This is what happens when you're 20 years old, live downtown in a tiny apartment, and need to build a new 350 cuz your old L03 just blew up...

It had finally had enough, spun a rod bearing or something on the highway and promptly shook itself to pieces and siezed. Sucked, but at the same time was somewhat amusing, I knew that motor was gonna go any day now.

Luckily I'm almost done with my 350, picked up a rebuilt short block for $275, tore it down just to make sure it was as advertised (craigslist buy), just got my bow tie heads back from the machine shop (new valves, cut seats, new valve guides), cleaned up a '91 TPI intake with harness and ecm (also from craigslist).

Just waiting on some more cash to get all the valvetrain stuff (XFI268 cam, retrofit roller lifters (I'm using a late 70's block), 1.5 roller rockers, valvesprings, retainers, seals, pushrods), PROM tuning gear, misc. gaskets and hardware, new starter, water pump, higher stall converter, headers, y pipe, 3 inch cat, catback, and I'll be back in business

 

I hope you live on the first floor. How do you plan on getting a fully assembled 350 from your living room to your car?

 

YA GOTTA LOVE IT . now thats a real gearheads apartment .

 

My dad was telling me about him and his buddy building a motor on the counter of a gas station his buddy worked at. Well, they built it, started carrying it out and found out that they should have measured first. Had to pull the heads to get it out the door.

 

You sir are my hero. Good luck removing it from your apartment, I hope it goes well.

 

lol, nice pic. Just put a big square piece of glass on top of the block and use it as a coffee/end table (until you are ready to build it).

 

Yeah I'm on the first floor luckily.

My engine stand won't fit through the front door though, so once everything's done and I'm ready for final assembly I'm gonna take the short block off the stand, get my room mate to help me carry it outside, disassemble the stand, then do final assembly out on the covered patio, then seal it up with tape and trash bags and stuff until it goes in the car

It's more of a duplex than an apartment, at least it's in a college neighborhood so the neighbors are pretty cool with me pulling an engine in the alley

Ghetto, I know, but I've got to do it

 

Actually I was thinking about doing that, I've got 2 350 blocks, but the first one I bought (the red one next to the couch) was no good, cracked, but it cleaned up real nice, would make an awesome coffee table, I've got the glass already

 

lol want to see ur neighbor face as you hauled that block to your apartment lololol would be fun if you made a backyard engine dyno in there haha and started that bad boy up with not headers in the apartment lol good luck anyway

 

well haivng a garage and all the tools aint all cracked up to what everyone says it is...............people always want to come over to my house to work on their cars, and somehow i wind up working on them, the only plus side of all of this is that i tell em to bring a donation to beer fridge in the garage

but good luck with that motor, better find a way to lock it up when its outside, things like that tend to grow legs and walk off

 

Yeah I'm gonna keep it inside for as long as I can, until I'm ready to drop it in the car

The weight of it alone should be enough of a deterrent, plus our patio has a gate, and it's not visible from the street, so I'm not really worried about it getting stolen, I just want to keep it out of the elements until it's fully assembled and sealed up

After blowing up the L03 I'm getting all OCD about this new motor, keeping it perfectly clean, triple checking all clearances and torque specs, etc., don't really care that I destroyed the 305 (except I don't have a car until I get this done), but now I see what can happen if I don't do this right

 

Good man. That's dedication to your hobby. Lots to be learned when you live with your parts. You'll know that stuff backwards and forwards from looking at it every day.

A living room is NOT a bad place to assemble an engine. Know why? It's probably cleaner than most garages.

Save those pictures! Win or lose on this build, you will be telling your children about this someday.

You can hold your head high because you're OLD SCHOOL now, baby. What you're doing is where this hobby began. Build what you can, where you can, with what you got.

 

True, every day I wake up and see that engine, imagine it in the car, either work on it for a for an hour or two, or get on the computer and read posts on here, make parts lists, compare specs/prices, etc...

With no car right now I can't really do much else, good motivation to save every penny I've got, learn everything I can

Luckily I'm at an age and living situation where I can do stuff like this without anybody complaining, turn on some good music, smoke a bowl, have a beer, and work on my 350 all afternoon

I think I need to go to Summit Racing rehab... gotta make rent this month but all I want to do is buy car parts!

 

Lol, I did it! Junk block = badass coffee table

 

Lol wow they should sell old engine blocks as coffee tables now thats recycling.

 

Is that carpet?

 

No, it's concrete

 

Maybe you can rig up the cylinders to be cupholders in the meantime. You can turn the pistons upside down and they will serve as nice ash trays. I once visited a friends house back in the day and he had a nice dual quad set up on his kitchen table. "Honey... Can we go out for dinner tonight?" The funny thing is his wife didn't even seem to care. LOL.

 

yeah the junk block I bought came with a set of stock dished pistons, they'd make nice ash trays, problem is I'd have to get a machine shop to press the wrist pins out, or maybe I could just dremel the small end of the conrod off, the old rods are useless anyways.

As for the other block/pistons/crank/rods, I'm not using them for anything else, it's all wrapped up in trash bags to keep it clean until I get the rest of the parts to put it together, I'd rather not trash the main bearings by doing something stupid like spilling coffee in there, don't think coffee/soda/beer and assembly lube mix very well...

All the parts are on order, should be here in a couple days, only things I need besides what I just ordered are the 268XFI retrofit K-kit (~$950), exhaust (shorty headers, y-pipe, 3 inch cat, 3 inch catback), and all the PROM tuning stuff. That will wait a couple weeks when i get more money, but until then I've got plenty of work to do:

-Remove the L03, get a few laughs at the destruction
-clean the engine bay
-re-pin the '91 TBI harness to '91 speed density TPI (I also have a hacked up TPI harness to scavenge injector connectors, etc)
-make sure the 700r4 and the engine accessories are still in good shape
-drop the fuel tank, install my BBK 255lph fuel pump
-rebuild the bottom end of the 350 (guy said it was recently rebuilt, but there was some copper showing on a few of the rod bearings so I'm gonna replace em anyways, keep it safe)
-Gasket match the TPI base
-Have the TB milled out to 52mm (or bigger???)
-Go sit in my car and turn the wheel and make engine sounds

 

i know a guy who had a friends that was OCD about his motor an lined the gap in the rings all up in a line ....then wondered why it had no compression and burned oil

vrooom vrooom!!!!!

 

How about a bottle of Bourbon for that bar of yours?

 

My dads paperweight in his office is a 12:1 327/365horse piston he had in his 55 chevy till he missed a shift one night. My paperweight is a chunk of a cruz pedregon TF piston. And building Muncie 4spds on the kitchen table is a great way to **** my mom off (along with entire 3cyl snowmobile engines.

People do sell those engineblock tables...for big money. Did you just sit it on your floor or fab up a cradle?

make sure you use good oil, if youre using dual valvesprings, you want to take the inner ones out and run in the motor. never mind I remembered you have a roller cam. Fire that sexy bish up and run it easy for a day, then do some 0-60-0 and cruise at 60 to seat the rings. OFFSET your rings (jesus!) and make a crank scraper while youre waiting for parts. Id also get a dremel and polish your intake manifold top and tubes (either a nice satin or a high end bling.

you COULD run that thing in your apartment...make a cradle, dummy up your fuelpump with a gascan and well...Im gonna be not responsible for this (and you'd have to disable VATS and all the other bunny hugging stuff)

Keep that diehard spirit alive man!

 

+1

 

Cool build. Neat coffee table!

 

Well, today is a good day

Re-honed the cylinders myself, got the bottom end put back together with new bearings, rings, ARP hardware

And I got my cam kit in the mail today! Cost a pretty penny for the 268XFI retrofit roller kit (with the beehive springs, retainers, pushrods, etc), but I'm excited about having the reliability of a full roller setup (roller lifters, Summit machined aluminum 1.5 roller rocker arms)

Got all the parts I need, just got to put it together now and check my valve to piston clearance, etc, gasket match the TPI base, and drop 'er in!

Still don't know what to do about the transmission though. The stock 700r4 was working fine, but I have a feeling it won't last long behind this new motor. Would it be worth it to have it rebuilt with some beefier parts, or get a new one and trade the old one as a core, or get a beefed up T5 or T56? I really want a manual tranny but I'm worried about the strength of the T5 and difficulty of finding parts for T56 conversion

Heard it's kind of hard to find a flywheel for a 2-piece crank that will work with the T56, that will cause some headaches...

 

well if you go manual, you would also need a longer driveshaft and shift plate.
i like how this is going though

 

I have engine parts everywhere in my house and garage.

 

LOL, looks great. Put some cup coasters on the glass so you don't mark it up. lol, and put a magazine or two on your "coffee table."

 

LOL, I have a friend who has a coffe table like that (Cracked ls-1 block) Makes moving a bigger pain in the azz, though. I would put the thing in there and start saving for a t-56 if thats what you want. The 700r4's are a lot tougher than most people think. Plan on spending at least 2,000 buck for a t-56 conversion. The 2pc rear main flywheels arent really that expensive or hard to come by.

 

Yeah I'm gonna drop the engine in there with the stock tranny and see how long it lasts. Going to need to upgrade the rear end at some point too.

Going to go real easy on the motor till it's broken in and I get the tuning right, then start opening it up once I know I have the money to fix it when stuff starts breaking

 

Well I got my heads assembled now, installed the cam, degreed it the best I could (should be good enough, I'm not too worried), installed timing chain and cover, and checked my piston to valve clearance.

I didn't have a solid lifter to use to check VTP clearance, so I just removed the valve springs on the #1 cylinder and used my hand to hold the valves closed, spun it over a few times. Plenty of clearance even with no head gasket, so all is good

Fitting the timing cover was a pain though, I'm using a Summit cast aluminum cover, and it didn't have enough clearance between the cover and the cam button, I had to remove 0.092" from the back of the cam button to get .007" clearance

 

well now I'm waiting on parts to arrive again...

From being machined a few different times, the valve seats on my heads are not all the same height, so I'm waiting on a valvespring shim kit to get the spring heights all the same, a couple are way off. Not enough to affect combustion chamber volume too much, but enough to affect seat pressure definitely.

Once I get that taken care of though, the motor is pretty much done Torque the heads, adjust the rockers, install the headers, intake and accessories, drop 'er in!

I've really taken my time on this build and done my homework, so hopefully my first SBC rebuild is a success. If my camera decides to work I'll make a video of the first start

 

gettin there, just got to finish porting the TPI base so those minuscule intake ports can sort of line up with the aluminum heads...

I'd just go and get a hi-flow TPI base, but I'm pretty good with a dremel, and poor, so DIY made the most sense