351 Cleveland Rebuild

Background
Specifications

The Bottom End:

The Top End:

The Transmission:

Credits:

The Block and Bottom End:
In The Beginning

This rebuild started with a short block I picked up a couple of years ago, before the current engine grenaged. For my purposes, to save overall time and hassle, I chose to rebuild this block for replacement into the Mach I. The current engine installed in the car had already been bored .030 over when I rebuilt it in 1985, so the chances are slim that is is rebuildable again.

	This is pretty much how I received the block. It had spent some time outside, but covered. We see the top side of the block. All the piston tops look charred. There were no heads when I purchased this block. From this position, you can clearly see the water outlet at the front, and the distributor hole to the right.
Turning the engine over, Here we see the bottom end with the oil pan still in place. The whole thing is prety worn. Small spots of a shade of blue paint are faintly seen here and there. Evidence of oil leaks abound. From here we will remove the oil pan and start removing rods and pistons.
	Once the pan was off, we can see inside. The majority of the bottom end looked pretty bad. I would venture to say this engine had been run low on oil sometime in it's past. All parts were pretty well coated with a hardened soot. You can see the oil pump pickup in this shot, has a shroud around it. This aids the pickup during cornering, by preventing all the oil from sloshing to the side. Also, the oil pan had a large baffle in it. Note also the 2-bolt main caps.

The first engine I did for the Mach I was in similar shape, the only difference being that this one didn't smell like burnt oil. That was probably due mostly to the fact it had been out of a car for a few years, allowing the smell to dissapate.

	Here it's difficult to see, but I have the oil pump sitting on the baffle "shelf" in the oil pan. This is constructed so a majority of oil stays put around the pickup on hard corners. Since this Mach I is used more for everyday type use, we will re-use this pan, along with using an oil accumulator for thos times when the system does go into oil starvation.
This is the Harmonic Balancer. It was in very pathetic shape. As you can see here, the rubber ring between the inner hub and the outer balance ring, is severely cracked. Being very well worn, I decided to have this one rebuilt by Damper Dudes. I sent this one out, and got a different one back. What I got back was better. : )
	Here is the tming set in all it's glory. Amazingly enough, the plastic teeth are still intact around the aluminum gear. The last original engine I took apart had all the plastic gone and the chain was running straight on the aluminum gear. If you look at the photo just right, you can see how much slop there was in the chain, though not bad, it would need replacing. Again, look at how dirty this all was, black everywhere.