Rebuilding The Third Ford Small Block

This was now feeling like the Six Million Dollar Cobra...

We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic car.
Better than it was before.
Better . . . Stronger . . . Faster.

Where to begin. Parts have been ordered. Tools are being shipped. Karl the UPS man is getting ready to call a Wildcat Walkout union strike since I have been working him so hard as I attempt to breath new life into the money pit. It has been a couple weeks on interesting and discovery. This internals of the modern combustion engine are all new and exciting to me. Here is what has been happening since the last tale.

Finally, after 600 years, the mysteries of the leaking passenger side rear caliper are solved. Jimmy at Wilwood customer support said that it most likely had dry seals and simply needed the $8 rebuild kit. Since it took me 12-18 months to finish the car, and the brakes were installed early on, they had a chance to sit and do nothing, where they like to be wet with fluid to stay lubed.

On a side note, I am going to go back to the D pads, swapping out the A pads. The dirt level was high...really high, but not being a waxer, this I could take. What I could not handle, was pulling up to every intersection and sounding like Jethro Clampette. Those brakes howled. That was too embarrassing. The pads were quick-changed and marked for installation on race days.

One other interesting thing about the A pads was the level of rotor wear. The cleaning groves were down to nothing on the left rear and totally gone on the fronts! That is 500 miles use. Race pads are certainly race pads.

One thing odd on a Holley is the secondary throttle screw lives on the bottom of the unit. Holley's tuning literature says to adjust the primary and secondary screws "evenly". Well why on earth put one under the car so it takes a bent screw driver or removal of the carb to make a subtle adjustment. More often then not, people set the secondary once and then never touch it again, always relying 100% on the primary screw for idle. I knew there had to be a better way. Here is the primary idle screw. Just above the red laser dot, on the bottom of the carb, is the secondary idle screw. What a terrific place to put it! Ta Da! Holley and a couple after market companies sell the secondary idle adjustment lever arm for double pumpers. Here it is in my hot little hands. The screw is left in the casting to prevent wear. We are going to swap this old arm for the new one. Remember what position the cam is in. The butcher could not use a stinking philips head with a lock washer. He quickly chopped off the socket head cap screw. In ten minutes or less, the secondary idle screw, adjustable from the top, was not mounted!

I wanted to try and think of a way to pull an engine without a cherry picker. I hate borrowing tools and I don't have room to store such a large apparatus. I told Corvette Ansel that I wanted to suspend a chain hoist from my room but there were no beams and my roof would cave in and fall on my head. Corvette Ansel gave me an idea to use 3 beams from Home Depot. Just mount one to the framework to hold it in position, and then add the legs when needed. Three 4"x4"s would do a great job and you can always use them for lumber if needed around the home. In retrospect, I was a little nervous with the top beam. Ansel would of gone 4"x6". There were no creeks or groans, but the beam did deflect little. The first beam was attached to three roof beams with Simpson Strong Ties, just to hold it in the air and in place. It will stay there forever now. By the way, I simply love Simpson Strong Ties. I then bought a $50 chain hoist from Enco. Enco is a pretty cool site. Lots and lots of tools. I prefer chain hoists to come-a-longs and ratchet hoists, because they are simply smoother going up and down, where it is a song and dance to reverse a come-a-long. The hard part of the operation was getting the car in the correct spot. It had to be on jackstand so I could balance the transmission at the same time. I was lucky and the placement was fine. Start the countdown. Goin' on up to the spirit in the sky. The evil scientist had succeeded. I then called the wife, "she strong like bull". We pushed the cobra out of the way. I then had a hanging engine. This whole procedure took all day. Sounds like ten minutes here, but it was a FULL PULL and I was doing the funny walk with a rum and coke in hand, later that evening.

Once the engine is out, then what? I have to back track a little bit. I did decide to order an engine stand. These are smaller than cherry pickers and you can roll the engine upside down to work on it 360 degrees. The Ford Engineers in the book on short track power made two suggestions that I followed: 1) get a four wheel unit, the three wheelers can get tippy and 2) get a drip tray. The parts came. Stinking grade 2 bolts and lock washers. This would never do. The butcher ran to his wall of tricks and produced socket head cap screws and grade 8 lock nuts. This bad boy stand was ready to live through 8 on the Richter scale when he got through. Check out this screw. That crack could fail the head and then I have an engine stand falling onto my big toe! Ahhhh, sweet. These are the devil's playground. Yes yes! That connection is not going anywhere. These bolts will not rattle loose today, or tomorrow. When the archeologists dig up the Butchers garage in 3027, there will be an intact engine. Here we have the finished product. I lubed the slots so the arms would move easier. For a man that loves all things assembly lube, I completely forgot to grease the center pivot section. This would come back to haunt me later.

One other gadget that I thought would come in handy was the "turn your jack into a transmission jack". I've had my eye on this part for a few months now. I originally thought I could get Jorge to drill a hole in my car jack. This could not be done since there are support structures under the head of aluminum jacks. I still had my old 700lb jack and this fit in the cup hole nicely. I am not sure if I like it yet or not. Speaking of jacks, I really dig my 6 pump, long acre race jack. Once you try one, you can never go back. Friends are in awe of the light weight. The big problem with the aluminum jacks is the steep price tag. Recently I saw that harbor freight just introduced one for $199. This is the lowest price I have seen. I am not sure of the quality, but they look like pretty slick units.

I eventually got the engine on the stand, and lowered it down. The great thing about the chain hoist, is that it can be stored in a 5 gallon bucket, which is much less space than a cherry picker.

This might be the hardest part to get off an engine. A damper's job is to minimize the vibrations created when the engine is not completely in balance do to oil and metal and spinning etc. You should NOT use a gear puller because there is a chance that they will destroy the damper. A damper is two pieces of metal fuses together by rubber, or they can be fluid. You can rip the exterior metal ring off the internal section. I originally bought a damper installer 2 years back. I kick myself now. I should of bought the remover / installer, but decided to go cheap. I decided to buy the whole unit this time. The first thing we have to do is remove the center bolt. It is a massive bolt and you need a massive socket head. I think it is an inch or bigger. Physics is your friend. Mr Leverage is always welcome in the Butchero's garage. I thought I had destroyed the ratchet, finally the bolt let go. I think I also wedged a screw driver in the front to stop the whole thing from turning the engine over. It's a lunker! 5/8-18. Next I install the tool, which has various adapters and a center spinning section. A couple of arp bolts go through the pulling plate, and into the damper. The bolt is over an inch so I have to use an adjustable wrench. Spin spin spin, and out it comes.

Ever wondered how to remove a stuck stud without damaging it? One of the cleanest ways is just to use two bolts. I had locktited my valve cover studs, and had to remove them with this technique. Bind the nuts together and then you can turn the whole stud.

Need a cheap and easy gasket scraper? Back at the sign store, one of or favorite tool mods was to take an exacto knife handle, and insert a utility knife blade. Tighten it down real good and you have a terrific scraper. I forgot to say that the manifold came off easily. I had done two of them before and so I had my technique down. As an aside, I have manifold caulking techniques debated two ways. Most people are pro high temp silicone. The gasket makers like Fel Pro and others are pro cork with a dab of silicone in the corner. I discovered why its done both ways in the latest engine book I'm reading (which I give a 10/10.). If you have a stock blocks, new heads, and standard manifold, the odds are great that you can use cork if you choose, or silicone. If you have had the heads milled, the block milled, or the manifold milled or on spacers, then the cork end pieces most likely will not match the area and it is best to use silicone only. After trying it both ways, I would say I like the cork end pieces now. I think the key is to use gaskasinch or some pre-gasket glue to hold them in place.

Under the intake were the pushrods and solid roller lifters. There were no surprises like hunks of metal. I am hoping some of the engine builders in the audience can set the record straight since I was confused today and I am sure I removed at least one of the heads wrong. What is the proper or best way to remove a head? Is it

1. Remove the head bolts and lift head off off pushrods?

2. Remove all rocker arms and pushrods (with each at TDC) and then remove head bolts and lift off head.

3. some other combo?

I had my Crane part organizer, ready to go. I got the first head off with technique #1 =) I believe this is wrong since the rods are under spring load and the head lifts off of the gasket. This certainly does not seem like the correct way. There are the neat long pushrods. I think trickflow heads use a longer than standard rod. These rods might of had 8.550 on them. I will have to double check. Under the rod is the solid roller lifters. The pistons are dirty and burnt. I have never really seen used pistons until now so I don't really have much to compare them to. I did see the one broken piston on my other engine and it was more tar covered. I think these are flat pistons with indented fly cuts for the valves. Here is the bottom of a head. I thought the dish area would be larger. The big circle is the intake valve and he smaller ones are the exhaust valves. The head weighed more than I thought it would. Here is a closer view. That small hole at the top is where the spark plug sits. Here is the exhaust port over the exhaust valve. Here is the intake ports that connect to the manifold. The tray was starting to fill up. The back of the head. One thing I discovered by looking at the soot markings on the heads and my header gasket, was that I think my gasket was sticking up 1/8" and blocking the smooth flow of air. I will have to chop it down this time to make sure there are no obstructions.

Here is a flipped rocker with extra grease. The stud goes up through the center and the pushrod lives in the cap on the left side. The roller aka roller rocker, sits on top of the spring. Here is the rocker stud that bolts to the head and then the rocker is mounted to this with one of the lock bolts which can be seen in the upper left. These are nuts with a socket set screw in the center to lock them from rotating. ARP sells pretty slick perma-lock models on page 6 of this pdf.

I bought this here spring compression tool to remove and install springs, on or off the engine. I forget that you need an air fitting for the spark plug hole to hold the valves in place. I also was not sure what you do once you compress this bad boy? Engine builders or head experts, how to you remove the spring once it is compressed? Is there a tool or a tap or a clip? I decided to leave the springs and valves alone for now =)

Here are the cylinder walls. I can see the crosshatch pattern. There are some faint up and down scratches as well. Comments? Do these holes look correct? I have removed the water pump. When I first built the car, I lathering that hole area with silicone, in fears that water would leak everywhere. In actual fact, the water only flows though those two ports. I removed the fuel pump blocking plate. If you run a mechanical pump, it sits here and a pin on the cam whacks an arm on the pump and drives it. You can also see my oil pressure port but will be looking for one after the filter circuit in the future.

The timing chain and gears were very pretty and much smaller than I imagined. I pictured it as big as a flywheel, when really it is small like 6". I got out my books and they said to carefully pry the top and the bottom unit forward with two screw drivers. That zero and this dot I think are to set initial timing. Finally the top gear comes out far enough that it falls off and you have the chain removed. I did this but then used a gear puller to remove the bottom. I have no idea how I will get the bottom sprocket back on. I have always wanted to build an engine with the whine of gear drives. Now I am not so sure. Richard the engineer has got me all worked up about Danny Bee belt drivers. It turns out that JBL dave is working on custom units for a race team. These units are very trick for a few reasons. First, you get to use a big ass gilmer cog belt! Give me gilmer any day. Have you seen the new Harleys? They are belt drive. Next, the unit is all visible...so you see the belt and gear in action. Depending on the unit, you can easily adjust to cam timing. Let me see if I can find a pic or two. Here is some dry sump hardcore engine sporting a Danny bee. Here is the unit. I am tempted =)

Here is the timing cover and an oil seal. A center seal. The notorious oil pump which has a bolt that was almost impossible to get to until now. I will be attempting to turn these into studs. One more. The stud girdle has to be clearanced to get around the pump. We are running out of things to remove. Talking things apart is a lot easier than putting them together. =) Here is the oil pump with shaft and the top of the shaft is what you see when looking down the distributor hole. The distributor shaft sits and couples onto this. Cam cover retaining plate removed.

It was now time to test the rotational abilities of my super fastener strengthened, engine stand. The first problem was our old friend physics. This time he was not here to help, but to hinder. Friction. Remember I forgot to grease the center area. It did not want to spin. I had to crank on that arm and finally got things in motion. I decided I needed to retrofit in a little grease. I did not want to break out the old chain hoist again. A simpler solution was needed. I got out a couple of West System epoxy syringes, cut the head off one, sucked up some moly, and plungered it into another. I was then able to squirt grease into about 1/3 of the tube. I then drilled a tiny pilot hole in toe top tube case and was able to inject more moly into the high friction area. This helped a great deal. I began to turn the engine. Instantly, gallons of radiator fluid spewed out. I am glad I had that grease tray at this point. After all the water was drained, I hose the engine with a healthy dose of WD40 to help fight rust and continued spinning. Glonk. Four letter swear words filled the garage. I ran out of bolts the correct size and had to use a long bolt with washers to space it. This made for interference in both direction. I found a bolt from the bell housing removal and decided to risk removing one bolt and inserting this new one. It worked. We have 180 degree rotation. Keep that bolt and washer game I like to play in mind for a story a little later down the page. I am not positive yet, but it will come back to haunt me in an unusual way. We are into the short block area now. Crank, rods, piston, camshaft and bearings. This is the meat and potatoes,

Attention engine builders, what does this all mean? Can you decode this for me? Here is the rear main seal. It would seam to me that this might be replaceable by just dropping the oil pan and pulling this out as I did? If you had a rear main seal leak, could you not do this? Why? There is the crank area where the piston spun. It is all smooth except there is a larger chip on the upper side that cannot be seen here. I decided to just do one or two fun measuring tests. This is what I will be doing for the next few days and so I did not want to dismantle too much since I want to learn the proper spacing. They say to use two feelers in the books for balance. This one checked out at 20/1000 but the next three got progressively tighter. Do you want all 4 equal? Or just all 4 within limits? I would think you would want them fairly equal? This is going to be way too fun! I am working on the spreadsheets now. I am also anxious to fiddle with the dial bore gauge, micrometer, and depth gauges. More on this next week. I removed a couple of bolts on the cam and it slid around. I did not want to remove it since I could damage it without being able to hold the other end so I will wait. Here is the clearance area for the oil pump. Those lads at ARP think of everything. How about a stud with an internal wrenching allen key slot. The main caps are numbered 1,2,3,4 and 5 is blank.

I forgot to mention that the Exxon Val Dez cruised through my garage. What a mess. I was wrenching and rolling and dripping in oil ad I attempted to remove the transmission from the engine. I first tried a squeegee mop and that moved the oil around nice. After 100 paper towels, I was making little progress. I decided to go for the kitty litter and made mounds of gooey, mucky dirt. This worked pretty good but I threw out the mop and the dustpan afterwards.

You may recall that after the trailer ride home from the dyno, Swifty Scott and I were ice skating around his trailer since the tremec had relieved itself of all the MTF. Here is why. The nose bearing literally welded itself to the Denny's Driveshaft. The driveshaft has some play, and the bearing then pushed out the oil seal and out went the fluid. No wonder the car felt sluggish...the transmission bearing was going or gone. Do you know why? I am not sure why but I have a hunch. I was chatting with FFR Bill Gill today, and he said "that has to be misalignment". At that point, it all made sense. Now I am not positive about this yet, but I think it is the answer. Remember how I told you I have played the long bolt and washer game a couple of times before. Well on my tremec mount, I did just that. The bolt I had was too long, and so I had to use over an inch of washers. I then broke my first engine. The car went to HOC. They removed the engine and reinstalled the second engine, along with the transmission. When I took the transmission out yesterday, the washers were flipped on the wrong side of the mount. I believe the installer was confused by all my bolt tricks, and thought they were shims (rather than bolt length reducers)...He then put them on the top side, making the mount 1" higher than normal. I don't know if that 1" additional height is enough to cause misalignment? Thoughts? This is currently my best theory. It is just a single bearing and not a difficult or major repair. I should have it fixed early next week after I call tremec and order a replacement bearing. What was fun and scary, was taking my tremec apart to look around. I want to go on record right now and say "TTC Tremec writes the best technical manuals on earth". Every kitcar manufacturer should run out and get a TTC Tremec manual and see what great instructions they have. A zillion pictures and tons of hand holding. They write stuff like. Place wrench on cover plate bolts. Turn bolts counter clockwise. Remove all four bolts. With bolts removed, now remove cover plate. I love brutally simple instructions like this. There is nothing left to chance. Well done! I have a secret...this manual is now available in pdf format online.

Being the Butcher, I started removing bolts, in hopes to pull the front 1/3 off. I have taken some of these off before, but this time I was going deep. I started to get scared when the front would not come off. It was time to read that great manual. There were the steps needed. There are three roll pins that had to come out. These are tubes of steel that get hammered into position and then hammered out of position. I guess that is called press or interference fit since they are bigger than the hole. Since I used to have a foosball vending route, I was well versed at the installation and removal of such pins since that is how Tornado affixes foosball men to rods. I ran to my home foosball table and grabbed a pin extractor punch. Here is a removed pin. The book says to have a magnet underneath when removing them. This is more wishful thinking than anything. I was eventually able to fish them out.

At this point you might be asking yourself "Andy, what the hell are you getting yourself into?!", and right about that time I was asking myself "Andy, what the hell are you getting yourself into?!" There was no looking back =) Out came the springly spockets...I forget the real name. I placed them carefully on some newspaper. Off came the front! Those are some fancy gears and synchros. Here is the part I needed. This is where I believe the press fit bearing came from. I will run this and a bearing down to Jorge's and have it installed or I may fedex it to TTC if they will allow it.

I found one other odd thing on the transmission. My Tilton throw out bearing almost collapsed in my hands. I think there was an internal rubber seal and this is all that is left of it. I need to check with tech support on whether or not the rubber can be replaced or it I need a whole new center.

I forgot to show you the filled Crane holder. The bolts are all waiting to go. I have been making notes and labels for all of them. A bunch of them are going to be switched to studs. ARP will be sponsoring the Butcher shortly. The big box of head studs is ready to go. Next project is to measure and record lots of measurements and find out where these measurements are. I think I have a good idea on most of them. I have notes from 4 books on the following specs

Rod Bearing
Main Bearing
Shaft End Play
Piston To Deck
Rod Side
Piston To Wall
Ring gap

I also made note of 4 engines and then smokey, and then the blue book and the claimer book and have running lists of their specs on all these dimensions. I will add that to the next story.

These is also more HP on the way =) I can't just sit back and let the cobra arms race pass me by. It is time to head for the high fives! I can't divulge the secrets yet...but I'll leave you with two hints "super" but not charger, and "port" but not ale. Those are the stories. PS one last thing! my first attempt at a car math calculator. I decided to make the first air cleaner calculator. You only need the first two lines. Box 3 and 4 are optional. The Xstream top is there just for interest sake if you like them. Let me know if it looks correct or if there are any funny bugs.