I'm looking to start rebuilding a ford 302 soon, my friend has one he's gonna sell to me for a few clams. My thinking is I rebuild it and the accompanying t5, then buy a foxbody shell or other interesting ford and have a rad car.
But for now, what tips can the hive offer me about building a fairly budget minded 302 with reasonable performance?
What I learned from having an experienced person supervise my 302 assembly is that you can screw up by putting the head gaskets on the wrong way. You end up blocking a water port and the result is overheating.If you are unaware of the head gasket thing, you would go nuts before you ever figured it out.
I of course was about to put them on the wrong way.
If you are really being anal about this, get a big plastic storage tub and fill it with hot water and dawn dishwasher detergent and scrub that thing until the water looks clean enough to drink ( 'cept for the suds). You are going to be very wet when you are done.
Plasti gage is a good thing.
Obtain and learn how a degree wheel works. Not that it is going to make a huge difference to how the engine runs, but it will give you more insight into what the cam is up to in an engine. Kinda like a rite of passage.
The bolts that hold the "spider" in place are special, keep them in order. "Spider" being the tin bit in the valley that holds the lifters in place. If I recall, too long and they crush the cam bearing?
Chamfer cylinder bolt holes, that's pretty generic to all engines and the machine shop should have done it, but check.
Fords need to have sealant on some of the head bolts.
I like blue locktite.
Buy a good oil pump drive. It is a flimsy looking thing and likes to fail. Failure is bad here.
If you decide to go stroker, go 331 rather than the 347. Less chance of getting an oil burner because of where the rings end up.
Don't buy a cheap Chinese gasket kit; good place to splurge actually.
It takes longer than you want it to. So put the patient hat on and stop when the words "Good enough" form in your mind.
This is from a person who was in your shoes not long ago, so I am not an expert, just passing on what is fresh in my mind and what I did. Experts will be along shortly.
My advice, unless there is some sentimental attachment to this free motor, is go get a good running take-out 5.0 from an explorer and just clean it up. Its not cost effective to do a rebuild on a stock 302, and most of them are in really good shape anyway. Unless you are going balls to the walls with pisons, rods, heads, etc, and at that point you can't put enough power thru the stock block to justify pumping money into it and you need a Dart block or similar anyway.
agree with 93gsxturbo - the machine shop costs alone will eat you alive vs buying a good used take out.
There is however, one really great solution:
copy Tom's recent articles on rebuilding the LS motor, and TAKE A CLASS at a local community college. You will get to use all the right tools/machinery, meaning the machining is done by you, supervised by someone who knows what they are doing, and done in a facility that has the chemicals and environmental considerations under control. You will stay on schedule too, and if you are anything like me when I was in high school, this is huge.
And you don't have to figure out how to buy or store tools that you might rarely use.
Unless that 302 came out of a 1993-1995 Cobra Mustang or a 1996-1998 V8 Explorer most 302's are nothing special. The E7 heads that they all got during the late 80's-mid 90's are just OK. They can be ported but you'll just out flow a set of stock GT40 or GT40P heads that way. If you can just get a 302 with the GT heads and start from there you'll be way ahead of the game. I had a '93 Cobra and with a few mods it put down about 250 HP at the wheels. With a swap to GT40X heads it added another 30 HP. That's about 330 at the flywheel. It still had the stock intake and cam.
As an owner of a dry-sumped 347, unless you're just hell bent on keeping it blue oval, go LS.
Robbie wrote: agree with 93gsxturbo - the machine shop costs alone will eat you alive vs buying a good used take out. There is however, one really great solution: copy Tom's recent articles on rebuilding the LS motor, and TAKE A CLASS at a local community college. You will get to use all the right tools/machinery, meaning the machining is done by you, supervised by someone who knows what they are doing, and done in a facility that has the chemicals and environmental considerations under control. You will stay on schedule too, and if you are anything like me when I was in high school, this is huge. And you don't have to figure out how to buy or store tools that you might rarely use.
Definitely agree on the class. When I was in high school in the 70's I took an engine rebuilding class at the local community college. I got high school credit for graduation and rebuilt a 289 SB Ford engine for my '66 Mustang. I had to buy all the parts but that was my graduation present instead of the Senior Cruise (dad gave me a choice and an engine is the gift that keeps on giving). It was the class project and the whole class loved it because I went with 11:1 pistons, nice cam, had the engine parts balanced at a machine shop that catered to drag racers. We put the engine together in class, bored the cylinders to .020 over, honed them, checked bearing clearance, put in new cam bearings, knurled the valve guides, put in screw in rocker arm studs, everything. My only regret was I didn't have any porting work done on the heads.
On disassembly ,measure everything. Modern engine have very little wear requiring machine work.
I have seen engines with over 100K miles that needed nothing. Of course if there has been poor maintenance, overheated or catastrophic failure.
So take it slow.
Gt40p heads or some used aluminum heads would make the biggest improvement. You could use an entire exploder long block unless you wanted provisions for a mechanical fuel pump.
E7s arent a horrid head but theres nothing to really be gained for the price vs a gt40p.
As with any engine rebuild make sure the work area is clean, a little bit of dirt in the wrong place can trash a bearing.
I have no attachment to the engine, so finding one out of an explorer is a really good solution. Pull-a-part has an engine listed around $200 so that's good for the money.
I'll look into the community college route for sure, it'll just take some research.
All good comments here. One thing I have not seen mentioned yet is to be aware that if you go with an explorer engine or just the GTP heads, you will need GTP specific exhaust manifolds or headers. Do a google search and you will find out what fits and what does not. I can tell you from personal experience that most of the headers made for the SBF will hit spark plugs on the GTP heads.
For my project with GTP heads I went with the Ford Motorsports Stainless Shorty headers that can fit any of the SBF heads.
Or you could go with some truck pull zoomies. No spark plug clearance issues with those, though you may not like the idea of cutting holes in your hood.
Also of note if you use gt40p's theres a limit on cam size because of the exhaust valves. Theres a few companys who make fix it kits that allow a larger lift to a point. After a certain lift you actually need to have some machine work done and replace the exhaust valves and springs. Its well documented on the internet.
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