1. Just noticed the very small holes (.020" or so) in two of the 3 front small oil gallery plugs. What is the purpose of this, never saw them on other SBC's.
Do I need to order the holey ones from GM or can I measure the hole and drill my own?

2. Where do I get that square tipped tool to pull the thread in plugs?

3. Is there only (1) passage clogging steel ball to be removed?

 

1. The general concensus is that these holes are meant for lubing the waterpump gear if you are still running a factory waterpump. If you're running a double roller, most seem to not worry about it. I for one do not have the holes in my new freeze plugs.. running a double roller w/ no issues or noise after 1400 miles.

2. Those are roberson bits.. check autoparts stores.

3. not sure

 

The Mike Mavrigian book on rebuilding the LT1/LT4 speculates that the holes are also intended to vent air from the oil galleries, in addition to providing oil for the timing chain.

 

When I got my block back from the machine shop, it had regular freeze plugs without the holes in it. I went to Ace hardware and got a .030 drill bit and drilled them just to be safe, even though I'm running a double roller and EWP. I figure they certainly cant hurt anthing being there

 

I was told by one of the guys at VRE that their double roller shortblocks don't go out with the holes drilled. I figure they have built enough to where if there were problems, we'd know about it

It can't hurt to have 'em either way.

 

Well I certainly agree with that, if I had known this bit of info at that time I probably wouldn't have bothered. But I still don't think they'll hurt anything drilled

 

Nothing against Victory but I am confident that the GM engineers had a valid reason for these holes or they would not have done it. I am going to either ndrill my own or order the GM's.

 

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with having them, so if you decide to drill 'em out, no problems there.

My engine was assembled and ready to go at the time, and the research I did showed it wasn't worth it to disassemble for my particular setup.

 

the word gallery is not anywhere near the engine.

oil galley. a passage .... galley galleys is plural

 

My bad, glad I could provide a good laugh. Thanks for the clarification.