351 Cleveland Rebuild

Background
Specifications

The Bottom End:

The Top End:

The Transmission:

Credits:

The Top End:
The Heads

I had picked up a set of heads a while back. They had been packaged and were supposedly all set to go. Well, I guess I wasn't too surprised when I unboxed them later and found they really were not what I had expected. They had been done alright, just not correctly. New valve guides had been installed but not been machinded at the top for positive seals. This was a problem in that the top is crowned and when they pressed in the new guides, the crowns cracked. Machining took care of that. The valves and seats appeared to have only been "lapped" and not actually machined. The springs and retainers didn't fit together well, very sloppy and it had all original valves installed. I took them to Cylinder Head Service of Spokane, WA. They fixed me up real well.I finally got a camera that can get me some good close up photos too..

	These are the finished heads. 4V Cleveland heads with Quench combustion chambers, D0AE. All new Stainless valves from Manley were installed. Hardened seats were installed in all exhuast valve locations. The heads were planed about .004 and look great. All new hardware was used as well, new Crane valve springs, retainers and keepers, matched to the cam being used.
This is an indication of a job well done. When I dropped off the heads, I left my Crane catalog with them, along with all the new parts. The arrow in this photo points to valve spring shims installed under the spring. These are used to get the correct installed spring height. This is critical for proper open and closed spring pressures. These are almost always needed when rebuilding heads and having the valves done.
	Now the fun part. These heads were not the BOSS 351 variety, so the rocker arm pedastals were not machined flat. Since this is a very intense process to machine (multiple angles, mutliple machine setups), most shops won't do the machine work unless you pay a lot of money. Crane Cams sells a conversion kit that allows you to install studs for adjustable rockers. Here, we are chasing all the pedastal threads with a tap.
After chasing all the bolt holes and blowing them out, we place the pushrod guide plate on the pedastal. These help keep the hardened pushrods in place. Later, a plastic insert will actually go into the slot and the pushrod goes through the plastic part. More photos later as we put the heads on the block.
	The conversion kit comes with new studs, guidelplates, guideplate inserts, special thread-locker and an installation tool. Well, it's just an adjusting nut and stop nut really, but it works great. To assembly, apply some of the thread locker to the stud end inserted into the head, then torque to Crane's specification. The most important part is to let this whole assemlby sit for a good day or so to let the thread locker do it's job.