So when I was 21, I was building a 390 for my 75 F250 factory hiboy. I was a proud arrogant 21 year old, that was sure he knew lots of things. I was working at a Diesel shop where I rebuilt diesel fuel injection components, and I had free run of our complete engine machine shop. With some help of the many machinists we had, hard seats new guides, bore hone surface, everything but a balance job was very inexpensive, so we could have very quality work on even basic rebuilds. So I was assembling a very nice fresh 390 block at my dad’s shop. I had the heads on, ready to set the intake, all warm and fuzzy cause my truck was gonna breathe fire that weekend. My dad walks up with a can of Raineer in hand, casually says: Cam plugs in backwards, and walks away. Now I was building big block chevys for bracket racers much older than me. I had put my nova in the low 10s. I looked at my buddy and said what’s wrong with my old man? The next afternoon, I decided my dad new more about cam plugs on fords than I did, while I watched the oil run out the inspection cover of my NP435. So valuable lesson learned, the hard way.
