New FE build BBM block and heads

[mdross1]

Interesting and the way it should be between a man and his machine. All my builds over the years have received the same love and attention to detail, the end result is always so rewarding in so many ways.
Just walking by the car knowing what is in it how it was assembled the best part ownership. Good Luck with your build.

[jkg2101]

here are some more FE building pics.

Here is the back of the engine, seen from inside the car with mutliple panels removed. note the rear cam plug faces opposite relative to the typical freeze-out plugs on an FE.

[jkg2101]

here is the block plate that goes behind the flywheel. i made sure to have cutouts for the cam plug and the oil galley plugs, although probably dont need them. some say to not make cutouts, so the blocking plate will keep the cam plug from backing out. i guess I would say, that if the cam plug is backing out, we have bigger problems anyway...

[jkg2101]

next I installed the flywheel, and then dialed in the bellhousing. in the future, i would strongly suggest doing this BEFORE the engine is in the car. it sure seems like there is plenty of room to work here, but there is not. The downside to owning a kirkham is that there always seems to be a sharp seam of aluminum waiting to remove some flesh.

the first pic shows the baseline, where mostly I just needed to move the bellhousing up. the numbers are just measurements in thousandths of an inch. the actual value doesnt matter, but they should all be within 5 of each other hopefully. Kirkham has a nice pictorial of this process on their website.

[jkg2101]

so, my original plan was to remove the bellhousing alignment dowels and buy some of the offset ones from RObbMC. well, it turns out these dowels are not so easy to remove. and there really is no way to get good leverage on them inside the car. I got a real nice pliers on one, then twisted it and BAM - the pliers slipped and I left my knuckle skin on one of those aluminum edges.

So, i decided to try the lakewood bellhousing dowel kit, which is what kirkham used on their posting a few years back. Unfortunately, those dowel kits require me to drill a HUGE hole through the bellhousing. The biggest drill bit I have for my press is 1/2" and it looks big. you need something like a 1" drill to make the hole, and the bellhousing is thick steel.

then I would need to hold the bellhousing in the right position while I tighten the nuts, and then weld it up in the car. Doing this with the engine in the car would be a challenge. i'm not sure I have enough knuckle skin to do it. And it would be so awesome if welding splatter got on the polished stainless heat shields too.

So, I came up with plan C. Because I mostly just have to move the bellhousing up in this case, I just enlarged the holes in the bellhousing slightly with my 1/2" drill, and put a bottle jack under the bellhousing before I tightened the bolts. I checked twice to be sure it was repeatable. Then I got good numbers. In the future, I might do what I have done in the past - I might just NOT dial-in the bellhousing. My 69 mustang has had the same toploader for more than 20 years and no trouble there. I wonder if dialing in the bellhousing is overkill for a hobbyist who puts 1000 miles a year on a car.

[blykins]

Bell must be dialed in. No question about it. If I don't do it here, I put it in the build sheet that the bellhousing has to be checked.

There are too many manufacturing tolerances between blocks, cranks, bells, and transmissions.

If you're going to do it your way, then you need to weld washers to the bellhousing so that's there's no slop after you get it positioned where you want it. Things move around a lot and I wouldn't want to rely on clamping force to keep the bell from squirming.

A good way to get the bell dowels out of the block is to weld a nut on the end of them, then use a slide hammer to pull them out.

[DanEC]

It may just be the picture or a shadow but it sort of looks like there might be a small void or two in the sealant under the intake on top of the china wall in post #22.

Condolences on the lost skin - I can relate.

[jkg2101]

that's a great trick for removing the dowels BEFORE the engine is in the car. really hard/impossible to get onto them when the firewall is so close. lesson learned

next time, test fit engine to bellhousing before anything else!!!

[ACHiPo]

Great build thread! Like your choices. How much machining was required to get the BBM block ready for assembly? Trying to decide between new BBM and old 428--savings in machining costs would tip the scale toward BBM.

[blykins]

Any aftermarket block, no matter if it's a SBF, FE, 385 series, etc., will need the full range of machine work: boring/honing with torque plates (or just honing if it comes in a rough size that's already close to finish size), square decking, and align honing.

These blocks are not final finished by any means because each and every engine builder wants to have full control of the finished product.

[ACHiPo]

Originally Posted by blykins

Any aftermarket block, no matter if it's a SBF, FE, 385 series, etc., will need the full range of machine work: boring/honing with torque plates (or just honing if it comes in a rough size that's already close to finish size), square decking, and align honing.

These blocks are not final finished by any means because each and every engine builder wants to have full control of the finished product.

Thanks Brent!

[jkg2101]

as for machining the new block, of course there was some

BUT when I went out of my way to preserve the numbers matching big block in my 67 corvette a few years ago, there was just as much money into getting that block ready to go. i would believe that most of these vintage performance blocks have been through it all and then some, and so a vintage block will probably have lots of needs. Unless you get lucky enough to find one that is really original and low miles, but those are few and far between in my experience.

brent - do you think the bellhousing really will move once bolted in place? i did not think of that. there are a lot of bolts holding it in place. welding a washer in place will i guess be helpful but now I wish I did it the right way from the start. only one of my dowels extends out past the bellhousing at all.

[DanEC]

I was going to suggest trying a die to cut threads in it so some washers and a nut could be used to draw it out? But if one of them is so short that it barely extends past the block plate, it's probably way to short to thread.

I know on Chevrolets the dowel holes ae not blind and the dowel can be tapped out from the front side. I guess not so on an FE? I've read where others have drilled the center and threaded it for a jack bolt or attaching a slide hammer.

[ogasman]

I have KMP 369. I did my engine/transmission install several years ago. Not a common DIY project around here. Some words of advice. Save yourself hours of grief, and do the job right. Pull the motor back out. Dial the bell in right, when it is out of the car. Fit the throw out bearing. I also used a RPM crank and had to turn a little off the bearing. Fit the header pipes to the side pipes in the car, and leave them loose and out of the way. Attach the transmission, and drop the whole assembly in the car. The pipes can be fished through after the engine is installed, but you will have a very annoying jig saw puzzle to figure out.

Good Luck
Paul

[blykins]

Originally Posted by jkg2101

as for machining the new block, of course there was some

BUT when I went out of my way to preserve the numbers matching big block in my 67 corvette a few years ago, there was just as much money into getting that block ready to go. i would believe that most of these vintage performance blocks have been through it all and then some, and so a vintage block will probably have lots of needs. Unless you get lucky enough to find one that is really original and low miles, but those are few and far between in my experience.

brent - do you think the bellhousing really will move once bolted in place? i did not think of that. there are a lot of bolts holding it in place. welding a washer in place will i guess be helpful but now I wish I did it the right way from the start. only one of my dowels extends out past the bellhousing at all.

Yes, I think it could move. Without something solid to locate it, all a bolt does is clamp it down. If there's slop in the hole, or room to move, it could squirm around a bit.

[jkg2101]

Thanks for the advice. I will use some epoxy then to fill in the gaps in the locating hole. Justin

[blykins]

Epoxy?

Come on man....

Yank that thing out and weld some washers around the dowels so it will be located. Spray some paint on it and be done.

[Three Peaks]

Agree with Brent here. There is huge torque at that point so bolt clamping isn't really a great idea for holding things in place and epoxy is worse than a bandaid solution. Take the time to do it right and you won't be pulling the engine at a bad time during driving season.

I helped a guy in our club dial in his FE scatter shield and it was a chore. Once we got it in place, he placed some bushings on the studs and we welded them in place. It was several hours' work, but worth it in the end knowing that was one project we would never have to tackle again.

Bob

[jkg2101]

I can weld with it in the car. Maybe welding the washer will work. I'll take a look and see. Fighting with starter now

[jkg2101]

Well, before i can mount up the bellhousing, i wanted to test fit the starter.

i went with a really nice unit from powermaster. I was thinking about one from RobbMC since everyone says such nice things about him, but my dad had a fantastic experience with powermaster customer service on his R galaxie 427.

When I mounted up the starter without bellhousing (just to block plate to see how it sits), it was a full 1/4" from the flywheel ring gear. This is a little too far for my liking. When I fully pull out the starter gear, it only overlaps about 50% with the flywheel gear. including picture here of the starter at rest.

The folks at powermaster are really nice, and they will mill about 1/8" off the mounting plate for the starter for me. i think then it will be perfect.

I think the problem is that the rear of the crankshaft might just be a little thicker than a stock one. or maybe not. the distance I measure from the rear of the block to the edge of the flywheel ring gear is 5/8". i am not sure what the normal measurement should be. I am using a Ford performance flywheel. I also don't know if the ring gear on the flywheel is in the totally stock position. these challenges always come up when using non-stock parts (crank, flywheel, and starter)!