It started as a small project the got "BIG"

Since this site is dragging a little I thought I would start an extensive thread.:( After Homecoming this year I decided it was time to adjust the valves on the FE 427 Side-Oiler. After pulling the valve cover on the passenger side I noticed the intake gasket was not laying nice and flat against the Edelbrock Aluminum Head. That means one thing, the intake gasket had slipped, I had also noticed that the passenger side pipe was not the nice light ash color it normally was. This happens when it starts sucking oil into the right bank combustion chamber or chambers. After pulling the intake, the gaskets had failed on both heads, the passenger side was just a bit worse off. Fel-Pro Gaskets are great, their intake gasket "sucks", Print-O-Seal turns out Print -O-Leak.Attachment 3242As you can see the gasket is in bad shape.Attachment 3243 So basically just put a new gasket on but not so fast. My Edelbrock Heads don't have Helicoils in the intake holes and I had a few bolts that were getting soft while torqueing the intake down. After trial and error it is impossible to install Helicoils in all 10 holes correctly while the heads are bolted on the block. So the only way to do it correctly is pull the heads off..... You know that is about impossible in a Big Block Car. You may get them off but you will never get them on a torqued down correctly. Now the fun begins, pulling the engine.....more to this story.

rick, i had nothing but trouble with the intake gaskets on my fe after i zero decked the block so i know what you mean. remember my car smoking anti freeze when i unloaded at homecoming 09. did you deck your block any? never oil just coolant. and youre sure right about torqueing the head it can be done but just barely by jackin the motor around. cant wait to hear the restof the story after you pull it down. hope all is good with you and yours. later, brian.

ps my former car got destroyed by the new owner in france if you havent heard already.

Attachment 3246Attachment 3247So I started preparing for the motor to come out of the car. On positive note my friend Butch Capps a Unique owner (2 cars) had installed a new McLeod Dual disc street clutch and Billet Aluminum flywheel in his 427 car. I drove it at Homecoming and really liked the feel of the new clutch. Peddle pressure is great and the engagement is smooth and positive. After Homecoming in early may I had purchased the new clutch and flywheel, both from McLeod. SO I was going to have to pull the transmission anyway and the bell housing. Now pulling the motor in the 427 car is not easy, getting the headers off is a pain, getting them back on will be a pain. There is minimal clearance between the foot boxes and the heads. Anyway the engine came out and was put on the engine stand for partial disassembly. I pulled the heads and took them to a local machine shop to have steel threaded insert put in the heads replacing the factor tapped aluminum holes. Then upon inspection of the cylinders and pistons I noticed a score at approximately 7 o'clock in number 5 hole.Attachment 3244 Not good, something is going on there. Good news was I had the Canton Road Race Pan off replacing the gaskets (windage tray) so easy to pull number 5 piston and take a look. As the piston started out of the hole in my hand so did the top compression ring, broken in two.Attachment 3245 These were FOMOCO cast pistons, stock bore, that had been cut down (originals were high compression ratio domed pistons) these were machined to make a flat top piston with eyebrows. My engine had a 9.8 to 1 compression ratio. So the scored hole was caused by the broken ring, what caused the ring to break? Probably detonation, what caused the detonation, we will look at some of the theories later. After feeling the scored wall you could tell it had damaged the hole somewhat. After much though I remembered that there was a fellow close to me in Kentucky who had built some engines for Unique Car's and he was also a FE guy and knew quite a lot about building FE engines for Cobra's. Enter Brent Lykins, B2 Motorsports in Simpsonville, KY, after a call to Brent about my problem he agreed to come by the garage to take a look. We discovered the scored #5 hole was about .002. So now what am I going to do, several options out there. #1 Hone the cylinder and replace the piston with new rings, #2 put new stock bore pistons and rings in all the holes, the old piston may be damaged, #3 Bore the engine to clean the score, minimum .010 over, #4 Torque Hone the block to clean up #5, then do all the holes the same, order custom pistons to fit. The answer to come:

Rick, you might want to replace the felpro stuff with one from Car Quest, part number MS 15166X. It's made by Victor Reinz - if I spelled that right! I had the same issue with the felpro sliding away and passing water into #5. Now, with the Car Quest part, no more problems.

Jim, I have a set of the Victor gaskets you mentioned, some folks like them some don't. Brent tells me he has had really good results with Edelbrock's Intake gaskets and Mr. Gasket Intake gaskets. We are going to use the Edelbrock Intake Gasket set. I think with an FE engine you can plan on replacing these things every 5 to 6 years if you have aluminum heads and an aluminum intake. Just a big "ole" intake sitting up there!!!

rick, if you got it done, out the door, for 1500 ish id do #4 . if that couldnt happen, depending on what it really takes to hone # 5 clean i would consider #1 with a custom slug (bore size change only) for only that cyl. you gotta consider the overbore is double the size of the groove. .004 wouldnt add that much volume. anything more than that i dont know. and it actually wouldnt save you that much. i know youre going to go with #4. and i would too in all reality. so butch finally did the flywheel/clutch change. we talked about that at H/C 09. i was going to go to that setup, the aluminum flywheel part, but never got to it before my car got sold. on why youre ring broke, could just be an anomoly. sometimes sh*t happens. good luck with it. later brian

niether set of felpros (2) worked for me, but the mr gaskets` sure did. brian.

Brian, you will have to wait for chapter #3, I would jump up and down if I could get #4 done for $1500.00, that may come close on the parts. Yes there is really no way of knowing what caused the broke ring. It was not detonation from fuel as I use 50-60% Sunoco 110 Octane Fuel in mine and I have done that for years and years.

did i ever show you the piston out of my cj motor i blew the ring lands off of from detonation? chunks pinging in the sidepipes. i know i showed it to butch. later, brian.

For me to do this project right I decided to have the Block Torque Honed and turn the engine building over to Brent at B2 Motorsports. The block cleaned up at .003 on number 5 hole and all holes were honed to .003 over. Since this is now going to be a rebuild the block has been squared and decked .005, also has been line honed (mains) I ordered ARP Main bolts to replace the stock Ford main bolts. These have to be used when you line hone the mains, whatever fastener is going on the mains has to be the ones torqued when the line honing is preformed. New ARP head bolts will be used in favor of the original Ford bolts. The pistons will be Diamond Forged Custom Pistons .003 over, changing the cam to one Brent specified, a bullet Custom grind Solid lifter flat tappet cam. Will be using Competition Cam lifters, and custom Trend Pushrods, new Rollermatic Billet timing sprockets for the cam and crank. In checking the cc's of my Edelbrock Heads they were found to be 79 cc instead of the advertised 76cc heads. We are shooting for 10.25 - 10.50 to 1 compression ratio. Will be using the existing Blue Thunder dual plane single 4 intake and the MSD Pro Billet Distributor. So now it's clean all parts up, strip and repaint the bell housing and backing plate. Powder coat some parts and get ready to re-assemble the motor. Brent will break in the cam on the Dyno at his shop and then adjust and tune before he does a Dyno pull to see what we've got. Now it's waiting for the custom Pistons and Cam, once the pistons arrive the Rotating Assembly will have to be re-balanced, with the lighter pistons the crank counterweights will most likely have to be lightened. Shively Speed Machine in Louisville, KY is doing the machine work and balancing. Will check back in 2-3 weeks.

rick, if youre going that far im surprised your not going roller cam. how come? later, brian.

The Hyd. Roller Cam was proposed, but I don't think I would like it in this engine. They are expensive, about $600.00 higher than the new solid lifter parts. I guess I just like adjusting things!!!

with what youre doing im sure youre way past what you wanted to spend already. who did your motor originally? later , brian.

Wow Rick that is some re-do! Thanks for the details it is really interesting to hear what you are doing. Also after you get some miles on it it would be good to get you take on how it feels.
God Bless