. That new oil pump moves some oil. After plugging that port I started the drill up and was rewarded with a sight I have never seen before on a SBF. Oil was spraying out of the lifter bores when the cam was at max lift and hitting the bottom of the head. This was happening on several cylinders. I watched a video recently about Johnson's BBF lifters having this problem since the oil band was higher on the lifter body than stock and was coming out of the lifter bore at max lift. Since I was using Johnson SBF lifters I grabbed a pair of Comp Cams lifters and checked them against the Johnsons. Sure enough the oil band was about 1/8" higher on the Johnsons than on the Comp Cams ones. I changed out the lifters to the Comps and the problem went away. Sure glad I checked that with the intake off or it could have been really bad down the road. It appears the Johnsons are not retrofit lifters, they seem to be designed for roller cam blocks only. The reason I never ran into this before was I always had roller cam blocks. All the 351 blocks I have now are 84-87 flat tappet blocks so those lifters won't be used in any of them. After that pre-oiling went fine with lots of oil to the top. However when I stepped back from the engine after pre-oiling there was a fresh puddle of oil underneath the engine stand. The oil was coming out from between the pan rail and pan gasket. After inspecting further it appears the parts store gave me the wrong pan gasket. This one is rubber with a steel core and bolt stops and I can see light in places right through both sides of the engine. This sucks since I was hoping to install the intake manifold tomorrow and then drop the engine in the car. Now I have to see if anybody has the correct gasket or failing that maybe just get a couple of tubes of Ultra Black and silicone the shit out of the entire pan rail. I also glued the intake manifold gaskets to the heads and the intake is sitting on them overnight to hold them in place.

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Napa on 50st has them.

https://www.napacanada.com/en/p/FPG...P:SP:Belowproductdescription&ppid=FPGOS34506R

 

That's the one I have which is for a flat pan rail. These Moroso pans have a dimpled pan rail so I either need a Moroso specific gasket or a 4 piece.

 

I might have something, will check this morning.

 

I called Napa, they said they can get me a 4 pc by noon.

 

Is the pan rail dimpled or ribbed? I have this, bought a bunch of these kits years ago, got a killer deal on them, this is my last one, you can have the pan gasket if it will work for you.

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Yes, that's the one I need.

 

Bring back my oil cooler and you can have this.

 

I will be working on my junk today so will be home.

 

That gasket is for smooth rails. Ribbed gasket fits smooth rails, smooth gasket fits ribbed rails.

If your pan has ribbed rails it's most likely made using a stock pan modified by Moroso, welding warps the rails. Set the pan on a block without a gasket and check for warpage. If you can see any gaps, then you're going to have to work the rails until they sit flat. Every increased capacity pan I've ever had that used ribbed rails needed the rails reworked to seal properly.

After having a Moroso pan with smooth rails and billet ends, I'll never buy another ribbed rail pan. The last ribbed pan I got was from Canton, new out of the box it had 1/4 inch gaps when I set it on a block without the gasket.

 

Or you can use these to keep them flat. My 88 gt vert had them stock.



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They make those for windsors too. I have a set I plan to use.

 

Those came on all the flat rail pans, that's what I used to flatten my canton pan. That and a tool that looked like a wide blunt chisel, it was rounded on the end instead of sharpened. I just tightened the rail down slowly while working it with the tool and a hammer. Went slow and would put the tool against the 90° bend where the rail transitioned to the side of the pan and work my way around. It took a lot more force than you would think.

 

I guess I got lucky with my Moroso oil pans. Both are ribbed rail pans and both sit flat on the block. After further investigation I found that 2 of the rear oil gallery plugs were leaking and since the flexplate wasn't in place oil was leaking out of the bolt holes in the crank. I pulled the oil galley plugs and resealed them then put Ultra Black around them for good measure. I can't remember whether I put them in or the machine shop did but I am glad I found the problem now rather than after the engine is in the car. I ran a bead of silicone on the pan rail all the way around the engine and around the outside of the rear seal. The intake manifold and the water pump are on as well.

Tomorrow after the silicone dries I will pre-oil it again and if there aren't any leaks it can go in the car. Fingers crossed.

Once this engine is in the car I will disassemble the other one and get new cam bearings put in it and get the broken bolt removed from the cylinder head.

 

generally when this happens to me i am standing in front of it.

 

That would suck. In the future I will ensure there is a plug in place as it made quite a mess and almost hit the car.

 

No oil leaks when I pre-oiled the engine today, fingers crossed it stays that way. I had to make a new crossover pipe for the turbo kit hotside today which took a lot of time. The engine is completely buttoned up and ready to be dropped in tomorrow. If all goes well it might be running tomorrow night.

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The engine is in the car. The bellhousing, starter, torque converter and motor mounts are all tightened up with liberal use of Loctite Blue where appropriate. The problem came when I tried to put the Holley Dual Sync distributor in. It wouldn't seat in the block no matter how it was rotated. Best guess is that the other block and/or heads had been decked more than this setup so the intake manifold sat a little lower. I thought about just putting in the MSD mag pickup distributor but decided to see if I could make this one work. I filed off about 1/3 of the threaded boss for cap hold down on the passenger side and got about 30 degrees of rotation which should be enough to make it work. After thinking about it more I think I will file some more off to get more clearance since the next block/heads combo might not be decked at all and it would suck to go through this again. I am really not impressed by Holley engineers, why you would make an expensive distributor that won't clear most popular manifolds is beyond me. Probably the same idiot that decide that no RF shielding was required for the Sniper. Now hoping for start up tomorrow but I have a lot of other things to do tomorrow so it might not get done.