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Well, life is getting busier and going in an unanticipated, but positive, direction. My interest for vehicle builds has taken a back seat to life and getting older, in general, and I'm trying to get all my sh*t boxes buttoned up before I get to the point where they're neglected entirely. That concrete ain't gettin' any softer on the back and transmissions ain't gettin' any lighter. I've got, perpetually, more and more going on and it seems to be the natural progression of things. I had a fairly organized plan of how I was going to present all this material and the format I was going to use. Also, I had a vision of what the BKO was going to be. That's all become relatively impractical and gone out the window now. Lol. So, I'll just take anyone who's interested along on the sporadic play of how things have materialized and some tech/fab/industry tidbits along the way.
Because of my background in motorsports, throughout the years, I've gotten many questions, from many people, about how things are done. There is no single proper way to do something. PERIOD. Many different methods are utilized by different professionals to achieve a desired result. So, the information I'm presenting has been the result of working hand-in-hand with some of these professionals and taking their application techniques down to the "home garage" level. If you can take something away from this build thread to apply to your own work: make it yours, make it work for you, your budget, and your situation. That being said, this is how this particular build progressed. Let's hit it...
This is how my BKO started its life with me. I saw it sitting on a used car lot that I passed by every day to work. It hadn't moved in over a year. I decided to stop by one day and check it out. It was an '88 XLT, 5.0L, AOD, 3.55 open diff, top-hat hubs, quad shock option, swing-away tire carrier and 187,000 miles. It had a sticker price of $2,995. This was in August of 2014. When I popped the hood and crawled underneath the chassis everything was completely original with factory parts. Nothing had been modified. Hell, the shocks were still factory. Even the dash was in good shape, under the cover. I had to have this unicorn. It was a little mom-and-pop car lot and the owners agreed to a "layaway" payment plan with no interest. They kept the vehicle until I paid it off. Win.
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Now, during this time, I was building an engine for a customer I had done some work for in the past. The motor was as roller block 5.0L out of a '92 T-bird. It was going to go in a '66 Bronco he had recently acquired. He wanted a mild build, initially, just to have something to take the BKO out and about. Something in the 250-300 HP range and erring towards a practical TQ curve. He wanted to show the truck off more than wheel it, so aesthetics were a priority on the build. This is what we came up with based on the budget constraint he specified:
I had a different thought about what to run for carburetor sizing, but he opted for the 670 "in case" he wanted to build the motor into a stroker at a later date. This outline was a pretty straightforward build, relatively inexpensive, and would get him in the power-band he wanted. This guy usually goes pretty big with his builds, but this one seemed kinda "low-buck" given his prior requests. No custom cam grinds, no CNC'd heads, no port work, no gasket-matching, no lightening/balancing of the rotating assembly, no forged bottom end componentry, etc. Hell, not even roller rockers or one-piece pushrods. This led me to believe it was just a temporary motor and he had bigger plans in the works for down-the-road. That's fine. Easy build. Here's how it went down, starting at a local machine shop I've been going to for almost 20 years (which is where some of my industry "education" comes from):
The above 4 pics are of the bare block after it comes out of the hot-tank cleaning and bead blasting. It's been inspected, via magnafluxing, for cracks/damage and all threaded holes are chased.
This is the block being fixtured in the boring machine. The block's cylinder walls will develop a wear pattern from the piston traveling up-and-down, over millions of cycles, during the engine's service life. If you were to cut the cylinder in half, longitudinally, and view it straight on, it would look like this: ( ). We need to "true-up" the cylinder walls to "re-set" the wear pattern to zero. I didn't want to overbore the the cylinders too much, as I wanted the customer to get as many rebuilds as possible out of this block. Therefore, we only went with a .020" overbore because that's the minimum it took to "clean up" the cylinder walls to this: I I. So, we had this: ( ) and we want this: I I.
Here are the heads being fixtured for a rebuild. They've gone through the same hot-tank, blast, and mag process as the block. They've also been "decked/milled" to true up their mating surface to the block. You can do further machining processes to modify the heads, but we'll get into that later on in this build where we get our hands on some GT40 (3-bar) heads.
Here's everything complete and ready-to-go. The rods have been sized, and everything has been cleaned/inspected. Master overhaul kit came in, too. Let's get this stuff back to the garage and get started.
Ta-da! It's on the stand, it's got a neighbor to keep it company, and all the parts made it back safe. I opted to have to machine shop use their rod heater to install the piston wrist pins. I have the ability to do this work myself, but I wanted the shop's warranty for the customer.
Stay tuned... lot's more ready-to-go and coming, but I'm out of posting time for the moment. Just got called into work.
Because of my background in motorsports, throughout the years, I've gotten many questions, from many people, about how things are done. There is no single proper way to do something. PERIOD. Many different methods are utilized by different professionals to achieve a desired result. So, the information I'm presenting has been the result of working hand-in-hand with some of these professionals and taking their application techniques down to the "home garage" level. If you can take something away from this build thread to apply to your own work: make it yours, make it work for you, your budget, and your situation. That being said, this is how this particular build progressed. Let's hit it...
This is how my BKO started its life with me. I saw it sitting on a used car lot that I passed by every day to work. It hadn't moved in over a year. I decided to stop by one day and check it out. It was an '88 XLT, 5.0L, AOD, 3.55 open diff, top-hat hubs, quad shock option, swing-away tire carrier and 187,000 miles. It had a sticker price of $2,995. This was in August of 2014. When I popped the hood and crawled underneath the chassis everything was completely original with factory parts. Nothing had been modified. Hell, the shocks were still factory. Even the dash was in good shape, under the cover. I had to have this unicorn. It was a little mom-and-pop car lot and the owners agreed to a "layaway" payment plan with no interest. They kept the vehicle until I paid it off. Win.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, during this time, I was building an engine for a customer I had done some work for in the past. The motor was as roller block 5.0L out of a '92 T-bird. It was going to go in a '66 Bronco he had recently acquired. He wanted a mild build, initially, just to have something to take the BKO out and about. Something in the 250-300 HP range and erring towards a practical TQ curve. He wanted to show the truck off more than wheel it, so aesthetics were a priority on the build. This is what we came up with based on the budget constraint he specified:
- 5.0L roller block with stock rotating assembly/bottom-end, bored .020" over, maintaining serpentine belt accessory drive.
- Explorer 5.0L camshaft.
- GT40P (4-bar) cylinder heads, re-man'd with Viton valve seals.
- Weiand Street Fighter dual-plane intake manifold.
- Holley Truck Avenger 670 cfm carburetor.
- Holley 110 GPH fuel pump.
- HEI-style distributor.
- 8mm MSD plug wires (customized cut-to-length).
- Flow Kooler water pump.
- Full-length headers (brand to be determined based on engine bay fitment).
- ARP fasteners/studs used throughout.
- Color scheme: New Ford Gray/black accents.
I had a different thought about what to run for carburetor sizing, but he opted for the 670 "in case" he wanted to build the motor into a stroker at a later date. This outline was a pretty straightforward build, relatively inexpensive, and would get him in the power-band he wanted. This guy usually goes pretty big with his builds, but this one seemed kinda "low-buck" given his prior requests. No custom cam grinds, no CNC'd heads, no port work, no gasket-matching, no lightening/balancing of the rotating assembly, no forged bottom end componentry, etc. Hell, not even roller rockers or one-piece pushrods. This led me to believe it was just a temporary motor and he had bigger plans in the works for down-the-road. That's fine. Easy build. Here's how it went down, starting at a local machine shop I've been going to for almost 20 years (which is where some of my industry "education" comes from):
The above 4 pics are of the bare block after it comes out of the hot-tank cleaning and bead blasting. It's been inspected, via magnafluxing, for cracks/damage and all threaded holes are chased.
This is the block being fixtured in the boring machine. The block's cylinder walls will develop a wear pattern from the piston traveling up-and-down, over millions of cycles, during the engine's service life. If you were to cut the cylinder in half, longitudinally, and view it straight on, it would look like this: ( ). We need to "true-up" the cylinder walls to "re-set" the wear pattern to zero. I didn't want to overbore the the cylinders too much, as I wanted the customer to get as many rebuilds as possible out of this block. Therefore, we only went with a .020" overbore because that's the minimum it took to "clean up" the cylinder walls to this: I I. So, we had this: ( ) and we want this: I I.
Here are the heads being fixtured for a rebuild. They've gone through the same hot-tank, blast, and mag process as the block. They've also been "decked/milled" to true up their mating surface to the block. You can do further machining processes to modify the heads, but we'll get into that later on in this build where we get our hands on some GT40 (3-bar) heads.
Here's everything complete and ready-to-go. The rods have been sized, and everything has been cleaned/inspected. Master overhaul kit came in, too. Let's get this stuff back to the garage and get started.
Ta-da! It's on the stand, it's got a neighbor to keep it company, and all the parts made it back safe. I opted to have to machine shop use their rod heater to install the piston wrist pins. I have the ability to do this work myself, but I wanted the shop's warranty for the customer.
Stay tuned... lot's more ready-to-go and coming, but I'm out of posting time for the moment. Just got called into work.