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March 10th - With the short block together its time for the Heads to get their share of attention next. Last week Bob had the heads hot tanked. He already has guide plates, studs, dual springs and has had the heads shaved....what he wants to do next is put in BIGGER exhaust valves and possibly go with a dual spring with a dampner. Bob has done all the porting himself, and soon we will be 'plasti-guaging' [play-do] the top of the piston pop-ups to see how much clearence we have in the chamber of the heads. As close as he can figure, he will have 13.2:1 compression.

May 05th - A couple weeks ago Bob picked up his Alternator and lower mounting bracket so we installed it and his electric water pump. Bob took the heads to Blairs to have bigger intake valves put in. We picked them up 2 weeks later and also went to The Hose Man in Irwindale to have him bend us some 1/2" steel line for our pick-up in the fuel tank. After prepping the block and head surfaces we installed them. Felpro suggested we drill 1/2" water holes in the block but the biggest drill bit we have is a 3/8's. Should be good enough. We then put the fuel tank back together, reinstalled it, then installed his newly acquired Mallory electric fuel pump and re-located the Fram fuel filter.

May 31st - Its the night of the Twilight Cruise Nite car show at Pomona [once a month], but we got other plans! Earlier in the month we installed the Hooker Super Comp headers, what a pain in the ass. We had to remove the steering box to get the drivers side header on. Also had to notch the header flanges to go around the ARP head studs. Sheesh. The passenger side went simple enuf, but the drivers side sucked! Anyways, we got them on. [can hardly wait to do the same to mine, ugh.] We later installed the 7/16 push rods and Crane [?] Gold roller rockers. We bolted the Dart intake manifold, bolted on the 800 cfm Holley DP carb, installed the MSD Distributor, bolted on the valve covers, and hooked up the radiator. We'd been stumped on how to mount the fuel pressure regulator that bob got from a friend, we were thinking up all kinds of different concoctions, then i said wait, lemme cruise their [Mallory's] website to see if they make a bracket for it. Has Mallory been bought by Mr.Gasket? Anyway, i talked to some dood there and he said they didnt have a part # for *just* the bracket, and he sent me one free! So, we got the regulator mounted and looking tits. The only thing left was getting braided fuel lines before we could start it.

A few days later, on the 31st, bob called me at work and told me he had hooked up the fuel lines with regular ol' rubber gas line just so we can fire it up. I spent the next 1/2 hour finding out where we could get racing fuel locally and for what prices. I checked on TRICK, VP and 76 racing fuels, preferably 110 octane. They all averaged around 7$ a gallon. After work, we shot over to Berts Motorcycle Mall and picked up a 5 gallon can of VP for 37.50$ i think it was, got to Bobs and put it in the fuel tank. We double checked everything one more time and gave each other a thumbs up, "Let's do it."

I didnt have my still camera, but shot about 20 minutes of video. I've posted a small 30 second clip [4.1 megs] for your viewing pleasure. The sound is great, so turn it up. We started it and it ran for about 15 seconds, and we discovered the new Mallory fuel pump we put in had gotten clogged or something. We quickly re-installed the old Holley Blue, that leaks, and got it fired and ran it the first time in over 4 yrs for about 8 minutes before the water temp got up to 220 and we shut it down, and the electric motor running the water pump cooled the motor back down to 120 in about 10 mintes. It ran great. No leaks, no odd noises, smooth idle....perfect. After it cooled back down, we ran it again til it reached 220, setting the timing at 2500 rpm.

June 23rd - Not much going on this month. Bob and his family did a couple weekends of camping. We should be hoping to get the 1000cfm carb and braided fuel lines in July or August at the latest. Stay tuned for more video clips !

July 01st - Well, ...bobs rims havent been polished since who knows when.....im used to polishing my motorcycles every weekend, so i got out the polish and cleaned them up so they will look great the first time back out to a strip.

July 31st - Bobs wife kept him pretty busy for the next couple weekends. When we had another chance, bob picked up some more VP and we went to start it up again. 5 seconds after it was started again, sludge sprayed all over the firewall from the distributor hole. [It wasnt tigthened down cause we were gonna set the timing after reversing the the weights inside the MSD dist.]...we drained the oil and about 2-3 gallons of water out of the oil pan. After a few hours of contimplating what could be wrong, we chose to redo the intake gaskets and make a few modifications to the intake since the heads had been milled [25 yrs ago by the original owner of the big block whom using the motor at the time for a Nascar series circle track racing, the rules changed and the dood went to a small block 350 and gave this motor to bob dirt cheap.] and the intake hadnt been shaved to match. How much had the heads been shaved, ...he has no idea. Anyway, we changed the intake gaskets and ran the motor again for 15 minutes. The oil looked slightly murky, but thought it was from residual crap from places we couldnt get to to clean. The car was overheating [220 degrees] in 8 minutes from before, but we added a 6 blade fan and wasnt getting up over 195 now, so that was good. We ran it again for about 18 minutes. Pressure and temps all looking good. The oil level had risen ever so slightly. We werent optimistic. We let the car sit for an hour. I went home [11pm] and bob told me the next morning the oil level raised more and we still have a leak somewhere. Bob called the shop were he got the motor from. The guy told him to bring him in the bare block. We had pulled and reinstalled the front clip the last time we'd pulled the motor but werent looking forward to do that again. [reinstalling the clip and getting everything shimmed just right is a b#tch] Our cherry picker has lost its extention, and its about 8" short of reaching all the way in to pick the motor striaght up...so we pull the intake and one head....[the drivers side head can only be removed after all the head studs are taken out because of the power brakes booster]. We finally got the motor pulled and on a stand. Bob tore the motor down further the next night. The following saturday bob and i took the short block [block, crank, pistons, rods] down to the guy in Chino and dropped it off. The dood called bob the following tuesday and told him he did a 50 lb pressure test and found a crack in the no.1 cylinder. He then told bob he could get it sleeved and ready for pick up by Friday. The dood called bob back on thursday and told him he couldnt get the sleeve til the following week. Bob then told the guy that he paid for a good block and doesnt really want a sleeved motor, the dood at the shop got kinda grumpy about it, but this last monday was told they have a block, they will pressure test it and prep it and we should have it ready for rebuild this weekend.

August - Well, ...we didnt get the block back for a couple weekends. It is a newer block that takes a spin-on oil filter so we dont have to reinstall the adapter for that. The Saturday we picked it up Bob cleaned the block and as you can see from the pics below, the main bearing journals are not plugged [notice the water shooting out of the journals], later we got the bottom end back together. We had to stop before putting the oil pan back on until we picked up a .010" over Cloyes "True Roller" timing chain set to pick up some of the chain slack since the block has been line-bored, we ordered one from Speed-O-Motive for $98 they said it would be a couple days [from Monday] to get it, i called on Thursday and they told me Cloyes sent them the wrong one...i called around and found one at Service Center in El Monte for 120$...wanting to work on the motor this weekend, we paid the extra 20$. [sheesh]
Saturday morning 15th : After busting Bobs welfare gear puller trying to get the crank gear off we tripped up to Auto Marine in Glendora and borrowed a Matco puller and had the thing off in seconds. Ten hours later we had the shortblock complete and bolted in the car.
Sunday 16th: Bob called me over to his place around 5pm. I spent the morning watching Nascar, and Bobs wife dragged him to church....before we were done at 10pm, we had the heads, intake, carbuerator and headers installed. The only thing stopping us from starting it was Bob had to shorten the linkage bar to the carb.
Monday 17th: We hooked up the linkage, had to change batteries, and started the 2nd motor. VIDEO will be up soon!
Thursday 20th: We threw it in the trailer and took it down to a small car show at the local In-N-Out burger in Glendora [Arrow Hwy and Grand]. Straight headers always draws a crowd.
Saturday 22nd: Trailered the car to Speedway Mufflers in Rancho Cucamunga to finish the exhaust system. [600$] Two Flow Master 30 series dumping just in front of the rear axle, both tips turned in and down at a 45 degree angle.
Saturday 29th: Trailered the car over to Alhambra Dodge dealership where Bob works and had the car alignment done.