The Saga of the 347

This started last year when my friend Mike bought a bigger motor for his race car and was going to sell his 347. Well I got this big idea to buy it from him, put it in my Coupe and run quicker than with my 308.

So in January I bought it from him and in February I took it to my friend Kevin for him to check over and put a bigger camshaft in it. That's when the nightmare started really.
He started looking it over and found the pistons were too lose in the bores and would be a problem. It turned out I had to buy new pistons for it so I decided to get ones that would also increase the compression in the engine. More compression means more power which is good for a race car.

So with new pistons ordered and the engine at the machine shop we decided to work on the cylinder heads so we could put a larger camshaft in it. Larger camshaft means more power, again a good thing for a race car.

Now another nightmare begins.

Mike had these cylinder heads built by a reputable race shop and they did at all wrong too. We always wondered why the motor never ran any better after he had all the work done on the cylinder heads and we found out why. The supposed race shop took the heads apart and put parts back in that weren't even as good as what came out. The valve springs were too light and couldn't support a very big camshaft. The valves they but back in were too small, they put in 2.02 inch valves when they should have been 2.08. The valves were also too short which why they couldn't put a very big valve spring in it. So basically Mike spent over $2500 on this and got back heads that were worse than what he had to begin with.

So now I have to take the cylinder heads down to the machine shop and have those rebuilt too with all the correct parts. The shop I took them too did a great job on them and now I have a very good set of cylinder heads for my 347.

My friend Kevin assembled the 347 for me and we ran into another nightmare.

We started putting it together way back in the second week of July and things were going along fine until we started to put the connecting rods in the block. It turns out the connecting rods used in this motor take a special rod bearing that I didn't know about. I'd ordered regular Ford rod bearings and guess what they didn't fit. So we did a little research on the internet and found they actually used a rod bearing from a 1979 Chevy Monte Carlo with a 3.3 liter V-6.
I called the machine shop and told this to them and was assured that I could use a standard small block Chevy rod bearing. So I ordered them and guess what, they didn't fit, too big. So I called them back and told them this and they ordered the bearing for the V-6 Chevy, but I had to wait another 3 days for those to come in.

So in the mean time we decided to do what could to the cylinder heads and my friend Mike was going to let me use a set of rocker arms he had laying around. Yup, they wouldn't fit, too small. My cylinder heads use a 7/16 rocker arm stud and they were for a 3/8 rocker arm stud. So now I had to track down rocker arms and it turned out I needed a special set that's only sold by one company. Lucky me this time and they had a set in stock, just had to wait a week to get them is all.

Well in the mean time Kevin got all the parts and finally able to start assembly of the engine, and another nightmare pops up. Now there wasn't enough clearance for the connecting rods, so it had to come apart again and Kevin took it to another machine shop where they fixed that problem, just took another 3 days.

The time line is important because this whole time I was working toward trying to make the Pinks All-Out race on August 13-14, which I might not make it looks like.

So after all this Kevin only needed 2 days to put the engine together and I was able to pick it up Friday night after work. And another nightmare pops up.

Well after spending all day at it the motor is in the car, but the headers are being a pain in the neck. I borrowed them from a friend and they fit except for where the evac tube. Because they came off a EFI car they welded the evac tubes on the inside of the collector, leaving the outside for the O2 sensor. Because I have a pan fill transmission instead of a case fill the dipstick tube is in the way of the evac tube preventing the header from mounting to the head. So that's where I'm at right now, trying to figure out how to get the headers to work in the car. I'll be back at tomorrow in hopes of figuring it out.