Good to know they have priorities in the middle of economic Armageddon.

Back to the conversion. I pulled the engine tonight and I'll start disassembling it tomorrow. Hopefully the cylinders are in good shape and it will just need a hone. I'm going to wait until I have the engine rebuilt and ready to drop in before pull the engine out of mine and then I'll switch the wiring harnesses and computers.

Nice work bench, wanna loan me that lift plate?

Thanks. I find the Chevelle makes for a good work bench and storage.

Sure.

Here are a couple more of the engine. Externally there is a lot of rust but internally it looks good. There's little wear on the cylinder walls and the valves look good.





I also disassembled the heads today to do some mild porting on them. I finished one and started the other. I'll finish it up tomorrow and post some better pictures.

This is a stock exhaust.


I concentrated on the roof and pocket and didn't make the port much bigger. To my surprise the short side radius on both the exhaust and the intake didn't need to be touched.



Intake after blending.



Intake after shaping the valve guide. This is all that was done to the intake.

I still didn't finish the second head but here are some more pictures of the finished one. I also ordered new springs and valve stem seals today.

Are you gonna need a decking and valve job?

Lurk

This is going to be a budget build so I'm just going to clean and lap the valves myself. I discovered yesterday that I have an issue with the Cobra that I thought was the radiator cap but isn't so it's going to have to be torn down. So what I'm going to do is build this engine for as little as possible and get it in the Explorer so I can drive it while I go through the Cobra. A 331 might be in it's future.

cough 347 cough