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CLEVELAND ENGINE TALK

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T. Meyer I think it is. They'd be a 400 crank with the mains spun down to 2.75" down from 3". Probably some sort of Chev rod and/or custom pistons. Either that or full custom rods.

In the past, 400 engines were worth scrap over there, so cores were cheap. They were made for 12 years vs only 4 for the clevo, so plenty more around. Dunno about now, folks are waking up to their bang-for-buck potential.

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I mean a stroker kit to suit the 400 around 470 c.i odd

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On 8/8/2018 at 10:18 PM, bear351c said:

You can buy lifter bore sleeve kits, now.  Ream out, press in sleeve, ream again, problem solved. 

Simples.

Simples

 

Also saw on Roadkill Garage with the Clevo Commando build, (408C 650hp solid roller)

about new lifters (solid roller tho) so you don't have to bush lifter bores, I'll look up who made them later.

 

I'd love to build a 440 Clevo, Arrow block 4.125" bore, Scat 4.100" crank, Scott Cook SCM alloy heads, SCM air supremacy intake, BIG high lift solid roller cam,

But for now I'll plan a 351 hyd roller or 393/408 AFD. after I rebuild my mates mystery 351c

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yeah im back on the hunt for a windsor or clevo to go sic big stroker i would really like the 468 windsor with dart block or big ass clevo or even consider 429/460 just finding engines at reasonable prices is getting hard even harder std bore blocks

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Hmm not too sure about this one. Tempting, clevo power is good and all but these are cast in China, not sure where they're machined. They had some problems early on with air pockets and inclusions in the castings, probably fixed by now (this was a couple of years ago).

Also no 4.125 bore option, not a deal breaker but it's easy cubes and bigger bores unshroud the valves better.

If you can land a US-made Dart Windsor for similar money, I think I know what my choice would be for now.


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while on this alloy block topic,what is the best clevo block ? ,Fontana,arrow,dart ? rumor has it moffat had one from ford for his mustang as a trial cause the normal cast iron one was so heavy ,when he went to turn into the first corner the car went straight ahead compard to the boss 302.

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Cam Research were the ones who made the solid roller lifters from my earlier post, don't need oil restrictor or lifter bore sleeving

 

max 4.060" sounds funny, Pavtek's website says 4.185" max, 0.250" wall at 4.155",

They did have some issues with 1st batch, I'm sure I read on ford forums all blocks now come with sonic & hardness test reports aswell. They are iron block not alloy.

Still heaps cheaper then T Meyer USA,Track Boss cleveland Iron at $4590(AU) which only 2 have been cast, CGI iron $6885(AU) or Alloy at $11,475(AU)

Dart alloy block is $9895, SHP iron $3200, Iron Eagle $5000 (all prices from Precision Intl)

 

Ben Gatt runs a supercharged 408 Fontana in his XA hardtop,

& Mark Hunt, Huntsman Customline "wild bunch" car sometimes has a supercharged Clevo,

I remember hearing him saying when he raced at Swan Hill Dragway it had a Cleveland in it.

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At those prices I'd be getting an older block hot tanked and machined. Hell, I put 302C heads on my 351C in an F350 and with a mild cam and 4bbl it went like hell!

 

A big part of the reason they got killed was the looming 1976 emissions standard for US and in particular California which is notoriously strict. Part of the design of a Clevo is that it has inefficient low velocity ports and in open-chamber style produces poor power with mediocre emissions... albeit better than the closed chamber heads. Add to this its oddly low 1st piston ring, causing a thin ring of hard-to-ignite vapour mix, and you've got an emissions disaster by any standard.

 

Also, the contemporaneously popular style of emissions regulations were not easily integrated into the Cleveland castings. These tended to be things like exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and air-injection into the exhaust ports to encourage thorough burning of any remaining unignited mixture being expelled. With a short production run slated mainly for performance options and larger luxury cars, the Cleveland was replaced by the Windsor in most applications and quietly killed off.

 

Another aspect to this was management. Apparently the head of development at the time the Cleveland went into production was somewhat of a mover 'n' shaker, and was an influencing factor in getting the project not only off the ground, but into production cars. As with many things, this quickly changed with new management, plus the aforementioned emissions standards and the Arab Emirates fuel crisis in 1972 inspiring a move away from larger capacity engines.

 

Shame, they were pretty much the LS motor of their day, they just couldn't be efficiently adapted to meet regulations. 

 

 - boingk

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All great points, I'll add to/elaborate on the many reasons why the US Clevo died in 74:

They were a heavier engine. The 351W was slightly lighter despite having a taller deck.

The word "performance" for all manufacturers was becoming a forbidden word. A major key to the racy 351C, the 4V head (what made it a performance engine) was becoming redundant because performance was way down the list of priorities, and was of no advantage with all the smog requirements of the time.

The federal laws in advertising engine horsepower had to be shown in DIN or net (ie: as installed in the vehicle) as opposed to the bullshit SAE figures they used to get with no water pump, alternator or exhaust system. Finally, people could see the inefficiency of the big lumps they were driving, some down by 100 HP with no changes to the tune. For the fuel they used, they provided poor performance.

Efficiency is another good point, one well made by Boingk, was the open-chamber design that was better for emissions but worse for efficiency. The new laws pushing from one end and the fuel crisis from the other put the squeeze on manufacturers to cull the worst performing designs and focus on engineering the ones left into a feasible product.

They were somewhat able to recoup the development cost of the Cleveland by continuing to build the 351M/400, an evolution of the Clevo but used in large cars and trucks. This range continued until 1982. It was a low-power, high-torque smog motor, a replacement for the 390.

The cars coming out at the time were too small to take the large, heavy lump that the clevo was. The Mustang and the Pinto were going to be their bread-and butter models, which were 4 and 6-cylinder powered. Although, they did manage to wedge a smogged 302W into the last model of the Mustang II before the Fox came out.

What eventually killed the 351M/400 was the difficulty in adapting to the new emissions standards of the 1980s, which required feedback via oxygen sensors which are (for obvious reasons) incompatible with air pump injection systems. Coupled with the reduced demand for an engine of that size in the lean-and-mean 80s, the cost of re-engineering the "M" motor was not justifiable.

The reasons why the Cleveland continued in Aus right until the end of 82 was the fact that large family cars were still popular at the time. The Cleveland was already engineered for fitment into the Falcon/Fairlane chassis so there was no problem continuing that line, even if on a small scale. The tooling had already been made, so the rest was just production cost.

Of course Ford pulled the pin in 82 and paid for it until the bitter end, but that's a whole new essay for another day.



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Looking at retro conversion (reduced base circle) roller cams. Can someone elaborate on if/why the factory 302W roller lifters are not compatible with the Cleveland block? The actual retro lifters are near triple the price but I can't see where the difference lies.

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Nope, but interested to find out myself. 

 

Did a little research. seems the lifters raise up too high and uncover the oil hole in the side of the lifter, Bye, bye oil pressure.....

http://351c.net/board/index.php?/topic/2414-sbf-roller-lifters-in-a-cleveland/

 

C vs W lifters

 

Looks  like it can be done with the brass lifter bore inserts. Which also solves the old "oil issue" that Clevo's have. 

 

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Nope, but interested to find out myself. 

 

Did a little research. seems the lifters raise up too high and uncover the oil hole in the side of the lifter, Bye, bye oil pressure.....

http://351c.net/board/index.php?/topic/2414-sbf-roller-lifters-in-a-cleveland/

 

48752938772_b9b82ece5e_b.jpg  

Looks  like it can be done with the brass lifter bore inserts. Which also solves the old "oil issue" that Clevo's have. 

 

Hey cheers bear, yeah i read that one too, but dont know if they were using the reduced base circle cam, also if there is a certain amount of lift where this occurs ie: if using a cam below a particular lift spec, this might not be a problem. I want a roller version of the same cam i have now. I'm done with flat tappets.

 

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Fair comment, I was thinking that the actual casting around the lifter bores wasn't as high on the Weezer...

Would a smaller base circle be any different?  Roller cams have higher lift, don't they.?

 

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