gerg

Big bolt: rattle gun if available, if not, breaker bar with gearbox in 4th gear, handbrake on. If auto, remove bellhousing dust cover or the starter motor and wedge a screwdriver in the flywheel teeth to stop engine turning. When using the puller

If you want a simple on-off setup, you could use a central locking actuator. They're about 17 bucks at Jaycar. Use a slave one with a simple 2-pole center-return rocker switch.

If it's an alloy bellhousing you can weld it. Cast iron, well no (unless you stuff around furnace brazing, etc).

+1 for the spacer ring. I recently did the opposite, machined the input snout on a T5 to suit a toploader bell. The difference is only about 1.5 mm, so it could be made from a slice of sheetmetal bent into shape. You might have to tilt the box to the right slightly to get away from the holes that are already there, you don't want 2 holes too close to each other, it might split between them. Tilting the box also brings the gearstick closer to the driver. My brother's putting a toploader behind a 3.9 EA motor, same sort of thing.

Yeah nice, she came up good. Though my approach is that you only ever look at the engine when something goes wrong... So make it reliable and you won't have to look at it! Nah seriously, looks good but you will have to coat it in some sort of clear coating to stop it from corroding. Clear acrylic might do it but the temp may be too high for it. Believe it or not, it's the thermostat housing's job to corrode! It acts as the sacrificial anode in the system, just like a zinc anode does on an outboard motor. This is why they fail.... They take the brunt of the electrolosis so your engine wont. And cheers for the info on chromeys guys... I'll skip that one next time.

I say any auto tranny specialist who is worth their salt should at least be able to rebuild one, if not trick one up. Getting bits from the US might be a little expensive, but if that's the box you want to run, then that's what has to happen. I say it's worth it, but I'm into manuals myself.

My brother's building a ute. I'll have a look. Might need to take the guard off.

I tapped my heater outlets to take 3/8" and 1/2" NPT brass screw-in fittings, which enabled me to use angle fittings and route the hoses where I want them. I also dropped my hose size down to 1/2" to make them less bulky, and adapted them back up to 5/8" at the firewall end. Heater still works fine. I shifted the return heater hose to the bottom hole (3/8)" on the water pump which normally is plugged or has a vacuum switch. The top one (1/2") is now where my thermofan switch goes. I am lucky enough to have a brother who is a fitter, and he made me a staino thermostat housing from scratch. It's the elbow type. He even welded a bung on there and threaded it to 3/8" for the dizzy vacuum switch. They are available though, but like you said, aren't drilled/tapped for the switches. Easily fixed with a drill and tap. Ask for 3/8" NPT or BSP, they're slightly different but brass is soft enough to cope. The local parts guy sells these chrome housings for about 60 bucks. Pretty expensive really.

• If you ever want to run it on 91, keep the compression below 10:1. •Do all your porting before getting the heads done, and just tidy up the areas that need attention, don't go opening up the ports as they flow well at that size. Smooth out the short-turn radius and blend the valve pocket into the port, and you've just gained more than any further mods could do. • split duration cam, 2000-5500 rpm, keep it below 0.500" lift if running stock rockers. • 3-angle valve job, 2-angle seat cut • 30% heavier valve springs • If fitting new valves, go with single groove collets. • don't do too much to the exhaust, maybe blend the valve pocket a bit, and take the lip off the short turn. Keep the single cut seat, same as the valve. Don't go stainless unless you're running hardened seats, your engine builder will tell you this anyway. • Don't use a high volume oil pump unless it's a race motor running loose tolerances/cross-drilled crank/high constant rpm. The 302 I just built never goes lower than 2/3 on the oil gauge, even at idle when hot.

I've never worked on one but reading up a bit on them, they were designed in the 1960's based on the FMX gearset, obviously with extra gears for the overdrive. They use a kickdown cable and lockup clutch in the converter. They can be built up to handle decent power, contrary to what a lot of hotrodders used to say about them. There's a lot of info on the net, most of your answers will come from a simple search. They were never offered on any model car in Australia, so it will be a full import job. Bits are plentiful from US but be wary of hidden handling/freight charges from places like Summit. I found that out recently when I looked at a power valve for my carby. It would have cost over $70 just to get it here. Here's a wiki article: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_AOD_transmission#section_3

Also, it's illegal to heat or weld any suspension or steering component. If you look at RRS's boxed lower arms, they're riveted together.

If you've got some steel laying around, you can build a press using a bottle jack or similar. Use bolts or weld it together.

10.5:1 is pretty big for a Crossy, so any hot spots will ignite fuel more easily. What plugs are you running now? If you're running NGK BP5s or similar, maybe 6 is the go. Even the standard Crossys have some sort of shutoff solenoid, both the Strommy (base idle) and the Webber (idle fuel shutoff) so there's an issue even at stock compression. I think it's the long stroke/small chamber design. I'm assuming you've got some sort of Holley on there. Maybe you need something like this to kill the motor. Ignition timing has nothing to do with running on. You flick the key off, and no spark is produced, so ignition timing means nothing once that happens.

Wow... The world's first Clevo powered by varnish! Hope you're putting a decent pipe on the new rig... 2-1/4 single is way too small.

Wow mate, that's one cranky Cusso.

C'mon, don't be shy!

You'll be fine with 302 rods and a 4MA crank, just use the special ACL pistons and you'll be laughing.

A 351 is as big as you can go with 302 rods. No pistons exist for 6.125 rods on strokers. In fact, the more you stroke it, the shorter the rod has to be. More compression is more efficiency. It enables more energy to be released from combustion. Squeezing the mixture into a smaller space makes it burn faster and more completely. It's basically free horsepower, up to a point. Go too big and you'll have detonation problems. Iron-headed street engines might be ok up to maybe 11:1, depending on the cam you're running.

The CHI 3Vs have the advantage of 30 years of experience in port design, with the bonus of having been designed with computer modelling. Looking at a cross-section of 2v, 3v or 4v ports, the difference is profound. The original 3v opening sits higher, straightening out the flow, and the short-turn is nice and smooth and the pocket is nice and round too, giving the mixture a straighter shot into the cylinder. There are versions with the lower standard ports, able to be used with any 2v manifold. By comparison, the factory iron heads, while excellent in their day, have lots of compromises. The opening is tall but low, forcing the mixture to squeeze tightly up the ramp in the floor, then turn around about 110 degrees to get round the short turn. The pocket is deep and looks to be a bit of a dead spot, causing loss of velocity and turbulence. 2v and 4v suffer the same problems, but much exaggerated in the 4v. They discovered that filling the port floor in a 4v with epoxy filler straightened out the flow and actually picked up horsepower, despite the port being smaller. This is the principle behind 3vs. Again, factory clevo heads flow much better than most other smallblock heads around at the time, particularly Chevs. They were as good as factory iron heads could be in the late 60's. The secret to 3vs flowing more despite being smaller is in the velocity, having higher speed through the port keeps momentum up and fills the cylinder more efficiently. Being made of Aluminium alloy allows them to carry away much more heat from the combustion chamber, enabling higher compression before detonation is a problem, generally around 1 point more. They enable the engine to warm up more quickly. They're also much lighter, about half the weight of iron.

When looking at the specs, ignore the advertised duration (the longer one) as this is not indicative of the true characteristics of the cam. Instead, look at the duration at 0.050" valve lift, that is when all the slack/flex in the valvetrain is taken up and when flow actually starts to happen. So if advertised duration is around say 280deg, then duration at 0.050" might be about 210deg. Lobe separation can indicate how much overlap the cam has but not always. It also depends on the shape of the lobe. Nevertheless, it's a general indication of how much overlap there might be. With a given duration, if you have say a 108 deg LSA, then it will have more overlap than 110 or definitely 112. The narrower you go in LSA, the more scavenging effect at higher rpm but at the cost of low-rpm torque due to exhaust gas actually bouncing back into the cylinder, and will give a rougher idle. Scavenging needs a good exhaust to work, so running stock manifolds and single 2-1/4 with a wild cam is a silly move. If you go wider in LSA, it will tame the idle somewhat and be more torquey but will start to run out of puff sooner. Go too wide and you'll drop volumetric efficiency because the inlet is open for too long and mixture will be pushed back out of the cylinder before it closes again. Playing with cam timing alters the engine speed at which the cam works best. Advancing brings the rpm band down, retarding brings it up higher. A barely tolerable cam in a 351 might be too hairy for a 302, general rule is that things happen 500rpm later in a 302, so torque and power need more revs to start happening. You could advance the cam a little to compensate for the smaller engine but I'd just go one step down in cam size and install as instructed. One thing about Clevos is that they like more exhaust duration, due to the fact that while the exhaust flows quite well, it's quite a lot less than the inlet. It's less than the accepted formula of 70% (or thereabouts), so to compensate, they make cams over a certain size with what they call a "split" duration, where the exhaust is held open a bit longer than the inlet to allow more complete scavenging.

If you're replacing the pistons, get the ACL ones with higher gudgeon pins to suit 302 rods. That way all you need is a crank. In the scheme of things, a crank grind doesn't break the bank. However, if you stay with a 302, I reckon you'll be reasonably satisfied with 300 hp, or 1hp per cube. That's a nice street motor that will fire up and purr every time. They were (optimistically) rated at 240 stock, so an increase over this needs a decent, split-pattern cam and nice exhausts. Intake could be something like an Edelbrock air gap. They're pretty popular for an upgrade over the stock 2-barrel, but less of a jump from the later 4-barrel 2V, which are actually pretty good. I'd go for a Holley 600 vac sec-type carby, but here's an idea: why not the Holley 570 truck avenger? They come with annular boosters which are good for filling in the hole down low where a big cam would give grief. Annulars are better at atomising the fuel, especially at lower speeds so the torque is stronger but the tradeoff is top end, thus why they're not rated at 600 but 570 cfm due to the (slightly) more restrictive boosters. It would make next to no difference on a 302, this would be my choice of carby. Or a remanufactured Rochester. Ignition, well the stock Bosch electronic is pretty reliable, MSD in recent years seems to have some bad reports of reliability. I like the old oil-filled coils. The newer resin type ones seem to just fail with no warning. 2V clevo heads flow better than any factory Windsor head ever built. That said, they often need work on the short-turn radius (these are nasty and sharp) and the bowl needs blending to unshroud the valve a bit. The guide bosses can do with some streamlining and the roof of the mouth can take off 2-3 mm to about 2 inches into the port, then match the manifold face to it. That's about it, this will gain the most for your port work, any more and you're spending hours chasing the last 10 hp. Get some back-cut valves, maybe 3-angle cuts but only on the inlet. Exhaust needs nice wide single cut seats to conduct heat out of the valve. Hope this helps.

STD crank and rods, good for 7000rpm. A workmate builds 351s for his ski/race boat and uses 4MA cranks and reckons they're good for 7500. You won't need to spin it anywhere near that hard to meet your target. 400 hp is easy for clevo bottom end, just make sure it's all balanced. Open chamber heads aren't as efficient as closed, and need a few more degrees of timing. They also need a split pattern cam with more exhaust duration to scavenge the larger chamber. Std comp is 9.2:1 from memory. Give them a skim down 20-30 thou, (any more might affect your pushrod length), and that will take the compression up maybe half a point. I didn't catch whether you've got 2Vs or 4Vs, but I assume they're 2Vs. In that case, they respond well to cleaning up around the bowl and short turn, and maybe take a bit out of the roof at the mouth, both inlet and exhaust. Don't go for too much of a cam. Torque is what V8s are all about, and a grumpy, peaky engine will give you the shits in no time.

Polson you can have mine but I'm in Sydney. The steering problem could well be the upper bushes. Why not eliminate the knowns first then attack the unknowns?

Looks like yours was a Friday arvo special!

My $80 EvilBay Holley has thrown up a bit of a surprise on dismantling. It's a reverse-idle type with extra air-bleeds drilled into the bore. The idle ports up under the main body, primary side, have brass plugs inserted, so the only fuel it gets at idle is through the transfer slot. This doesn't sound right to me. The idle discharge hole gets nothing. Do these carbys take a different throttle plate from normal? Anybody dealt with this carby before?