I'm helping my friend rebuild his 350 out of a 77 z28. As far as I know the end caps are going on right, and we are torquing them to 45 foot pounds like Chilton's says to. Then crank turns fine when all the rods are on it, but after 4 or more rods have been torqued down the crank becomes extremely hard to turn. We bolted the balancer and crank pulley on to use that to turn and after the 5th rod is torqued the crank will not budge even with the 2 of us leaning on it. The crank and bearings were bought together, we clearanced 4 of the 8 rod bearings and they were all the same. Everything has been greased like crazy with assembly lube but it just won't turn. When the rods are loose it turns easily which leads me to believe that there's something going on with the rods. Any ideas?

 

seems like this borderlines on advanced tech...

 

Chris
When the end caps were removed was the location of each cap noted , the end caps and main bearing caps must go back in the same location from . eg same cap on same rod and the main caps as they came off . Check all mains and bigend bearing clearances using plastigauge , this will show the tight ones , let me know how you go
O'Call .

 

O'Call hit it right on the head. Not only do the rod and main caps have to go back in the same position, they have to have the same orientation as well. If you didn't mark them when you tore it down, all you can do is put them on one at a time, and turn it after each one. If it's significantly harder to turn, or if it won't turn at all, take the last one off and try a different one.