Bringing An Old School Straight-Six Back To Life - Engine Power S1, E3

it's time for engine power today it's machine shop tech as we start the rebirth of an old-school ford straight six welcome to engine power where more of it is always the goal more power tire smoke better ets and more checkered flags are fought for so while most guys are stuck in a roll cage on the weekends this is where i get my jollies finding the hidden power potential inside the engine so kind of like a squirrel in a tree this is my haven today we're in springfield tennessee at tommy's auto machine specializing in high performance engines i worked here for six years learning from francofria who's been creating race-winning engine combos since before i was born a customer is on their way to sit in on a dino session for another of one of frank's creations listen frank i'm so glad he took a chance on me a marine fresh back from iraq the boys a little bit of a wild child i say you know came to us you know we hired him and he worked worse for several years and he's a pretty good guy though he's a good worker show him once and gets it you know he kind of goes off here once while i'm in a little singing things and you know back part a little bit annoying you might say so in spite of that he still lets me come back to play sometimes and this is the toy i brought a ford 300 straight 6 from the early 70s born in the 50s making 170 horsepower and a whopping 283 foot-pounds of torque they were tough and reliable it was a perfect match for many service trucks it's not hard to find a fan of these inline sixes jimmy harrington who took my old job claims it's his favorite ride along with the ford 460. they run forever and they run good they're strong motors and uh there's a lot of aftermarket stuff for them you can get four barrel intakes for them headers cams uh a lot of people used to race them and drag racing we did one not too long ago for a rat rod a lot of people using them in off-road trucks and rock crawlers that kind of stuff so 40 years later we plan to bring this thing back to life a lot stronger than before this one retired in a junkyard but it wasn't beyond repair now it will however require some serious machine work for its new purpose and after a few minutes in the shopping here's what we found this year this broke off the bale housing can be fixed but only because we have the other piece now the mains look good with no evidence of heat from a spun bearing but look at this we've got some nasty gouges in this number one cylinder or sleeve i should say you can tell it's a sleeve by that part line right there and that's really no big surprise especially when you know how an inline motor works most of them have the water pump right up here and front next to the number one and two cylinders so it pulls in all that cold water keeping them from expanding as much as the rest of the cylinders creating tighter tolerances which equals more friction so since we didn't have any other cracks on this block first order of business is going to change out that sleeve we first need to get a length measurement of the cylinder so we know how far to bore down and get a measurement of the outside diameter of the sleeve in several spots just to make sure it's round and determine our press fit size after that we can center the cutting head in the bore and sharpen the cutting tool set up the cutter to start boring now frank will take out about 70 thousandths at a time until what's left of the sleeve can come out now here's why it was re-sleeved to begin with a crack in the cylinder wall that goes straight through to the water jacket so with some green loctite sleeve retaining compound we can hammer in the new sleeve resealing that crack now frank can bore the inside diameter of the new sleeve back out to four inches and 55 thousands and spot face the top of the sleeve back down even with the deck surface because these engines are so long warping of the deck surface is common ready so we'll finish the surface up on the decking machine this one wasn't too bad it only needed about an eight thousandths cut to clean up so we're off to a good start on another rebirth of this classic ford 300. we're back and still being a nuisance at tommy's auto machine for more work on this ford 300 and now that all the dry machining is done we can move over to the wet machining getting ready for a line honey frank starts by cutting the bottoms of the caps five thousands [Music] now this should shrink the housing board down to about two and a half thousands i'm prepping the block side of the mains for these new arp studs needed to strengthen the bottom end for the added torque we'll be making with the center cap installed we can hoist it into place now we'll install the rest of the caps and torque them to 70 foot-pounds that way we can check to see how much we actually need to remove then we can hone all the mains back to the exact same size it calls for in a line hence line home now this will create heat so frank does this in stages and checks as he goes along when the gauge hits zero the mains are done and we're ready for the final step in block work honing the cylinders for new rings now frank starts off by setting up shoes or guides by placing them in a fixture inside the cylinder board this tells him what shims to use for this particular bore size then he does the process for the stones this sets up the bore size on the honing head since the stones will wear during the honing the shoes will keep the head straight and true while the stones wear thinner then he's going to bevel the edges of the cylinders to be easier on the stones as well as the rings when it's time to put them in then he sets up the stroke or how far the hone will move up and down in the cylinder if it goes down too far it could crash at the bottom and break the stones since we're already sixty thousandths over on the rest of the cylinders frank starts out by rough honing the number one sleeve to get it close to the rest of the cylinders then it will swap out the stones to a fine grit to finish the block he isn't gonna take a lot of metal out just enough to get a good finish for our new rings and make sure our cylinders are round from top to bottom he moves from one side to the other because honing creates heat this process will help keep it from soaking into the other cylinders and just like the line hone he checks for roundness and taper as he goes along because once you go too far you can't get it back once he's done with the fine stones he's going to ball hone it backwards to knock off any little sharp edges left from the stones and then finish it with some brushes to get that slick finish for a good ring seal short of a jet wash we're done with the block and i think frank has done with us too his customers due soon to sign off on the dyno results and while frank is busy i'm ready to take advantage of a shop full of machines and tools we're back and while frank and jimmy are running the pumps on this soon to leave street engine i'm burning time on their machines now we're not only just doing block work today we're also going to fix this cylinder head and we've gone ahead and run it through the oven and shopping and check for cracks we're good we've got a good core that's about all it is right now this thing's going to need a lot of love if we want to run it and that's because when the lead was removed from pump gas in the 70s the cast in exhaust seats couldn't take the abuse now even though they look like they've been replaced look how far these have sunk compared to the intakes now that lead was a great upper cylinder lubricant but since we can't get that at the pump anymore we've got to install some hardened exhaust seats now before we can do that we've got to put in some liners first we need to knock out the old liners in the intake guides and after all the intakes are out we can install the new ones next we'll run this bro stewart that's got expanders on it which will seat the liner inside the guide and start the sizing process trim off the excess and finally hone them out to size in our case about 1 000 clearance now the exhaust have had bronze false guides put in them so we'll just touch them up with a hone and save them at about a thousandth and a half clearance and once we're done honing the guides we can wash the head get it ready to replace those exhaust seats and it starts with cutting the olens out now this is really where you got to know what you're doing if you don't have the right fitment you can crack the head or the seat could fall out while the motor is running so after making sure the guide is straight and in line with the drill determine the diameter of the new seat and match it with the cutter slightly smaller now carefully cut them out we also preset the depth we want with the drill stop and if done right this is all that's left these are a press fit so we'll need to put in some high temp sealer just to help them stick and after about an hour or so in the freezer the seats will shrink just a little bit this will help us hammer them in and when it warms back up the expansion will keep them there next we can flip it over and work on the top side we're going to remove the preston 38 studs for screw in but first we need to remove the pins which are a good and cheap upgrade to the factory studs but what we'll be doing is ripping them out cutting them down and tapping the holes for a set of 7 16 screw and studs we'll be installing during assembly and after we're done with the rocker upgrade we can cut down the valve guides for a positive control seal now this will help keep the seal stationary attached to the guide unlike the umbrella seal that moves up and down with the valve now we're ready for the fun stuff the valve job we'll start off with the exhaust seats and this is what's going to help us make some good power this is a cutter i like to use on some of my high performance engines that has a 40 000 seat width and a beautiful radius throat cut and once i've cut the first seat i'll check by lapping it in this will leave a mark where our seats area is that is perfect the intakes aren't bad a simple touch-up is all they need and while i finish we ask frank for one more favor balancing the crankshaft first by spinning the crank to see where we need to add or remove metal to bring the crankshaft to a true zero balance looks like we need to remove three grams in the front and one in the back not bad but not perfect so frank grinds away a small amount of extra metal from the front to see where that puts us and checks again getting closer one gram in the front one gram in the back so frank grinds a little more and spins again perfect up front now we can work on the back by drilling a small hole in the counterweight and yep you guessed it another spin nice now all that's left to do is dress the cast and flash off the crank and roll over the sharp edges this will add just a little bit of strength to a cast crank it's the little things that go a long way when building a reliable and powerful engine we're almost done for the day frank's ready to show a customer the results of his labor that's like that's one of those things that you never get your money back out of mike shelton along with his son and grandson are here for the show he ordered a stroked 408 cleavoir for his weekend street truck [Music] first run 472 in horsepower 5 30 in torque i mean we play with the timing a little bit and we got to set at 34 degrees a bump to 36 degrees and one more run 482 and power 542 and torque that was awesome a whole lot better than i anticipated honestly i was expecting 390 and 490 on the torque yeah nothing's real radical i mean mild cam if you want to pull something with it it'll pull it crazy it's crazy never anticipated that much and that makes the check a whole lot easier to write while frank ends on a high note i've got one more thing to get done now we've shown you guys before how upgrading your main cap fasteners to an arp stud can make your block stronger and every time we build an engine we either use an arp head bolt or stud but i want to go over one of the most overlooked and overworked parts of the motor and that's the rod bolt so whether it's a high performance build or just a stock daily driver changing them out really is a must and after they've been tore down and run through the shot pain the first step is to touch up our big insides on the belt sander now this is just a touch-up only slightly holding the rod down until we get shiny metal then we can touch up the small ends as well now this isn't that critical on a straight six because each rod has its own journal but on a v8 the rod share journal so this is how side clearance is set too little side clearance and you can lose horsepower or even burn up a rod bearing too much and you can lose oil pressure i'll be cutting the rod half about one thousandth of an inch now this takes a while to get good at because if you cut too much it's hard to keep the bore around when you're holding it back out and if you've cut the rod at an angle then you'll fight taper which means one side of the rod will be a different size than the other the caps get the same treatment again at about a thousandths this should in theory make my housing board 2 000 smaller so i can hone it back out to size now we're ready for the new arp rod bolts and with a little lube we can start them by hand and carefully use the press to lock them in these are a through bolt so they have a knurled area on them that will seat them inside the rod keep them from moving now obviously the reason we're putting in new rod bolts is because the arps are much stronger than the factory original but it also will make the rod itself stronger too then we can install the caps back on the rods which they came off of torque them down and start honing now this is the sun and power stroke machine that holds the rod for you to keep everything true and round but it's not going to size the rod automatically i have to hone for a couple of seconds and then check then hone for a couple more seconds and then check again now right here i'm at about a half a thousandths from zero so i'll slow down until i get to the exact size sweet i love it when a plan comes together frank taught me a lot about machining frank and a lot about life as well he loves giving people more than expected very very impressed with the numbers it's not just good business but i appreciate the extra 75 foot pound of torque too it's a hard to find passion even if it does leave on an old tire i hope someday you will find your frank if you're looking for an exhaust system that sounds great and will last a lifetime under your ride this is it magnaflow's new 2014 camaro ss full cat-back system now this thing is made from 100 3-inch stainless steel tubing and it's mandrel bent over here 5 by 8 by 14 mufflers that lead out to a polished tip now this is going to give a nice smooth deep tone now these things are dyno proven to make horsepower and torque want to change the tone of your ss well you can to the tune of 600 bucks the higher the horsepower goal the more specialized the parts are going to have to be and that's why harlan sharp now offers a fully adjustable set of shaft mount rockers for the late model hemis now what i mean by that is when you start adding cam lift spring pressure and higher rpms the factory rocker arms simply won't do and any of you out there that have ever broken a rocker arm especially with a needle bearing setup know the costly repairs that come along with it now these things aren't cheap but the added assurance of knowing you've got a stronger shaft set up and the fact that they don't require any machining to the cylinder head sound pretty good but the fact that you can get them at summitracing.com today sounds even better whether you're adding power to a sport compact muscle car or european and you need a little extra fuel summit racing now offers ditch works injectors now these things offer an excellent spray pattern and atomization for great idling characteristics and easy tuning now each set is flow tested and comes with its own report this set is for mustang gt and will run you about 489 bucks if you need pricing for your application log on to summitracing.com and we'll see you again for the second part of john's classic ford 300 put back together the way you guys would do it with affordable performance parts now we're not building a race engine just a stronger version of ford's old work mule we'll see you then you

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 560,950

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock

Id: 7_L4aMY-NIU

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021