Quote:
Originally Posted by Sprucegagt
What are the hurdles you had to overcome? I'm sure others here would like to know any possible hiccups with this install.
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i suppose Eric wouldn't have a problem with me answering this ...
well for starters, everyone knows how fun headers are, that bottom front bolt on the right is horrible. anyways i decided to take the heads off b/c a) would make my job a lot easier, b) wanted to check for sure that his ported cylinder heads that someone did would hold up to the .559 lift, b/c i was still skeptical. so i take the heads off with headers attached. take the heads to the machine shop, and we were getting coil bind at .470 which means the biggest cam you could run safely would be around .430. guess what a stock cam is. so i outfitted the heads with the valvetrain we use on our heads, and now we get coil bind at about .610 which is more than enough to safely run the cam. this knocked us back about 2 days b/c we had to order parts, then i had my machine shop do like a 1.5hr turnaround while i slept in my truck. by the way, my machine shop is about 70 miles from my house, i made one trip there to find the max lift, then drove home, ordered parts and went back two days later. so that was wednesday ... after driving what seemed like all day going to the machine shop and a few other places, i went to the shop, and installed the new rear main seal, oil pan gasket, camshaft, timing components, front cover, etc, and got the motor ready to drop in the car, and called it quits for the day. so yesterday, i dropped the engine in, and was going to get it started that night, so long story short, i've got the intake gaskets on with rtv at the corners, tightening down the valvetrain, and this one rocker keeps giving me trouble. it keeps acting like it's cross-threading. so i backed it out and tried again, and again, and again. i noticed a small scratch on the intake side, near the rocker mount that looked like someone scratched it with a pick. only thing i didn't like was that the scratch started right at that corner of the square notch that the rocker its in. for those who don't know, the corner of a square hole is actually a stress concentration, so a point where a crack would more likely occur. anyways, decide to try the rocker bolt again, watching the "scratch" to confirm my thoughts on it, and sure enough when i tightened it down it got bigger. the head was cracked. came to find out that the previous owner had a rocker hole rethreaded with heli-coil, and last time Eric had it apart, he had to have it rethreaded again, so i wouldn't blame this on the part, probably installer error by whoever did the job first. so anyways off with the head, we are taking it to the porting shop later today so we can match one of our cores to it's port work, and i get it back on saturday, but still have to wait till Monday to make another trip to the machine shop, where i have to make them do another real quick turn-around. at the same time, the shop i'm doing the install at, the guys are getting ready to move out like tuesday next week, so i have to get the car done monday, tuesday at the latest, and back to my house for tuning, etc. so the head cracking wasn't really as bad as the lack of time. now i just have to order another headgasket, 8 more head bolts to replace the new ones that just got torqued down, etc. oh well, **** happens i guess. we'll get it running, but now you have an idea or the hurdles we have to overcome.
in hindsight, i'm glad i took the heads off to check the lift. otherwise 12 broken valvesprings would have definately been worse. if you're running different heads than ours, or different springs than stock, we will require a waiver to be signed if we're doing an install. the cost to modify your heads to work is around $350 or so.
