Project Muscrate:
It’s all a balancing act!
Hi everyone and welcome back! WOW! What a journey it has been since the last article! I apologize for missing last month but trust me it could not be avoided. From here on, the day of March 19, 2007, will be one of the best days of my life. My wife Amy gave birth to our new baby BOY, Michael Robert Roeder! He was quite the surprise considering he was three weeks early, but all went well and everyone is doing great other than a lack of sleep! This is our first child and, of course, I didn’t have the remodeling of the upstairs quite done yet -- guess I figured I had three more weeks! That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! Besides that most important event I have been insanely busy in the shop trying to dig out of the hole I was in and get my customer engines done and out the door. However, I have finally found some time for ol’ Muscrate and I hope you will find this interesting. Let’s get started.
 This is the casting number for the 1971 Ford 302 block being used. |
As a brief refresher: I am building a 348 (4.040” bore) cube stroker engine out of a 302. The foundation of the build is a factory Ford 1971 302 I procured from a customer that had been keeping it around “just in case.“ It is considerably stronger than the late model “roller blocks” I have used in the past and has much thicker main webbing and I believe thicker cylinder walls. The only perhaps better alternative to this block in a factory casting would be a “Mexican” Ford unit, which has beefier main caps, but I really don’t see much difference in the block itself. If I had one I would have used it, but I didn’t so I guess I’ll take my chances. I would love to have used an aftermarket block of some sort but for the purposes of this build, and my current budget, that would simply not be possible.
For you loyal readers, though, if you have the extra $1700 to $2200 lying around for a block, by all means it is a good investment. I think I can safely make this old relic work, however,with some careful planning and a little attention to detail.
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The first step when a block comes in the door at my shop is a thorough degreasing by means of a bath in the hot tank. The block gets stripped down to its bare core, meaning no cam bearings, galley plugs, freeze plugs, etc., and then is submerged in a nice solution of some nasty water-soluble chemicals that would also do a good job of stripping a carcass to the bone and eventually even making the bones disappear. (This last part is of course something I have heard about because I wouldn’t know of such things.) Moving on…
After spending a full day in the tank at 250 degrees, the block comes out nice and clean other than some residual muck that is taken care of in the next step, which is a ride in the jet wash cabinet. This operation does a very nice job of cleaning any remaining muck off of the block, and then it is dried and ready for machining. As this is a drag racing engine only that will see no street use and rarely ever hit 180 degrees, I am filling the water jackets almost all the way to the deck surface with Hard Blok.
