When did you last: Pull an engine-replace a clutch-rebuild a Holley?

[NHCharger]

I modified my shop roof for two lifts. does that count??

[Kern Dog]

Last week I put a roller 360 on the stand and tore it down. It was bought for $500 from a friend.
It has the desirable #308 heads and is a roller cam engine with a cam from Hughes engines, an Air Gap intake and Holley valve covers. It blew two head gaskets so I tore it down after seeing rust scale in a couple cylinders. My machinist has it now, he will determine how far it needs to be bored. It is .020 now, I sure hope he can make it work by .030, if not, .040. It ought to outperform the 360 already in my 67 Dart since this roller engine has a more aggressive cam, a better intake, a bit more compression and it will have headers too.

[Kern Dog]

....A few days later I helped a buddy pull the Magnum 360 and Tremec from his '68 Dart. We will be doing concurrent 360 builds here at my place. FUN stuff!

[Kern Dog]

A few weeks back I rebuilt 2 Holley 600s but I think I need to take them to someone that has more effective solvent. The stuff I soaked the carburetors in is California compliant and probably wasn't aggressive enough to work that well.

[Kern Dog]

Thank you to the the members that actually contributed to this thread.
It is great to see people actually spin wrenches and twist screwdrivers.

[Kern Dog]

I'm working on two 360 engines in my shop out back...me and another guy are doing simultaneous builds.
Mine is a fairly basic stock stroke 360 with 9.5 compression, stock iron heads mildly ported, a Hughes .544 lift roller cam, Air Gap intake and roller tipped rocker arms. It should be worth 375-400 HP. Rich's is a 5.9/408 with a 4 inch stroke crank, a .580 roller cam, Trick Flow heads and 1 5/8" headers. His mill could be worth 480-500 HP. Both engines are going into Darts....his is a '68, mine is a '67.
Good times...

[timmycharger]

Nice. Those should be so much fun in the Darts.  My first experience with a roller 360 was in the late 1990's with my brother's 70 340 swinger clone we built out of a slant 6 1971. 

Back then Mopar had 2 flavors of 360 crate motors, the 300HP and the 380HP versions. Both had roller cams, but had different intakes and later we learned different pistons also.  He ended up buying the single plane crate 360 intake and Cam but ran into piston to valve interference so after talking to our engine guy, he fabbed up a piston fly cutting tool out of an old valve that we used to clearance the pistons while in the motor! That was so sketchy but actually came out really nice.

That actually worked and held up for over 10 years of beatings until the engine was eventually rebuilt with new everything. 

That Dart was pretty quick, ran low 13s but with slicks it would definitely would have been in the 12s. It was a 4 speed and was running the TTI slip joint headers that had just come out.  I miss that car, my brother sold it to a friend of mine who I no longer really see anymore.

[Kern Dog]

MY buddy's engine was an original Mopar Performance crate 360/380 like you're talking about. It was standard bore and had the single plane M1 intake. He thought it was soft on the bottom end so this longer stroke ought to perk it up quite a bit, along with the better flowing heads.
The small block build has me curious too. If this engine of his runs as strong as he thinks, I may consider building one for this car:



It has a good running 383 that I built for it but I like the idea of running a factory overdrive transmission. Since the A-500 and A-518 only came with the small block bell housing pattern, that limits my choices. The car will stay an automatic unlike the red car. I don't like the Gear Vendors option and the aftermarket GM based overdrive transmissions are over $6000 for a swap kit. In reality, that would be cheaper than to build another engine and transmission so who knows what I'll end up doing. I just love doing the car stuff like this!

[70 sublime]

Well this weekend adventure
Dad has a 56 Ford truck hot rod he bought a few years ago
He had one back in the 60's and thought he wanted another
Well this truck has been one big project
Seems like many have owned it and did things on top of other things that have been done to it
The truck is on the road but this last issue has been weird oil pressure

To get the engine out I had to get the transmission lines off the rad and the rad had an electric fan set up but it was right on top of the lines coming out of the rad so the fan set up had to come out first just to get a wrench on the lines
Stuff like this at every turn

And to top it all off some of the bolts that have been used along the way have been metric Ughhh 

[70 sublime]

The oil pressure problem
The engine is a 302 Ford
Start the truck it goes up to 40 to 50 oil pressure
It has a oil gauge with the line coming off the block not an electric gauge
After a few minutes the pressure drops off to almost nothing
Turn truck off and right back on the pressure is up again

So we had tried many things to get to this point
Ford has a stupid little shaft that goes into the bottom of distributor that goes down to drive oil pump
Thought the bottom of the distributor was reemed out and not driving the shaft
The distributor had some braze on it where someone else had been working on it
So got a new distributor
Nope not fixed
Got a new shaft
Nope not fixed

The way the truck was built ( has a chev front suspension mounted in the Ford frame)
There was no way to take the pan off in the truck so the engine had to come out

Oh yea the exhaust is welded to the headers all the way back so they got to stay in the truck to get the motor out

[70 sublime]

You can see some of the handy work on the oil pick up tube

[70 sublime]

But what it all boils down to is the stupid cork valve cover gaskets are falling apart and made their way down into the pan to totally plug up the intake screen

Oh well a cheap fix but a lot of work to get here
Dad ordered a new set of valve cover gaskets

He did buy a new oil pump is why we were in the pan so that might just go in because we are here anyways

Yes in a couple pictures you can see the corner of my 70 Charger beside it in the shop

[Kern Dog]

The wiring in that truck is a mess!

[70 sublime]

The wiring in that truck is a mess!

Yep it is

Like I said it seems to have had a few owners that did things on top of other things
At this point it would just be easier to rip it all out and build a new harness
Under the dash is just as bad
Dad is 83 and this is his project
Will see if he can get it back together again as that is how his brain works putting it back together after he took the wires apart
Gives him something to fuss about and a reason to work on stuff

New valve cover gaskets will not get here till Tuesday because of the holiday weekend so it will be later next week it goes back together and decide on the wires then

[Kern Dog]

Holy crap....the debris blocking the oil pickup is criminal!
I do like it when a mystery is solved though. You had evidence that something was wrong with the oiling system and you found the problem. That is great.
With the 360 I'm building, I installed an aftermarket timing chain tensioner. I thought it would be a smart move but a few guys chimed in at FABO...the tensioners are supposedly only recommended for stock single row timing chains. Aftermarket double roller chains are likely to grind away at the plastic guides on the tensioner, shredding the plastic off of it. THIS would ultimately result in that plastic debris falling into the pan and blocking the oil pickup just like your Ford.
Not good.

[John_Kunkel]

When I saw the debris in that oil pickup my first thought was "plastic timing gear"...one of the worst ideas to ever come out Detroit. 

[Kern Dog]

The nylon coated sprockets was a noise reduction thing, right? That is what Rick Ehrenberg thinks anyway.
I've pulled a few timing covers to see sprockets with the edges of the teeth rounded off. That plastic has to go somewhere.