I thought it was about time for an update in case anyone's interested. I'm building a 289 slabside, at the same time as getting an extension done, so progress is slow.
In summary, work on the car hasn't started, but I've rebuilt the 302 V8 myself over the course of the last year. I taught myself to weld, stuck it on a home-made stand and started it up last Thursday. It started first time - well, second time if you disregard the fact I forgot to turn the fuel on the first time
I bought the block and heads from eBay for £400 in late 2012 - the plan being to see if we could rebuild it with stock components, and if it worked, upgrade it a bit. My friend Dave and I started stripping it down in early 2013 (I think - seems a long time ago now). We had the block cleaned, checked and honed at Roe Engineering in Fleet. They did a light skim on the stock heads for us, which are the rather poor-performing E6SE castings (they'll get an upgrade at some point). Cylinder bore was standard, with the crank ground 10 under. Then we took the rotating parts for dynamic balancing at Bassetdown Balancing in Newbury - the chap there is building a Dax in his spare time, so he's pretty cool. Started reassembling it in about May last year, measuring everything very carefully - ring gaps, lands, cylinder roundness, oil clearances, you name it - to make sure it's all absolutely within tolerance.
We sprayed it dark Ford blue, which I since discovered is probably wrong. Hopefully the finished car will get a 67 plate, so I think the motor should be black, but I'm sure someone can tell me for sure. It got an aluminium water pump, a Weiand Stealth intake, a Holley 600 CFM carb and some fancy rocker covers. Now I've done more reading and looking at original cars, I'm thinking of de-blinging the whole thing to make it look more authentic. Kind of regret buying the shiny alternator and pulley set, but hell - you don't always get things right first time around.
Roger kindly sold me a few parts I needed (radiator etc.), and my friends and I finally got round to plumbing/wiring the whole thing over the past month. Checked and re-checked everything and then bravely pushed the start button. It sounds pretty amazing - the video doesn't do it justice.
There's a video here if you want to take a look: http://youtu.be/3MS2JjKjOVM
The lack of reading on the oil pressure and water temp gauges is due to the puny voltage regulator I fitted. They worked for about 10 minutes of the initial run-in period, but then stopped working - the voltage regulator having gone bad. I knew I should've bought the proper thing rather than a transistor off eBay!
Comments and suggestions appreciated...
Andrew
