Well it has been a while. After my first go-around with these castings I determined that there needed to be some minor modifications made to the casting tooling, so it went from the foundry back to the pattern shop for the modifications. While it was there, I got an email from the foundry saying that they couldn't honor the original price, and that the price was going up by about 20% the next time I wanted the timing covers cast
I wasn't going to sit still for that price increase, especially after they had done the same thing to me with the intake adapters, so I went in search of a second foundry. I found another local outfit that I liked, so after the pattern modifications were done I sent the tooling over to the new foundry. They are a little slower than the old foundry, but finally last week I got another four prototype timing covers cast up.
I'm actually having the timing covers machined at the pattern shop, because they have some spare time on their CNC equipment and it allows me to focus on the intake adapters with my machines. So, I ran the four covers over to the pattern shop. They machined two of them, and I wanted to make one little tweak to the machining after I saw them, so the pattern shop did that and tonight I picked up two pretty cool looking timing covers. I think these things are ready to go.
There's some pictures of the timing covers below. Note that there are two part numbers, 14001 and 14002; the 14002 part number is machined so that it has no provision for a factory mechanical fuel pump. Otherwise, they are the same part. In addition to the removable cover, sealed with an O-ring, they have provisions for a standard FE front seal or a 351C front seal (which installs from the front). When using the 351C front seal you are pretty close to the end of the sealing surface on the stock crank spacer, so an aftermarket crank spacer or a little machining on the factory spacer
may be required; I'm not sure yet, and I really won't be until I run one of these timing covers on the dyno. They also have the additional bosses for a crank sensor bracket or some other bracketry as previously discussed. The first pictures are of the two different types of timing covers:
Here are a couple of closer photos of the 14001 cover:
Here's a pictures showing the O-ring installed in the timing cover, with the cover plate next to it:
As previously mentioned the cover plate is steel; the one above has been powder coated black. I also powder coated one blue and one silver, and assembled them on the 14001 timing cover; photos below:
I think I like the silver one the best; it looks like the ceramic coating you get on headers. I thought a little bit more about doing an aluminum cover plate, with fins, kind of like the center cover plate on my intake adapters, but in order to seal against the O-ring it would have to be much thicker than the steel covers, probably 3/8" thick. Then I would also have to provide spacers to space out the water pump and the crank pulleys so that the belts would still line up, and you'd also have to be concerned about the fan hitting the radiator, alignment of the alternator, etc. It would certainly be do-able, but also probably cost prohibitive, so I think I will stick with the steel cover plates for now.
So - what do you guys think? All comments and criticisms welcome - Jay
