Oil pressure gauge sender and warning light

This bit proved quite a challenge.

There are two take off points on the Chevy SBC, one is a 1/4 NPT just above the oil filter and the other a 1/8 NPT on the top face at the rear of the block.
neither are particularly accessible but I decided that the top one was the best prospect.

As I have two senders to accommodate I needed a T-Piece to attach them. This took a load of research to find an adapter that was narrow enough to clear the inlet manifold. I eventually found one from CBS. This one is 18mm across flats and I thought would fit. In the event it turned out that I had to file the bit nearest the screw in end as it was catching against the
manifold.

Modified T-Piece

Next problem was that with the sender fitted in the top. the assembly was too long to fit underneath the distributor.....

So - plan B - I purchased a 1/8 NPT tap from Amazon and drilled and tapped another outlet on the shank.

As I'd filed the sides down a little, it started to rust in no time so a quick coat of Hammerite was needed.

And finally!

Getting ready for Engine Start

Prop Shaft

Finally got round to ordering from Bailey Morris who were most helpful and got this in the post within a week. They provided the yoke for my Tremec 'box as part of the assembly, the whole deal including postage was around £270.
The tail-end is bored to fit over the diff pinion spigot but proved a little tight so needed a light sanding with the Dremmel to open up the bore of the coupling flange. The dimension of the spigot is needed by Bailey Morris when they are making your shaft and it turned out that they had provided exactly what I'd measured, I just needed to allow a little for clearance.
The flange is attached with M12 cap screws  high tensile 12.9. I've used nylocks to secure them but will research this a little more in case there needs to be a special fitting for this job.
















Side Pipes

Been putting this off for a while but a job I knew I'd struggle with was the Exhaust Side pipe fitting. I quickly realised that this was a two man job so I arranged for my mate Bill Holden to pop up and lend a hand.
Jon at AK advised that a good plan is to grease the pipe joints to ease the process as these will need to be on and off a few times during the build.
Even with plenty of grease it took two of us to force the damn things on and I'm now dreading the time when I need to remove them again for body-on.
Once they were on, we fitted the hangers with M10 set screws after by drilling and tapping. I've used two set screws per hanger. The rubber mounts are secured with standard nuts for now so as not to waste nylocks given they will be on and off a few times.
The distance from side pipe to chassis rail is between 85-90mm according to my research on the forum.
I've covered the fitted exhausts with bubble wrap for now to try and avoid any unfortunate dents should I drop something!




Plumbing

As this was over the xmas break, Bill brought his goddaughter Alice Boote with him who is a 6th form student interested in a career in engineering. She turned up mad keen to have a go a to working on the car so this is turning out to be a bit of a community project!. Its encouraging that more girls are considering engineering as a career so I hope my little project hasn't put her off too much. Unfortunately Alice turned up nursing a bad back so we gave her some lighter duties, fitting the heater rails and filling the gearbox oil. The heater rails are quite a neat solution from AK, fitting on the inside of the offside rocker cover. Getting at the rocker cover bolts with it in place is another matter so it was handy that Alice had small fingers for this bit!

Alice Boote - introducing youngsters to American V8 engines

Heater rail plumbing

AK supply a couple of lengths of hose and clips for fitting the heater take offs to the heater rail.

















The next part of the plumbing is the header tank. AK supply a lovely looking stainless one which unfortunately costs over £300 so I've done a bit of research around alternatives and found an alloy one from OBP for around £60. The standard one doesn't have the outlets in the best positions but OBP do a bespoke service so I sent then a mock-up of how I'd like the unit modified and I  now have one on order  - and only £15 or so for the mods. This also means you have to be a little more creative with the top hose fitting as you don't get the AK T-Piece that comes with their kit. I've bought a modular connector from CBS which has a fitting for the Fan Switch and I plan to fit a hose tail to the side of the unit to run to the header tank.

More on this soon!

Radiator

Finally got round to fitting the radiator and electric fan.

Not too much trauma with this.
I loose fitted the radiator initially to work out where the electric fan would be positioned. The 16" fan kit I have came with a variety of fittings including the ones that tie through the core. I didn't fancy those and managed to work out some bracketry to fix the fan cowl to the chassis.






I used some rubber tap washers around the locating pegs and top bolts

Rolling chassis

A bit more progress.
Since getting the engine in I've been concentrating on all the little ancillary jobs that are needed before I can test fire the engine.
My outline plan is to get to a point where I can fire up the motor and do the initial run in before doing final fit on the body.
This means I'll need to

• complete the fuel pipe
• Fit engine oil filter
• Fill with Oil
• Set static engine timing
• Install distributor
• Fit oil pressure and water temperature senders.
• Spark plugs and leads
• Fit radiator and hoses
• Header tank
• Electric cooling fan
• Cooling fan switch
• Fit exhausts
• Wire up Rev counter, oil pressure gauge and water temperature gauge.
• Wire up starter motor and rig up a temporary starter button.

Fuel Pipe
So I've started on the fuel system and run the fuel pipe part way down the chassis. The build manual suggest that the fuel pipe should be run from the tank directly underneath the diff then across to the inside chassis rail. AK supply a stainless cover plate to protect the fuel line under the diff. I must admit to being a bit concerned about this arrangement - despite that fact that AK and lots of others use that route to pass IVA. I found an article on the forum from Jaykay about an alternative route through the suspension arms round the side of the diff so that's what I've decided to do.
The idea is to use 10mm copper pipe with a couple of soldered elbows, then fabricate a suitable bracket to support the pipe as it passes through the suspension. This ends up with a rigid pipe route that is clear of the drive shaft and not affected by the suspension travel. The rest of the fuel pipe I've decided to run using rubber.

Fuel pipe section from tank 

Fuel pipe section underneath drivesharft

Fuel pipe section exiting suspension area

Engine filter, oil and timing.
A bit more work on the engine - as I had removed the distributor, I took the opportunity to fill the engine oil through the hole. I read somewhere that filling through the rocker covers takes an age. I firstly filled the oil filter with oil before fitting this.
Next problem was to set the static timing. The trick is to find Top Dead Centre on No 1 cylinder. On the Chevy 350, No 1 cylinder is the one nearest the front of the engine, so UK passenger side front.
I rotated the engine using the front pulley bolt (Chevy engine rotates clockwise when viewed from front) until the timing line on the harmonic balancer was at TDC. You need to confirm that this matches the firing position, in other words, at TDC both valves on No 1 cylinder should be closed. I did this by removing the rocker cover and observing the movement of the valves. The valves should remain closed for a half turn of the crankshaft up to TDC - in other words during the compression stroke. Some folks stick their finger over the spark plug holes to detect the pressurization of the cylinder but that's hard to do without an assistant. Next task is to refit the distributor.I bought an oil priming tool from Roadcraft which is useful for turning the oil pump shaft to line up the distributor drive gear to the oil pump while you line up the distributor rotor with plug cap no 1 of the distributor.  This process has given me a basic start point for the timing. In reality I'll have to remove and reset the distributor prior to starting the engine for the first time as I will need to use the oil primer tool to pressurize the oil.

Rocker cover removed while setting static timing

Engine Fit

At long last - the day came to install the engine and gearbox to the rolling chassis.
I booked the services of my mate Mark Edwards who fortunately had a Draper Engine crane he bought when building a Westfield a few years ago.

I wasn't quite sure of the full weight of the engine/gearbox combination, however a fair bit of it is alloy - cylinder heads, inlet manifold, water pump etc so that reduced it a bit. I also removed the starter motor (for weight) and distributor (to avoid damage).

I bought a lifting plate off e-bay which turned out to be just the job. The idea is you remove the carburetor and fix this plate over the inlet manifold using the carb studs. Added bonus of sealing the manifold so nothing drops in to cause damage later. I admit to being a bit worried about all that engine weight hanging from the 4 carb studs into an alloy casting - but turned out to be no problem.
The crane we had was rated at 1000kg, dropping to 250kg at full extent. We actually managed to lift the engine at the 250kg setting which was just as well due to the reach required.

 The gearbox end does drop a fair bit on lifting but was easy to manually level while we maneuvered the lump around.












We found it easier to roll the chassis up to the crane to position everything and we took a few breathers to take stock of progress. We hit a problem with the alignment of the front mounting brackets. Basically when the engine brackets were out of line with the chassis brackets by around 1cm, which meant that the rubber bobbins were really distorted. After much pondering we decided that the only practical solution was to remove one of the engine brackets and re-drill the holes to suit the chassis.
So all done and bolted down at the front, ensuring that the gearlever was central to the chassis.

Drivers side bracket - all in line

Slightly out of line passenger side

My mate Mark Edwards

With the engine finally down on the front mounts we used a ratchet strap to hold the gearbox tail in position while we worked out how to fit the gearbox mounting bracket. This is a bit of a fiddle as you have to raise the car sufficiently to mark,  drill and tap the chassis from below. I used 4 x M10 Setscrews to fix the bracket and I don't think its going anywhere!

Having the crane around was quite handy for raising the rear of the car while working on the gearbox bracket - with suitable axle stands deployed of course! 

So major milestone achieved - Engine in!

I took the opportunity to fit the starter motor and rotated the solenoid to be below the motor as recommended in a number of threads on the forum. This seems to solve problems with heat soak causing starting problems.

Now to crack on with the build!

Brakes

What with weddings and holidays the summer has been a bit of a write off so progress has slowed somewhat.

I decided it would be a good plan to test fit the body and make up the brake pipes to the servo. My logic was to bleed and pressurize the brake system so I could confirm all was well with the servo and my brake pipes before having the engine in the way. This also meant I could fix the brake pipes to the master cylinder without any additional joints.

So with a bit of help the body was dropped on the chassis. As the fuel tank was now installed I had to cut a hole in the boot floor to clear the tank filler.

The next task was to fit the Rover 45 brake servo I got from e-bay. - this is a very tight fit and I hope never has to come out!

Brake Servo and Clutch Master Cylinders

Followed by the AK pedal box which is a tad awkward to fit just because of where it is.
I also fitted the clutch master cylinder and fixed to the clutch pedal with a 5/16 clevis pin. The threaded rod needed to be trimmed in order to line up the clutch and brake pedals.

















 I then fitted the brake pipes to the master cylinder using my hand held flaring tool and some 3/8 UNF male pipe fittings.

I drilled and taped holes in the inner wings to eventually fix p-clips to secure the brake lines after final body fix.

My bleeding assistant!

So finally it was time to bleed the brakes, and good news  - only one leaking fitting that just needed a nip up. In truth the biggest problem was that I'd fitted the front calipers upside down so the bleed nipples were at the bottom - very hard to get the air out! 10 minutes later with these corrected, and with help from my assistant on the pedal - all done.

Really pleased with the result - very solid pedal and no leaks. The draper flaring tool must have worked well!

Powerrrr!

While all this building has been going on I placed my order for the engine and transmission which have now arrived.

I went for a 350 Chevy from Roadcraft  - rated at 355hp - and a beautiful looking thing it is too!

I also went for the Tremec TKO500 box which I installed with a little help from my neighbor.

The engine shipped with the bell-housing attached, so mistake #1 was to attempt to attach the gearbox to the bell-housing which proved impossible in trying to line up the input shaft with the clutch release bearing and clutch centre. So off with the bell-housing, attache that to the gearbox and present the whole assembly to the engine - easy!

As with all these things there are questions I wish I'd thought of before placing the order. It turns out that the engine I have is certified as a 1978 block so that gets me in the right emissions band.
However, its clear that this engine has not been run in by the builder and the carb has not seen a drop of fuel. I would have thought that the engine would have been run and I'm pretty sure some other builders do this - I never though to ask!

That said, the installation and running in instructions are very informative and I'm not predicting any problems in getting it going. They do go on at length about the running in procedure and its importance and Brian @ Roadcraft did recommend using break-in oil and and using an oil priming tool to circulate oil and check oil pressure before first start so as not to ruin the camshaft. This is mentioned several times in the notes so must be a real worry.

Roadcraft evidently build their engines with flat tappets rather than roller - which is why they are more susceptible to wear. Also on these older engines, you need to be careful when selecting oil as the latest synthetic stuff doesn't contain the high zinc content needed to maintain the wearing surfaces of the cam lobes.

Finally the run in instructions say to run the engine at fast idle for 20 minutes and to make sure there is at least three gallons of fuel in the tank! - wow!

I think on balance I'd have paid extra for the roller cam but too late now and I'm sure with care all will be well.