351 Cleveland Rebuild

Background
Specifications

The Bottom End:

The Top End:

The Transmission:

Credits:

The Block and Bottom End:
In The Beginning

I gave up the block, rods and crank to a friend in the Inland Empire Mustang Club, George Litton, who works at a local machine shop, Evergreen Engine Exchange. George would be polishing the rods and making sure all the other things got done. For this project, I purchased a Torque Plate from Peterson Machine back east, since no machine shop in Spokane had one. The block was bored and hones with the Torque Plate in place. This helps provide a much more "true" round hole for the piston to move in, otherwise the bore is usually somewhat eliptical.

Although not pictured (I didn't have a good "close-up" camera until later), George performed an engine oiling modification that can be found in the Ford Performance book, available at most auto speed shops. The mod inserts oil restrictors in each of the vertical bores that go to the lifter galley, from the main bearing journal. Geroge did a great job.

The rotating assembly was taken to a local 351C expert, Rick Monahan, who balanced everything for us. The crank was turned .010 under and the appropriate bearings obtained.

	The refurbished block, .030 over, painted & clean
	I hadn't obtained my new camera yet, so I didn't get any close up photos of the oiling mods done by George Litton. Here, we see the crank already in place with the Main Caps in place. A new neoprene rear main seal was used and oriented in accordance with the factory manual rear main seal installation instruction.
This is the reason I decided I needed a new camera. My old one only has a focal depth of about 4 feet for close-ups, which make shots like this one turn out fuzzy. The arrow is pointing to a piece of Plasti-gage that has been torqued under the front main cap, to illustrate what should be done to each journal to make sure the clearances are correct. I this case, all main and rod journals came to well within the factory specs.