gerg

I'd start on an inconspicuous area first, say an inner guard or floor panel. To weld in a patch, use a series of tack welds at each corner. Then go around the piece tacking halfway between the last lot of tacks you did. Then go halfway between those all round and keep doing this till all the gaps are filled in. You can't do a continuous bead on sheetmetal because you're concentrating too much heat on one spot and that warps the panel.
 
A gasless MIG is ok, but the welds will be quite messy and a bit porous. I'd be reluctant to use gasless on anything structural that's for sure. My little SIP is a cheap, transformer type welder and I've mostly used gasless in it but once I used a disposable CO2 bottle with 0.9mm MIG wire and it turned from a pretty ordinary machine to an excellent one. The difference between gas and gasless is chalk and cheese.
 
If you buy a cheap machine, you'd be improving it greatly by pissing off the standard pissy little earth lead and clamp and chucking on something like a 25mm2 cable and a beefy clamp. You can tell if you need to by seeing if the standard one gets hot. If it does, you're losing power through it.

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.

"my" industry isn't just your local shitbag service station or theiving pricks at the nearest dealership. My industry is also in the mines, defence forces, fixing your fire engines and ambulances, keeping farm equipment going, and in my case, fixing the machinery and trucks that keep your power on. It's even much more than that.
 
So don't go lumping us all into a narrow field of shonks and ripoffs just because it's all you've seen of our trade.
 
We're a bit like doctors, except they don't bring out a brand new, completely different human body every 3-4 years. All this and we're paid less than the people that drive them for a living.
 
As for the ridiculous cost of LPG conversion, the Howard Government slapped a $2000 rebate on gas conversions not to help you out, but to get more consumers on board so they could then tax it just as petrol and diesel have been for decades. And guess what? Now we're paying more for LPG (in comparison to petrol) than before this rebate came along. I can remember LPG being around 30% of the petrol price, now it's closer to 50-60%. And once the rebate came in, overnight a $1500 conversion became $3500, surprise surprise. Everyone raves about the pink bat "scandal" but nobody remembers this scam of a setup. The rebate should have been conditional on the conversion price being fixed or capped, not having the "market sorting itself out" which translates to "charging whatever they fucking like". We're still living with the legacy of that today.
 
I heard all sorts of shitty excuses for jacking up the price too, like "we can't get hold of any cylinders, they're in too much demand" (like APA couldn't ramp up production if they wanted to).
 
I do agree with the comment that this particular "industry" is keeping the money to itself, but just don't go throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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.

• 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 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.

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.

My 351

This is my 302 XE. This motor might be making its way into my LTD after a freshen up. It doesn't get started much and fuel was prob 5 years old at this point.
 
No idea on engine specs, went ok. 600 Holley vac sec, genie tri-y extractors, single 2.25 or 2.5.
 

my clevo extractor note LOL
 

My old clevo powered escort,doing a few revs in the pad at winton raceway.
 

C'mon, don't be shy!

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.

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.

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.

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.