BUDGET Chevy Big Block Build! - Part 1 of 3 ( Short Block Assembly )

hey there feller welcome back to vice script garage the time has finally come this is part one of three where i'm gonna be assembling a budget big block for my 1972 chevrolet chevelle that i fondly call independence it's over here somewhere so in the video here today we're basically going to be assembling a short block cam crank rods pistons and then we'll go ahead and take a deep dive right down in the pistons bore measurements and a couple other things let's get started [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to what i call my engine room which really doesn't make sense because i quite literally do everything in here including store cold snacks as there's no heat in here but anyway high level this is going to end up once it's in the car a pro charged holley efi 460 cubic inch chevy big block but for this mini series once i get this built we're going to put it on the dyno and runner hard carbureted so if you're on a strict budget this absolutely does apply to you but i have to tell you this build does include a lot of new parts i fell into a couple bumps with my block and i'll explain that as we go and i was also missing some basic pieces like timing cover and oil pump and so on if you want to see a couple hundred dollar just refresh what you have i've got one of those builds in the playlist and also a really decent small block chevy street engine for about 1500 bucks so if this doesn't quite apply to you you can swing over and check one of them out now i had a lot of great feedback on those builds but one of the most common questions was how come you didn't put all the way to the penny including shipping and tax what every single part costs and where are all the links to every single part nope not gonna do that not only am i lazy and that's a significant amount of work but i would have to continually update that because prices change links change businesses change website google machine things change i don't know it's too much so once again i'm going to speak in ranges in generalities and you might not be running what i have you might already have a set of heads or you might already have cam shaft in mind so you can add and deduct as we go and come up with your own value the basics of this is i'm building for me what i consider a budget big block for my purpose which is to end up a pro-charged holley engine so speaking of parts let's start there i'm going to show you what we have as far as a crank cam rods pistons and rings and then let's get assembling this thing i'm going to jump right into the heart of the build to talk about camshafts i went with the comp cams retrofit hydraulic roller this is a 661 671 and a 110 and i have to say comp really impressed me this is a custom grind i filled in a form talked to the guys on the phone the next morning they got back to me with here's exactly what you need for that engine they're on all of the compression i mean you name it they had this thing dialed in and i actually ended up going with comp everything so lifters push rods rockers valve springs you name it this engine is going in a burnout car so extreme rpm for minutes on end is basically what i'm building this thing for valve train geometry and durability is absolutely paramount for me so if you want to save a few bucks right up front going to be honest with you you can go with like a comp hydraulic flat tap it or some of their other options and still make incredible power i just decided to kick it up and go with the roller this time as far as bearings we're going to go with king performance series on rod bearings and main bearings we're going with hastings performance rings again you don't have to go with king but for me in my circumstance i'm going to need that extra protection and durability so to offset a little bit of this cost and this is going to be a little controversial because it does limit me in the end as far as horsepower goes but i plan on doing several renditions of this engine in the future so i went ahead and just went this route for now i went with a stock crank so that saved me right there i mean good cranks forged cranks six hundred to a thousand dollars i've even seen them more than that i did have to have this one turned we did have some damage there was either a spun bearing or a damaged bearing when i got this engine i wasn't aware of so this is what's called a 1010 crank they got 10 off the mains and 10 off the rods so i had to get oversized bearings to compensate for that i also saved some money here on my connecting rods these are just stock connecting rods they're not forged so i already had them didn't spend a dollar i did drop some arp hardware in it though as far as pistons go these are sealed power forged pistons and they're a pop-up piston we'll get to look at these a little bit closer when we get to installing the rings on here now i'll take you down to the floor and we'll gander out the old block down here and we'll also do some block identification and see exactly what this thing is and where it came out of so as far as identification goes i'm just going to show you here on the chevy big block if you've got a mopar or a ford you might have to take a manifold off you might have to remove a starter same with head identification sometimes you got to take the head off gm is always stamped right on the outside so the top of the head block casting pad even on axles transmissions you name it it's in a nice visible area so this is going to be really easy for us here so on these older engines in the back there's always this right here 399 9289 i can already tell you is a 72 to 78 454. so we know we have a 454. and a lot of cases that's enough to buy a core engine you just look at this number and say yep that's going to work and away you go if you want more information than that you can come up to this pad and it's always right here and with the head on you can still read this and this says t0621trw what that means it was built in tonawanda june 21st and trw means truck so this came out of a pickup also we have an actual partial vin stamped right into this so if you wanted to determine the exact truck that this came out of you could do that by this partial bin so extremely easy to also do numbers matching so this one is a two bolt not a four bolt which is just fine for this build application because i'm already limited by my crank and the heads which you'll see in part two this did need to be bored out and i didn't initially plan on that i wanted to just dingle bow wholeness and put it together but we had some really heavy vertical scarring so we punched it out 30 and that's what gives us the 460 on this now this did have one minor defect in the block and i'll show you once we get it up on here and we're able to spin it around but right now we need to roll this thing out and we got to clean it before we get started so my block here while a guy was getting there you know punched out i went ahead and had the magnaflex it as well check for any cracks install cam bearings clean and inspect oil passages and i also haven't put the freeze plugs in so technically this is ready for assembly but first i really got to clean this thing usually when anything is bored or there's machine work done there's a lot of metal slurry in here and debris we want to get that out and even if you're just doing a quick hone and re-ring in your garage there you want to try to clean on her as best you can i'm just using i don't know what is this purple power simple green simple yellow black velvet whatever you got soak it down and we're going to rinse it off with some clean water i actually don't even have running water here in the barn so i'm just going to use a weed sprayer with some purified water in it and rinse it off that way i'm going to let this just soak for a minute and then i'll get in here and rinse this off rinse alization engaged already looks a lot better even though she looked clean she was dirtier than woodstock i'm just going to take some air and air dry it now make sure you work the air into all the crevices and cracks even like your lifter bores and we got to work pretty quick here because the borers themselves are going to start flash rusting here pretty quick so she's not perfectly dry at this point but i quick want to treat these bores before they start rusting once i get her transferred over the old engine rotator upper 3000 then i can finish cleaning it off perfectly basically you want whatever penetrating oil you use even motor oil you just want some sort of film on these boards to keep the rust at bay you're basically trying to displace the water what i'm going to use is wd-40 because it literally means water displacement on the 40th try make sure you're using a lint-free rag and i'm actually using a different rag for each bore and that's just making sure we're not transferring gunk from one or the other when you pull out your rag here if you happen to see any gray or any indication of dirt or whatever just keep going until that stops huge difference there we can actually see the cross hatch in better detail now guys got her back in the engine plus everything room that's a process with this door here but got her flipped over and 99.71 percent dry good enough i'm going to show you i thought there was only one defect i actually just found another one then we're straight into cam insulation it's like i was saying i have the machine shop punch in these freeze plugs for me it's just they do 11 or kajillion a year and i do 21. so it's just faster and easier for them to do it and the shop called me because this was an oddity i guess but see how they're all inch and three quarters except this guy is an inch and seven eighths and it's not like the oversized one it's the actual casting so something must have happened with this and uh they ended up putting an inch and 7 8 one in and then i just found this which might be a bugger that should be plugged but the threads are basically i don't know what happened but they're non-existent so i'm gonna have to drill and chase this and i might have to consider doing that now unless i plug this off because then we're just making a clean block dirty i'll risk it we'll do it later so the very first thing i'm going to do is the camshaft insulation and the reason for that is as i'm working this through the block with all of the rotating assembly out i can reach down in here and guide it through each cam bearing because remember with that cam sticking out here it's just a big lever and it doesn't take a lot of pressure out here to mar up these cam bearings and then you're in a world of hurt also when we get back to the end when it's about right here i can reach in and put a dab of assembly lube on the cam before we seat it in it's usually difficult to get lube all the way in the farthest cam bearing and doing it this way upside down you can make sure everything is lubed right before you pop her home once that's done then we can actually start on the rotating assembly there is a couple things that i would suggest a guy does before you just jammer in the old engine there hook your peepers on this really close make sure that no physical damage happened during shipping and then also take a close look at your serial number and part number make sure that matches up to your cam card and it does well that's good i could do it with them on but i'm going to take these main caps off now make sure you pay very close attention to where specifically these go chevy's easy they stamp them one two three four and then obviously your rear main is really obvious it's got the oil pump standoff and they also have the letter f with an arrow pointing forward if yours doesn't have any of that go get yourself a stampin kit one of these here things i got this off that jungle website they just bang in some numbers or letters or stars whatever whatever you need to know where the thing goes on the engine set these off to the side what i'm doing here is just taking a touch of oil and getting it into the cam journals this is just a rotella t5 it's really affordable and it still has 1200 ppm in it so can't go wrong there so your cam should have came with a little pouch to lubricate on her and i either use way too much likely very well there's not enough in the pouch so i save up on them until i can use them all on a different engine i just use this luber plate number 105 seems to work okay use whatever you want to use some feathers even just use motor oil so i like to lubricate and install my camshafts one quarter at a time i'm just doing the first quarter here guy can focus in a little bit more trying not to wipe off all that lubricant as you're passing through the cam bearings just put a nice even coat on here you don't have to get too crazy don't forget your distributor gear put a blob on there and i'll get a little bit more oil on this i like to fill my engines full of oil before i put the intake on so i can pour it evenly back and forth in the valley there that all runs down right on top of the camshaft and then makes its way down to the crank two bolts should be enough just snugglize it you don't need to give it all the torques okay we're gonna go nice and easy here you should not have to force this in any way your initial lineup is really important so take your time this distributor gear go nice and slow you can really mess up your cam bearings with that the little bit of motor oil we put in here is also creating a little bit of a cushion for us okay so i'm going to stop here now you'll notice this engine's got a little tilt to it in the cradle i don't want to let go of this camshaft because it could come scooting back out on a guy so i'm going to let it sit here now i'm going to lube up the next quarter okay now that i'm getting down to my end here i'm losing my leverage so i'm going to reach in with a couple fingers and i'll guide it into the next cam journal so as this camshaft is traveling through each time it loses some of the lubrication and unfortunately the first one if you see there is almost completely dry now because it's gone through all of these so i like to pause here put a blob on or put a blob in the back and that way when you seat it your back or your farthest one has the same amount of lubrication as the rest camshaft is in looks good everything's nice and lubricated including all the way back there on the rear got my trusty assistant up here just hanging onto her just making sure it doesn't want to pop out moving on to the old torque twister here got to get this unpackaged clean it and measure it well i've visually inspected this for quite a while now and it looks sharp pretty impressed it saved me a pile of money but it does limit us on horsepower right around 550 600 we're gonna be eol on this you know end of life so we're gonna have to be a little bit careful or at least conscious of that got my card that came with it you could see main size and rod size that took ten off and then they also recommended some bearings for it so what i'm gonna do because a man a lot smarter than me once said trust but verify i'm going to run that dial caliper down the mains and the rods on this and then i'm going to take some carburetor cleaner and just blow through the oil passages here and then follow that up with air make sure that this is absolutely perfectly clean before we get ready to drop it into the engine here before we drop the old torque twister in we got to drop in some main bearings here and i put one in just so you can see what it looks like here and it's absolutely critical that these are completely flush here with your block because when we go to torque our main caps on we don't want to distort the bearing in any way and we want to make sure that we have an accurate reading when we plastic gauge the clearance on the crank there also don't lubricate these before you drop in your bearings you're just increasing your risk of spinning a bearing which is where this bearing rolls into the other one you get excessive play and that's where that dreadful knocking comes from you can see these holes here that's for your oiling so it's really easy to determine which set of bearing goes in the block and which go in your main caps you can see all of these have a hole in them and these don't so these would set into here also there's this mark right here a lot of people call these a tang or a tab i like to just call them a depression you have to really pay attention to this and as you're setting your bearings in that kind of gives you a starting point i'll show you here in a second and you want to make sure that when you line up your main caps that your depression or tangs or whatever you want to call them are on the same side so this side would end up on this side and that also helps prevent those bearings from spinning or rolling in there i'm going to really quick press one in with you show you how easy it is this has been cleaned it's dry we're just going to set it in here i'm going to use this depression that'll hold it from walking i'm starting up high and i'm just going to gently press in the middle and i'm going to start looking at how high it is on the edge and work it back and forth so when it seats in here she's nice and flush just like that piece of cake so i'm going to knock the rest of these out quick same exact process when it comes to these take your time nice and slow make sure both surfaces are clean click them into place be back with you in a minute we'll drop that in i'm going to go ahead and install the rear main seal here and i'm going to put just a dab of grease on this so on initial startup it's not dry if all goes well this way i won't have to pull that crank back out now for assembly here i'm actually just going to use some motor oil in the main bearings and there's a couple of reasons for that i put quite a bit of assembly grease on the cam and i didn't really need to do that because this is a roller cam shaft so it uses hydraulic roller lifters but i don't know how long this is going to sit before i fire it up and i know that before we fire this up on the dyno we are going to prime it so the crank is going to get oiling immediately the other thing is if we get a little too carried away with this grease we can plug the oil filter and throw that into bypass we definitely don't want to do that during critical first startup you might have studs in here depending on your build and it can get a little sketchy dropping the old torque twister in with bolts hanging up here so if you're worried about it use some vacuum caps or even better yet some fuel line you can put that on there so if you accidentally do touch your crank against that you're not barring up your crankshaft hello what's your name hopefully you little fellas just hang around for quite a while just another reminder on these bearings before you drop these in make sure they're really clean brake cleaner works good mineral spirits make sure they're dry and then when you're oiling them just make sure the surface is covered and you don't want to get too carried away here and drive any oil between the bearing surface and the block now this has already been cleaned and prepped and you're just going to want to really take your time here and pay really close attention to your thrust bearing in the back here there we go and then what i like to do is just rock it back and forth real quick just like that it should spin really easy and that's how you know that she's home and you're not bound up in here so the next step here the guy wants to check his clearance on your main bearings so what we're going to do is plastic gauge it cut just a little strip of this we're going to lay it in here and then we're going to torque the main caps to spec and then we'll pull each off and look at the results and make sure that we have the proper clearance in here and the clearance for me is 22 to 28. okay so if i go on my gauge here it's going to be right between these two and that's looking right on the money so i'm going to work my way down and check all of these and make sure they're within spec well great news this checks out and something i just thought of here now fellers is i don't know what you're building four cylinder six cylinder inline something or other who domestic foreign i don't know make sure you research it because certain engines could have a different value on these caps so don't just assume pick a value and run it all the way through we're going to reassemble this again with the caps the difference this time is we're going to put the other part of the rear main seal in this is what's called a two-piece rear main and if you find yourself in this situation see how i have this clocked a lot of people drop them in flush and then they glob up some rtv here they always leak because you have a flat surface here i clock mine or rotate them a little bit like this and i don't know in my opinion that helps keep this from leaking i guess i've never had one leak i should say on a new build a couple little reminders here make sure you're putting the right cap in the right spot the cap and the block are machined as a pair and you do not want to mess those up make sure you lube the threads of your bolts and i'm also just dropping a touch of oil here between the washer and the bolt and depending on the hardware you choose you may not even have a washer so just put a little dab of oil in there that's going to make sure that your torque value is accurate and again you don't have to use this arp hardware some of the factory style hardware out there works just fine there's several different types and brands the reason i went with arp is like i said earlier i'm planning on doing several renditions of this engine so i put a little bit more money up front in hopes that i can just keep reusing a lot of this hardware now we're going to torque these down to a hundred foot pounds in three equal increments so we'll just do 33 66 bring her up to 100. where did my clicker clacker go starting on the inside and then work your way out now we're up to a hundred well the next step here now she's a big one we're on to the pistons if you're still hanging in there with the guy i appreciate it trying to make this interesting enough for those that have built an engine but also sprinkling enough nuggets there for those considering it now before we start grinding on rings we need to measure our bore and that's this measurement right here and we need to do that because our ring end gap needs to be absolutely precise or as close as we can possibly get it so we're going to use this telescoping dial bore gauge here and i also have just a standard digital caliper and we're going to have to do quite a bit of mathematicians going forward to get our ring gap precise but we need to do that in this case for maximum performance and we also don't want those end ring gaps butting together what happens under boost or nitrous is the pressure and heat is increased and those rings expand more than typical and when they come around and those ring end gaps touch or collide and they don't have anywhere else to go they splinter and break they start scoring the the cylinder wall they can also chip and break the rings off or in worst case scenario break a chunk of the piston off and kaplowii you guys have seen all the pictures online it's pretty common other than determining your cylinder bore for your ring gap you can also use the same exact tool just to make sure that your cylinder is still round in a lot of cases high mileage engines the bore starts to look like an egg shape unfortunately at that case you got to take it to a machine shop and they can just do what's called honed to round which might just be taking 10 off or 20 off in a lot of cases if you're going to bore an engine it's around twenty dollars a bore just go 30 over muzzle you're going to be buying pistons in a lot of cases anyway for us we just want to confirm that we have a 4.280 cylinder bore which is standard bar plus 30 over so this looks pretty complicated but it's actually very easy all we have to do is set this measurement from here to here this has several different extensions slightly larger than our gold bore 4.280 this one here with a couple washers i got it to exactly 4.295 and i can confirm that with this and i checked multiple multiple times i don't know seven times maybe eight so this distance is four point two nine five i'm going to set my gauge to precisely zero and all i have to do is just stab this thing in here and we're going to rock it back and forth and that's to make sure that this here is at a perfect 90 degrees in the cylinder bore and when we rock that back and forth what we're seeing right here is this dial indicator moving and it's coming up to 15 okay so if we take 4.295 minus 0.015 my math magicianals is correct that's 4.280 so i've already done this i've worked all the way around this block every single one of them is exactly 4.280 except for two that are four point two seven nine so one one thousandth i think that's what it is we're fine that's plenty fine so now we can go back to the table i have out there set up with the rings and we could take our bore measurement do a little bit more math and figure out our ring end gap let's go ahead and talk about rings for a minute here besides butterscotch pudding and the smell of rich mahogany they're one of my favorite things but i'm going to try to put a bow on her and just summarize it for you we're working with three sets of rings back here and that's very very common the top ring or number one ring is your compression ring and its primary responsibility is compression it's going to seal off your air fuel mixture up there in the combustion chamber the number two ring she's down there in the middle you know it wears a couple hats it's a back up to the number one ring for compression and it also helps with even distribution of oiling on the piston and cylinder wall then you have your number three ring commonly known as your oil rings and they're responsible for oil think of it as a scraper as your crank comes down and scoops up and splashes oil into the piston there along with vacuum it's going to scrape down that oil and get ready for a fresh splash of oil they all work in harmony essentially and a duty that they all share is dissipating the heat from the rings and the piston into the cylinder walls which will transfer into the water jackets a lot of guys radiator and water pump do their job rings are made of several different materials you're going to have to make up your mind what's best for your application and there's also primarily two different types there's file to fit and just a direct fit direct fit is for example if you've got a 302 ford you're just going to dingle ball hone it and you want to throw rings in it you could just pick up a standard size direct fit 302 ring kit throw them on and you're going to be fine however in most cases if you're running boost turbo nitrous you're going to need what's called a file to fit and that's quite literally where you're filing your end gap to a specific gap for your application there are some superchargers out there that you can run up to five pounds of boost you can even run a 50 75 shot of nitrous on a stock set of rings but once you start hitting that laughing gas up to about 150 or you get those sushi slicers up to about 15 pounds of boost you're asking for trouble believe you me being that this is going to be pro-charged i am going to do a file to fit and i'm also bored over so most commonly you're doing a file to fit in that case as well so i'm just going to really quick show you a couple tips that i've picked up over the years how to file your rings we'll get those on the pistons we can slam them power pumpers in so when i start to follow rings i like to set up a table like this or find an area in your garage or basement or kitchen table if the old lady will let you you want to be comfortable and you want to have easy access to cold snacks because this process does legitimately take several hours it's a very tedious process but it's worth it so what i like to do is i just get a piece of cardboard i trace out an old ring and i have a spot for each piston here and then i also write my measurements in here and i can keep track of things very easily this way and this will eventually turn into my piston with the rings on it in that slot with the number corresponding to the block again just kind of keeping things together here so this came with our hastings performance rings almost all rings come with a sheet like this but if not you can find a similar chart online and reference that so for us we're under forced induction up to 15 pounds we're going to take our bore times .006 so we're going to take 4.280 times .006 and that's going to be our top ring end gap our second ring is four times .0065 and then the oil rings are 15. by the way when you're measuring your bore you want to do that six different times okay one two three four five six all the way around and that's going to make sure that you have roundness in your cylinder and that you have an accurate number a mistake i've seen a lot on the interwebs is people are measuring their ring end gap with the ring like this they just put the ring in they're going to use feeler gauges which they should measure their ring gap and this is incorrect the reason being is cylinders are tapered so they're narrower at the bottom they're wider at the top where you want to measure your piston ring is down farther into the bore they make these tools you don't have to use these i can seat the ring down farther in you can also use an old piston anything that is basically this size that's not going to score the cylinder wall slide it in now we can measure it the reason that's so important is if you measure it at the top some of these can be five to ten thousands wider up here rather than down here so you're going to think that you're at the proper ring end gap but in reality when you seat the ring down in it's a significantly smaller gap than it should be and you're going to get right into the danger zone this is my ring filer here these are expensive i'm going to be honest with you they work great they're pretty decent but don't go buy something like this unless you're filing rings a lot like i do hand crank ones work just fine if you're going to use a hand crank make sure that your wheel is moving this way you want to be filing down the ring against your block and that's going to prevent that ring from cracking or splitting at the end you also need a little file here and you're going to be filing the tips of the rings which you can see right there that i've done to make sure to deburr it and there's not anything sharp on there that's going to cause any cylinder damage there there's that age old saying measure twice cut twice or something like that i don't know in this case it's measure 15 times cut 93 take several steps on this because you can't put ring material back so for example on one of my rings it's 28 is the gap i'll go 10 10 5 and then just really carefully dial in the last part and that might take two three trips it's really important that you get your rings as close as possible okay i got everything kind of lined up here for me i'm gonna go grab the pistons and basically what i'm gonna do is uh line the pistons up as i roll the rings on i'll set the pistons down in their place then i can get this into the engine room and we'll actually get them installed [Music] oh i got a wheel down dang it this is done a couple things i want to mention here on piston rings start with the oil rings first your wavy ring then the other ranks and work your way up pay very close attention to your rings almost always they're going to have a dot or a diamond or a square or it's literally going to say top or this side up something along those lines and the reason for that is they have a very specific shape to do their job correctly and i drew what these look like one last thing before we snip this bad boy in there on the rings is clocking the rings and i mentioned this in a couple other engine builds i did there seems to be a lot of mass confusion on this when i find it in forums on the interwebs and vehicle groups and things like that there's pictures and lines and diagrams and calculations and listen it's really simple and really there's a lot of companies that come out now and i won't mention the names literally in the box it says we don't care how you clock the rings because it doesn't matter and here's why piston rings turn when the engine is running not only that they turn immediately so when you're clocking rings you're talking about a .03976 repeating second interval that the rings are in that position before they start rotating in the bore so here's how i do it take it or leave it it's up to you but i'm going to make it really simple hold your piston and rod like this as if in there is an imaginary line running down your wrist pin the length of the block take your first ring put her at 10 o'clock take your second ring put her at two o'clock ten and two just like you're supposed to drive if you forget not ten and cold snack ten and two then just rotate it 180 degrees now do the same exact thing with your oil rings ten o'clock two o'clock put your wavy ring right at 12 o'clock you're done that's it there's no does not you don't need witchcraft and stuff never fails fellers by the way it's worth mentioning i did measure the crankshaft end play on this and it's uh eight thousandths which is inspect for a big block 454. it's quite the process so i'm not gonna go through it here but i do urge you to check it out if you're building you know something that you got some decent money into and you're worried about it it's simple it's just time consuming so look into that as well and that's the movement here on the crankshaft back and forth against that thrust bearing in the rear guy's gonna go on ahead and need a couple things here to pull this off obviously a piston ring compressor of some kind these old banjo banjo 20s i mean they're super affordable they work but you know they give you fits and you only get about two three uses out of them or at least i do and all this stuff just strips and they like to just fly open i went ahead and upgraded to these there's several different variations summit makes them i think jegs does these are arp brand but basically you can get them for the bores these are the two that i use most commonly and these are just tapered and they're really neat because they have a lip here you just set them in the bore drop your piston into it and then i just take my dead blow down to 200 and tickle it on down you could also just use the rubber handle to a hammer or stick or vodka bottle whatever you got and we just beat it in there reminder to put your connecting rod bearing in same process as the main bearing lubricate the piston very good also get plenty of oil on the cylinder wall itself smear it around and lubricate whatever kind of ring compressor you're using and drop them in i'll show you how to do one super quick and then i'm just going to knock this out the sun's going down and guys get hungry i'm just using some brake clean and a lint-free rag here you can see how dirty these are and i'm using that to clean the bearing as well and then i'll dry them off with some air here guys got everything ready to go i threw some vacuum caps on my connecting rod studs here and that's so i don't mar up the crank as i'm dropping this in and make sure the crank is in the center and at the bottom when you're putting these in also pay attention in your build what way the piston is facing that's important because in my case the machine shop press the rod on for me and this rod goes on a particular way and rides on the surface of the crank in a particular manner usually there's a dot or an arrow or some indication facing the direction it's supposed to in my case there's a giant indentation for the intake valve so i need to make sure that that goes to the top and to the right as i drop this in so i'm just going to take this i've got my rings already clocked i'm going to make sure that this is about lined up as i can get it i'm going to gently tap it and reach my hand in here and i can already feel the connecting rod and i'm just going to guide that right down onto the crank you can hear that sound changed that means we're home now what i'll do is i'll just pull these off put my connecting rod cap bearing on put my caps on and just snug them up and then i can roll this over and i'm going to do the whole odd bank first then i'll flip it upside down plasti gauge all of the connecting rods make sure those look fine then i'll move on to the evens so what i meant by when i dropped this in we want the crank at center and bottom is see how this one's over here that one's over there etc what i'm going to do once i get this connecting rod cap on is i'm going to use this belted oil filter wrench and the reason i still have this gear on here is i'll take this wrench and i'm going to use that going forward so i'm going to roll that over until that's at the very middle bottom drop the next one in turn it over more drop the next one in so on and so forth got the rotating assembly torch later down looking pretty good and it's rolling over nice and easy i'd probably recommend after you tie in each connecting rod roll the crank back and forth make sure she ain't bound up before you move on to the next one all these red dots mean throughout here is that i've torqued these once and then i've double checked them and then i drop a red dot on them because quite frankly my head's been banged off too many things in my life and tomorrow i'm gonna say did i torque these yet and then do the whole thing over again okay it's time to move on to the timing set get that put on so i'm gonna be using this summit brand gear drive for a timing set instead of a typical roller chain or a double roller and i don't have any scientificals to show you but i'm just a firm believer that this is much more accurate timing at the distributor and it's way more durable in the end because timing chains stretch and gears don't plus look at the crank snout gear difference chain gear drive this thing is really beefy so it basically goes in like this and you can get these and quiet or noisy this is a noisy set if a guy wants to hear what one of these sounds like there's a 71 chevelle it's red with a black top in my playlist and you can hear that running and basically it sounds like a roots blower at idle it's really cool actually so we're gonna put this in here and we got two clearances to check uh that's the power idler here we gotta check the clearance there and then the cam thrust button uh sits in there we gotta check clearance on that so this will be the timing cover this is going to be to the block so first thing we'll do is just get the crank gear on then we'll come back and put the camshaft gear on and then once i get that done we're going to come in and talk about camshaft agreeing really quick got this all assembled in here red loctite on your cam bolts and then i like to use locking plate always this guy here is called a dog bone small gear is your reverse idler gear the big fella over here is your power idler and basically once you get your timing marks lined up per usual six o'clock down 12 o'clock up slide this guy in there i need to do some clearance work here though when you drive your crank gear on always use a straight edge and make sure that this is at max back thrust so the in all the way straight edge these and then here you can see the dog bone gears are sticking out farther so i need to bring this back in and the instructions actually call for five thousandths of an inch clearance between the standoff and the block well five thousands that's basically touching so i'm gonna grind this down until this sits basically flush with the rest of these gears and that's pretty much going to be that once i get this clearanced up on the old bench grinder and slid in that would be the time to degree your camshaft or i guess if you're running a chain now would be the time to do that if you want to do that i could tell you i've done hundreds of cam installations and unless the engine's out of the car and i'm doing a full build like this i don't degree them if the engines in the car so on and so forth could be kind of a pain to do that but if you want maximum performance and you want to make sure that you have pissed into valve clearance you can go ahead and agree it but typically if you have an issue it's a proper timing set installation it could be that the timing set has advanced or timing built into it it could be the crank keyway is not set in the proper location it could be that the crank rod journals are not properly indexed relative to the key so they're they're not lined up properly to the key in this case thankfully comp cams if you just call them and you give them the static drop on your valve with the dial indicator and tell them your cam specs and your setup they can actually just bleep bloop it into a machine and they'll tell you if you're going to get pissed into valve clearance you can also do the old school way just use clearance putty pop a head on with your gasket roll it over and uh calculate it that way the other clearance the guidance to check here is the camshaft thrust bearing assembly and that's the clearance from there to the timing cover and this timing set is made to run with the stock style timing cover like this if you get into a fancy billet or aluminium one you might have to notch the actual cover and you can also take some clearance off the thrust bearing itself make sure you're using a gasket when you're doing this test you can use clearance putty i just put a little film of grease on there and i'm just seeing if it leaves an impression on this or not and you can also feel if you can't get it flush all the way around then you got some work to do and you can step it up to the putty i would say nine times out of ten you don't have to do anything make sure your cam is seated all the way in just gonna pop this in quick so i did leave just a small little grease smear there so it did touch but keep in mind the required clearance is five thousandths of an inch which i'm sure that grease is five thousandths of an inch so if i were to wipe that off i've got my clearance if you want to be extra sure take the assembly out just zip with the flap disc and i mean just lightly touch and you're going to be fine because you don't want this camshaft walking back and forth any more than that this has a little bearing in it as it comes out and presses against the timing cover that's what that's designed to do is hold this in place this does the work of stabilizing it back and forth the last part about a timing set here that i want to talk about and this applies if it's a gear drive single roller double roller doesn't matter is your timing and remember how i showed you on that one we've got the dots face up here six o'clock 12 o'clock you can put timing in or out just by how you set your timing gears some of them have dots and they'll have like a square or a triangle you really need to read your instructions because depending on how you line your cam shaft to your crank that's what your timing is going to be this cam was ground to be straight up so zero no advanced or in the timing and i just wanted to show you on this gear set how you do that is the washer on the camshaft pin dowel so see all these are offset in different directions that's how we can put timing in or out of the gear here just by changing that little guy there so make sure you're paying close attention failures when you're buying your bump stick there what it's supposed to be installed at or if it has timing in or out of it and then make sure you pay close attention with your timing set what you need to do to set it up for your application unfortunately you're gonna have to read the constructions here fellers new timing covers on looks pretty sharp i used some new hardware too super cheap might as well could have used the old one but moses by the time i beat in a new seal on that and cleaned it up even if i paint myself 23 cents an hour i'm at the same cost just getting a new one hope you took whole mech because we're baking next a couple different ways to get the dampener on try to refrain from just nailing it with the 1200 foot pound impact what could likely happen is you strip out your crank bolt now you're in a world of hurt you could throw these in an oven at about 250 degrees two to three cold snacks pull it out with some mitts she should slide right on there wood block and a mallet like this you can usually coax them on in there or you can use a installer tool which i have here and then you gently basically tighten it onto the crank snout i like to do a combination of both i'll take this finger burner here also known as my window defroster just give it a little tickle back there luber down good and then i just heat it roll it on a couple threads heat it roll it on a couple threads until i've got this fully seated make sure your keyway is nice and clean you don't have any burrs there and if you need to take a light emery cloth or like 1500 grit sandpaper and just clean up the cranks now it helps more than you think fellers careful not to light your seal on fire here fellers and remember to put a little dab of grease on that or some wd-40 or something that way when you first start this up and that dampener shaft is in there it takes it easy on that seal yep mm-hmm yep okay sure a little more juice maybe yeah mm-hmm yep okay oh here we go now i wonder what chris christopherson's doing today hmm was a highway man okay here we go yep by the way this is an sfi if you're just doing a regular street build you're not gonna need to do that but i don't know am i going to take the independent chevelle to a track i don't know i mean mods will plan for it now right we got positive turnage this is hot i think there it was you want to tighten these until your c7 pops final step here is torqualizing this down to 85 foot-pounds and what i did was i put two bolts to the flywheel on the back there and i put my door gapping tool and kind of just wedged her in there on the back and i should be able to pry against that now just take her easy though you don't want to bend one of them off now goodness oh wow i just guessed by hand and about nailed it well here we go we've got a nice short block assembled i'm really excited to get this thing completed toss her on the old dyno machine and see what this thing can do and i'm sure by now you're thinking yeah it looks great but what's this costa feller in real life dollars so for everything here that you see except the camshaft i've got right around two thousand dollars in it so the pistons and the bearings and the hardware i mean everything now keep in mind that might be considerably different for you because remember i've got a lot of machine work into this they did a lot of work to the block we had to turn the crank i also had them press the connecting rods into the pistons for me and so forth so if you're just doing a dingle ball home you're going to save quite a bit of money and i didn't mention the cam shaft because you might be going with a hydraulic flat tappet or a solid lifter cam shaft so you guys can plus or minus that as well now two thousand dollars is a tremendous amount of money and to be quite frank with you that's what took me so long to start my build having said that that still puts us well into the budget zone on a big block build now keep in mind guys i'm not a machine shop i am not a professional engine builder so having said that if you have any constructive tips or tricks for folks that are building a block or anything that you learn the hard way or interesting put that down there in the bleep bloop section i'm sure folks would consider it and then just a reminder folks this is just an example so make sure you're reading through your instructions that are provided with your products and probably go on ahead and follow them coming up next in part two of the big block build here we're gonna put the heads on and completely assemble the valve train we'll talk about a common mistake when choosing head gaskets that can negatively impact your compression ratio i'm going to show you how to set proper rocker arm geometry with laser accuracy the easy way and a very fast way to set your lifter preload thanks guys for watching we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Vice Grip Garage

Views: 1,379,849

Keywords: motortrend, roadkill, vice grip garage, vise grip garage, vgg, chevy, chevrolet, how to, piston rings, file, bore, 454, 460, 502, big, block, chevelle, ss, 454ss, budget, build, damper, timing, measure, procharger, comp, cams, holley, efi, xflow, x-flow, fuel injected, roller, cam, camshaft, retro fit, revival, rescue, rebuild

Id: GHqvyY4i1dw

Length: 55min 11sec (3311 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021