Chevy 350 TBI Built In The Backyard with Hand Tools? Challenge Accepted! - Engine Power S8, E17

[Music] you're watching power nation you know we hear it all the time why don't you leave that big shop and build an engine like we do at home challenge accepted today on engine power it's gonna get hot and it's definitely gonna get dirty [Music] everyone welcome to engine power if you've watched our show before you've seen us do some cool builds in a very well equipped shop i mean we have things like air conditioning power tools and even engine building equipment but you can see by my lack of pocket arsenal we're doing something a little bit different today and we're going to build an engine in the great outdoors with common hand tools the great outdoors is actually our parking lot and we're going to show you that you can build an engine correctly no matter where you build it and there's the engine right there in frankie's sweet truck clean one owner that's why i like to see an engine on a tire with a tote full of junky parts beside it it's gonna be fun we chose one of the most popular plentiful and easy on the wallet engines there is a chevrolet 350 tbi small block it was someone's unfinished project that we picked up partially disassembled with a few new parts thrown in for good measure total cost 500 bones once we got it on the engine stand we wanted to see exactly what our money had gotten us this is a flat table up until about 95 they still in the trucks for some reason i don't know if they just had old stock or what but they kept using flat tappets but we actually have a cam kit basically with this engine well i bought a cam kit and we got an engine for free so that's what we can go with that's with that that's what's cool about this is because the actual parts that the dude is gonna put in it are more expensive than the actual engine but uh they'll work for us so yeah i mean this thing's i mean it's got a little bit of you know schmutz in it but supposedly it ran so i don't think it's going to be too bad but only we want to find out this is one where we're going to freshen it we're not doing any crazy performance build we're not out here putting a set of aluminum heads on it or a tunnel ram yeah this is something that in this state not bad we are going to get it apart see what it needs hopefully it doesn't need much does have a starter on it so what i propose is once we get it all done we've never actually done this before we should fire it right here as i'm pulling the stock out where the oil pressure sensor was it just actually snapped clean off and snapped off flush in the block so i went to put a an easy out in it to back it out and then the easy out snapped off in it so i've had to troth around it and now i've got it moving this was just really brittle and just busted right off [Music] whoa look at that a couple of the oil shrouders are broken i actually saw that one of those on the other head but there's a couple in this head that are broken i have never seen that before all the rockers look good it's very tempting to just zip it apart but since we're gonna reuse a bunch of stuff on this now is the time to catch it yeah if something's goofed up if they come out good that's the big thing and none of them are wasted yeah on the bottoms yep all right all right ready you good pop it one two three four five yep pop it you got to hold it yep hold on i'm stuck how'd you get stuck you you reefed it out of there i didn't do it [Music] okay this side looks just like the other side oh i mean just some water and there's this and some oil water i don't see any chunks though so far our build out in the wilderness is going pretty well now we've partnered with autozone on this setup to not only get the parts that we need to get it back together but to utilize their free loan a tool service if you're building something at your house and you don't have it say a harmonic damper puller or maybe a piston ring compressor you can go to your local auto zone and get one for free and use it and then return it to them we're gonna get our dampener off with this setup [Music] this tool is a little pricey to justify owning it if you're not using it on a regular basis this is why autozone offers many specialty tools in their loan a tool service having the right tool makes it faster and easier to get the job done right even with limited tools you can still build an engine the right way we'll show you how we're mixing it up today leaving our well-equipped air conditioned shop to build a complete small block chevy with common hand tools much like you or we would do at home this is the right way but you know it works this way too because on this thing it's not gonna matter oh that's very sassy of you just jumped off there oh yeah man a little bit off that's not too bad that's not total milkshake it's kind of dirty yeah no matter how well you plan your project it seems like there's always one or two things you need to pick up after you get started autozone makes it easy with the autozone mobile app you can even order online for same day store pickup and their rewards program earns you a twenty dollar reward after you've made five purchases of twenty dollars or more nasty oh this is a horrible job that's what cardboard's for yep before removing all of the rod and piston assemblies we'll number the rods and caps to make sure they go back in the right spot we don't have our dedicated number stamps with us but a sharp punch does the job just fine people are walking by wondering what we're doing some just waving randomly it's our neighbors no we didn't get kicked out i don't know who comes up with these hair brained ideas to do stuff outside in the middle of huh i know who it was i mean i don't think the humidity is actually 100 i think the humidity was worse this morning i feel like some of it burned off no it's way better now it's like almost winter time there we go [Music] oh not as bad as i thought they were going to be not too bad a little debris you went through her i thought it was gonna be worse so i think the real question is gonna be are they standard or are they undersized well that's a ten under a quick tip use rubber hose on each rod bolt to stop them from scratching the crank journal let me give you a little let me give you a little we're going past a little there you go a little bit of carbon built up oh yeah oh i mean that's pretty standard do the rails move yeah they still move which is good that's a good sign the important part is the skirt the skirt is not gouged up not broken off not broken off and doesn't look collapsed gravy that's nice oh that's not even that bad the stock flat tap it looks to be in decent shape but we won't be reusing it these are aftermarket caps on this you notice that yeah and i'm assuming that's maybe like when it was a remand and the core came in they didn't actually have any caps for it so very possible just like the rod bearings the main bearings are also 10 000 undersize and are in about the same condition [Music] now the long arduous process of cleaning our parts by hand begins starting with these crusty valve covers while frankie gets filthy i'll recondition the cylinder finish with a 320 grit ball hone this establishes a new finish for the fresh piston rings to seed on using engine oil as a lubricant the ball hone is turned at approximately 300 rpm moving in and out of the cylinder to achieve roughly a 45 degree included angle on the crosshatch to final clean the block we'll start off with foaming degreaser and copious amounts of scrubbing we'll finish with stiff bristle nylon brushes and watery dish silk by hand it took over an hour to get all the sludge out of this block a good old-fashioned garden hose helps clear the passages and rinse off the soap [Music] engines can flash rust quickly especially in humid conditions we'll use compressed air to get our block dried off in a snap after all the hours we spent scraping and scrubbing this engine ready we hope it starts [Music] we did what we could to clean the cylinder heads scraping carbon deposits off the valves then lapping the valves to the seats with some fine flapping compound the heads get a heavy coat of degreaser and some scraping and scrubbing a cheap wire wheel on the end of our drill makes cleaning the exterior faster and a little bit easier when cleaning off parts you have to be very careful to not let the metal rust now an easy way to do this is use a good water displacer or petroleum lubricant and blow it off with compressed air now to do that in the parking lot we're going to be using this predator inverter generator and this mcgraw 8 gallon portable air compressor that we got from harbor freight this generator can support up to 3 500 watts running and it has some really cool features like 420 volt 20 amp gfci outlets one 30 amp 120 volt outlet and even a dc 5 volt outlet for charging mobile devices it also has a 3.2 gallon gas tank and with a load sensing throttle it can run for hours on end our air compressor is great because it's light and easy to roll around on its wheels and with a 150 psi max pressure and 4 cfm of output it's great for running things like blow guns and small air tools all we got to do now is we'll get this fired up get this baby running and finish up our heads [Music] since we're reusing the pistons they need a thorough cleaning to remove the built-up carbon a scuff pad some degreaser and a lot of patience is all it takes [Music] to remove the carbon from the ring lands we gently run one of the old piston rings in the ring group it's important to take it easy or you can accidentally remove aluminum from the piston the heads receive a fresh set of valve seals and new valve springs which are set up for our hydraulic roller cam no fancy pneumatic tools here we're using a manual spring compressor [Music] i don't know if you can hear me over the cicadas but we finally have all of our parts cleaned and the engine is ready to get assembled like i mentioned before we partnered with autozone on all the parts to get our project back together and what's great about autozone there's a couple different things one there's probably one close to where you live because they're all over the united states and two they have same day store pick up when you call in and order stuff and if they don't have it they can usually get it for you right away first on the list is to get our crankshaft in and measured up now you usually see us measure it with precision gauging but we have some precision gauging of a different kind this is plastic gauge also offered at autozone it's a great way to check clearances on your mains and rods without anything like a dial bore gauge so uh let's get her going we want a true oil clearance so if you lube the bottom you're actually putting an oil film underneath the crank and it will give you an actual true reading on the plastic so we'll lay the crank in dry put our plastic gauge in torque it to spec measure our plastic agent if everything's a go then the crank gets lubed up and then it goes in for real now as long as you don't turn anything it won't mark up the bearings and everything will still look good [Music] now that the plastic gauge is compressed from torquing we can compare the new width of that little green piece to our gauging looks like we are right at 2 thousandths clearance i'll take that that's good the old crankshaft was in poor condition so we picked up an engine rebuilder crankshaft kit it came as a set with the correct rod and main bearings the mains get torqued to 65 pound-feet [Music] has three thousands [Music] so you don't put a gauge on it because i can just feel that one of the nicest parts that came with the engine was a hydraulic roller cam kit from comp the grind on it was probably designed for a higher performance engine but since we have it we're gonna use it nice if you can turn it with your hand like that golden the kit also came with a new double roller timing chain now it's time to check gap on our rings now these are a pre-gap set these are a replacement ring for our size piston but that doesn't mean that you should not check it for minimum end gap and what we're going to do is stick these in the bores and then square them up we don't have a ring squaring tool out here we're going to show you how to square them up so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take them put them sideways in the bore then we're going to take a piston that already has the oil ring installed just like a piston ring squaring too we're going to stick the piston in with the crown down and it's going to square the ring up we have 18 000 and that's more than enough what you want is a minimum amount of gap you can have more but you have to have a minimum in case the thing gets hot we don't want to butt the rings and cause damage to the piston or the cylinder so we are good to go on thicker rings such as these it's a great idea to use a ring expander to install them you can get one for under 10 at autozone one compromise we will not make installing a cam without degreeing it even without expensive tools you can degree a cam this degree wheel runs about 20 bucks and it's well worth having a magnetic base dial indicator can handle the rest this cam comes in at 106 degrees of intake center line which is 4 degrees advanced nice as the sun fades away all we want to hear is this small block run will it as the sun creeps closer to the horizon the 350 small block chevy nears its completion once the double roller timing setup is installed we can move on to the oiling system around an open engine this means you have to be careful not to drop anything into the block these have compression stops so go right down to the stop these lifters are part of our cam kit they are tie bar hydraulic rollers which may seem like overkill for this engine once again since we have them we're going to use them we got a complete victor ryan's head gasket kit from autozone which contains everything you need for the top end [Music] wish that crew would come to do our work that normally does it the ninjas all the ninjas the midnight ninjas yeah you know the 10 to 20 people that do all the work for us while we're sitting around drinking smoothies and reading magazines i haven't had one mimosa today can you believe that object talk to somebody about that the heads get torqued in three stages to a final value of 65 pound feet just because you're building an engine outside doesn't mean it can't look good we're going with a classic gm blue let's go on back here i'm almost done i'm absolutely another piece the stock valve train goes back in but this time we're using the shorter push rods that came with the cam kit [Music] before the intake drops on we'll fill the engine with stp 5w30 synthetic oil we ordered from autozone weatherstrip adhesive holds down the intake manifold gaskets a tall but gorgeous bead of black rtv on the china rails will seal the intake see i don't need the gun i can just do it in place of the original tbi intake we'll use an old school wiring street warrior the harmonic balancer installer we borrowed from autozone's alona tool service is used again to crank down the balancer ready yep hit it before we test fire the engine we'll prime it to circulate the oil with the valve cover still off it's easy to make sure the valve train is getting proper lubrication and has adequate oil pressure looking good we knew we'd be working late into the night so we got a brawn dual head led work light from harbor freight it puts out 4 500 lumens plenty for seeing what we're doing for ease of getting the engine running pertronix ignition bundle works perfectly their ready to run distributor only requires two wires and an ignition coil to light this small block a street demon 650 provides the fuel we've used this particular one lots of times and it's rock solid reliable all right here we go there you go solid like those borrowed those from the guys down in carcass i knew we'd get used out of them one day with our macgyvered electrical and fuel delivery setup in place we're ready to see if this thing runs all right fuel and starter oh yeah it's gonna run all right ready yep did you shut it off yeah that's a win right there that's pretty cool high five that might be probably one of the crazier things i've done what did you miss most about being in a shop though probably the nice cleaning equipment because i mean pretty much what i have to do at home is what we did here we're just cleaning stuff in the driveway or in the parking lot and you know hand scrubbing everything i think that ate up a lot of time on this one but this went together as clean and checked as well with with stuff that we had as anything that was ever built inside so oh yeah it got the same amount of tension as any other engine we built so i think that's key check bearing clearance yes it was clean the block was going to spent two hours cleaning the block which would normally take 45 minutes of jet washer we'd like to thank autozone for helping us get this thing together they were a great partner on this build now i think it is time i don't know what time it is it's time for food it's time for food all i know is it's dark i'm hungry i'm almost slightly sweaty but uh we have a running engine done in the parking lot so heck yeah that's a win let's go for more information on anything you've seen on today's show go to powernationtv.com [Music]

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 554,492

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, engine power, horsepower, backyard build, 350ci small block Chevy V8, chevy engine, v8, small block chevy, chevrolet

Id: TH-IAT7-wis

Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021