Project 503 aluminum FE

[fekbmax]

Getting started.

[jayb]

Looks good, Keith!  By the way, you can put your text outside the [img] tags if you want to keep it normal size - Jay

[Heo]

Interesting

[fekbmax]

Looks good, Keith!  By the way, you can put your text outside the [img] tags if you want to keep it normal size - Jay

Thanks Jay, I'm trying to get it sorted out. I'll try and make corrections. 

[Stangman]

ha I like the big writing. Everything looks great so far. Why no distributor?. Im assuming crank trigger and coilpacks.

[fekbmax]

ha I like the big writing. Everything looks great so far. Why no distributor?. Im assuming crank trigger and coilpacks.

Crank trigger yes but no coil packs. Will be running a front (belt) drive distributor.

[fekbmax]

So I was able to get a little time this weekend, only got bugged by work 3 times and luckily 2 of the calls were early Saturday morning and the other mid afternoon.  Got Out to the shop and pulled the rods back out. Have had this set of crower rods for like 9 years on the shelf. Pulled them out last fall and did the ARP 2000 fastener update. Did some very minor balancing work, logged the weights, did the same with the Pistons,  pins, locks, rings, and bearings and established my Bob weight then off to TKM for re sizing. Since they had the crank and block as well I let them touch up the crank for the rod and main bearings (King coated) setting clearances. Finally Pulled everything out Saturday, gave it all a quick cleaning then took most of the day  verifying bearing clearances and pairing them up then mated them to the slugs and ringed them. Moving slow I know but progress is progress I guess. Hoping one night this coming week I'll get a chance to pre fit one of the camshafts to check specks, make some minor adjustments to the belt drive set up and set end play.

[cjshaker]

Looks to be a pretty stout piece. I'm curious what the deal is with the valley vents, why they have an inner tube? At first I thought they looked like 44 Magnum bullets..lol

Nice shop and shop cat, by the way. I've got 3 identical white ones.

[428kidd]

Doug glad im not the only one who thought the looked like a 44 with the primer screwed off lol.

[fekbmax]

Looks to be a pretty stout piece. I'm curious what the deal is with the valley vents, why they have an inner tube? At first I thought they looked like 44 Magnum bullets..lol

Nice shop and shop cat, by the way. I've got 3 identical white ones.

The tubes are in a effort for obtaining a dry vent scenario. The valley can and will fill with oil quite quickly in a hight rpm situation. With the support ribs in the valley it makes 4 separate sections that oil can collect.  I chose to not drill holes through the ribs because I had no plans in leaving the two rear valley drain holes fully open so I added 4  3/32" holes in each of the outer sections for drainage . Hot thin oil moves fast so the inner tubes protrude down below the drain holes in an effort to Keep the oil streams from fanning (spraying) across  into each other, possibly cutting  off or restricting the vents .

Shop cat is Blizzard, I pulled her from the snow and ice during  a bad snow storm a couple years ago, she was just a Kitten around 8 to 10 weeks old. Shes a sweet girl.

[fekbmax]

I ended up taking Thursday and Friday off last week, got some time to do a couple things for my mom then a thing or two for myself. Spent all day Friday working on my own junk. Pre fit the custom Bullet camshaft (thanks Brent) to check for fit, everything felt good and spun nice and smoothly.  Only problem I had with the cam is the standard 0.309" FE cam pins were to loose in the cam, luckily I had some leftover 0.312" SBF cam pins that fit much better with a snug press fit so I went with those instead.  Problem was the cam gear hub was set up to fit the FE cam pins so I had to carefully open up those registers for the larger pins to fit. Affixed the cam retention plate and cam hear hub, everything fit nicely and spins smoothly so I'm happy with that. Took it all back out, cleaned everything up once again then moved on to fitting the crank. Had some clearance issues with #2 counter weight just behind the #2 main. Had to do some clearanceing in that area,  not a huge deal but ofcourse that ment yet another bath. Got it all cleaned up then installed the crank once again. Got her all torqued down, she spun pretty good but I only had about .002" of end play max and i definitely wasn't happy with that so back out the crank came. Made some adjustments on the minor thrust side of the thrust bearings, cleaned them up and back in they went. Installed the crank, torqued it all down again. She spun nice and smooth and i ended up right at .0055" to .006" end play and I'm much happier with that.
Bagged it back up and called it quits. Maybe this weekend I can get the slugs in..

[cjshaker]

Hot thin oil moves fast so the inner tubes protrude down below the drain holes in an effort to Keep the oil streams from fanning (spraying) across  into each other, possibly cutting  off or restricting the vents .

Okay, I get it now. They are crankcase vents that won't be blocked by returning oil. Nice thought process and attention to detail.

[Chrisss31]

Nice write up Keith!  I always give the garage a deep clean and put everything where it belongs before I start a project.  Although, my garage isn't as cool as yours.

[fekbmax]

Nice write up Keith!  I always give the garage a deep clean and put everything where it belongs before I start a project.  Although, my garage isn't as cool as yours.

Thank you sir, I hope to get back on this project soon, maybe this weekend or the Labor day weekend for sure. Been working 60 hrs a week and still doing emergency calls on weekends along with building a chassis for a 65 Rancho so my stuff always gets kicked to the back burner.  Been waiting on a few small parts as well, I know you guys can feel my pain on that one. I do plan on driving up to Pa for the reunion just for 1 day (friday).

[fekbmax]

Just a little update,  had a few hours sunday so I got the cam drive system mocked up again. There Definitely is some work to be done with some fitment issues.  I had heard a few times that there were fitment issues but no one was ever specific about what the problems are so I'll share what I found.
Over all the cover fits good, the cam drive fits good as well although I did have a slight issue with the bullet camshaft. The pin holes were slightly oversized,  standard FE cam pins (.309) would drop right in and slip around so I ended up useing sb ford pins (.312) that are slightly larger and were a good press fit into the cam. This ment I had to enlarge the holes in the cam drive ofcourse because it's drilled for standard FE pins. Wasn't an issue since I have a decent set of machinist bits and was able to get exstreemly close then sneak up on it with a jeweler's roll and get a good snug press fit on both pins. One more thing about the cam drive that's really much to do about nothing but could be a bit of a headache if not addressed is that the advance/retard Mark's are labeled for them to be down at the bottom of the cam gear which would make it really hard to read/adjust because it would be down behind the water pump if you're using a block mounted pump. It's an easy fix though even if you're just useing 1 pin because the cam drive is drilled for 2 and you can just rotate the drive180*  moving the markings to the top. Ofcourse the markings will be upside down but atleast you can see them. Truth of the matter is once you get it dialed in and set it's not something you're gonna be messing with much anyhow. 
Anyway on to the issue's.
The issue is with the crank gear. It sticks out .270 farther than the cam gear which puts it way out of alignment. Looking at the crank gear you would first think there's easy enough on the back side to turn it down and remove the .270 but that's not the real issue.  The issue is the crank gear seal lip falls right between the crank shoulder and the back side of the crank gear so even cutting the gear back the seal is still gonna be in the same place. In my opinion the best way to "really" fix it is to cut the crank shoulder back the .270 so the gear slips thru the seal and back to where it needs to be so that's what I did.
Once the shoulder was cut back the crank gear lined up perfectly and there was more than enough engagement through the seal.
Problem solved..