Hey everyone,

My project has made a huge step forward this Thanksgiving week. I have my 350 on the engine stand disassembled. I removed the crank, pistons, and cam from it so I can take it to the shop to be cleaned and bored .030. Now I have a couple questions for you experienced engine rebuilders. I have assembled an old 351M Ford engine from scratch, but that was 3yrs ago, and I wanna re-familiarize myself with these terms. The crank has no obvious scratches on the journals, I am going to just have it "polished", is that just to clean up the journals? Do I need different size bearing wehn I reassemble (.001, .020, etc)? This engine was reported to have only about 20-40,000 miles on it. When I reassemble do I really have to plastigauge? And my last question...I am having new pistons pressed onto my rods, anything special I need to tell the shop or need to know? They will be speed-pro 12-1 pistons. Oh yeah, and anything special about the cam bearings? I will be using an XE-294 cam. Thanks for all your help people, I wanna get the block to the shop and back before Christmas. How much should I expect to pay for all this? Later

BamaZ28

 

Crank should be miked after polishing. If it's in specs, no problem. If it's a little undersize, use .001" bearings. If I measure a crank at good size, a lot of times I will make long strips of ultrafine sandpaper and use wd-40 and a shoeshine action to polish the journals. I always do this after having a crank ground undersize just to smooth the surfaces.

If you don't mike things, you should at least use plasigage. Shops make mistakes. You wouldn't want to install your newly assembled engine and find you have no oil pressure cause the clearnces are afu would you? Better to catch it during assembly. And yes, I have had cranks delivered wrong size.

Pop up pistons need to be assembled the right way cause some of them have different size pockets for the valves. Example: the L & R in the pn of Keith Black pistons doesn't mean left or right bank (no matter what the Summit or Jegs catalog might say). It means where the intake pocket is. Consult your piston manufacturer.

Nothing special about the cam bearings.

 

So the plastigauge is just ensuring I have the correct clearnaces (which would mean I have the correct bearings right?) Also what is line boring and chamferring? Thanks for your info

BamaZ28