No wonder the rear seal was leaking, from the looks it's already past time for a rebuild... With the wear that bearing has the crank is no doubt jumping up and down, my guess it the new seal will leak in a short amount of time.... I figured mine was in similar cond and is why I went ahead and bought the aluminum headed 5.0 that already had been rebuilt but never fired(heads are new)...
For sure! There is no more bearing surface at all! The copper is an underlament for the babbit material. I've seen engines run like that forever, though! I had a 53 Ford flathead V8 that had worn the copper off too! Every 6 months or so, I had to replace the old rope style oil seal. The engine ran great and didn't use any oil while I owned it. I had that car for several years as a DD!
Well I ordered some main bearings today, so I will go ahead and replace the worn ones. Also will replace oil pump and pull intake to look for any missing galley plugs. Don't want to dump to much money into it since I will be doing an upgrade to the powerplant some time in the future. Any thing else I should check or replace while I have it apart?
that silver metal piece really looks like the rocker arm pivot. i can't see it getting chewed up like that though...
Well I finally got around to pulling the intake and heads. Everything still looks good, ie, no damage that I can see to explain the above mentioned metal piece. Guess I will pull the water pump and timing cover as well. So now that I pretty much have my engine torn apart, are there any performance upgrades I can do? Really would rather not pull pistons. How about a cam upgrade, are there upgrades for stock pushrods, rockers, springs, etc.?
new... heads, intake, carb, roller cam, roller rockers and roller lifter conversion...for a few things...
Ive got new intake, carb, and working on heads. What's a good roller conversion? And how much is gained from a roller upgrade?
For a street engine, actually very little... It may free up 4-5Hp in the upper RPM ranges but unless you are regularly spinning past 5k RPM you won't see much more than a lighter wallet... Run a moderate cam like this Summit Racing cam, it's light years ahead of stock... Several of the BIG name cam vendors sell same for another $65-$80... http://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-k3600 You'll need a set of springs but have to be careful as too strong may pull the pressed studs out of the heads... BTW rather than deal with the steel dist gear & spend another $250 I opted for a flat tappet Lunati Voodoo cam for my 5.0(the $$$ will be spent on headers)... It's close in spec to the above but included a T-Shirt so they had me hooked...
So are the flat tappet cams a drop in deal on a stock motor? I assume an after market cam and lifters would be a set. What would be a good spring for heads with pressed in studs and a mild cam?
Cam mfg offer complete sets. I wud contact the mfg and tell them what I had in mind; they will know better than most what setup is best. That way, you won't have to guess at what will work or damage anything.
Yup the stock cam is flat tappet... You can call Summit to see what spring/retainer/keeper set they recommend for the cam I linked...
Well they've only been selling that cam & lifter kit for the last 20+ years, should have some idea even if it has to be looked up...
