A little off track, but same subject, my Brother bought a 99 5.0 Explorer from a dealer that had just done the intake gaskets on it. After a couple weeks, he calls me and says it smells like antifreeze, has smoke coming out of the exhaust, it's idling funny and has the money light on. I was thinking it blew a head gasket for sure.

So we bought the kit and started tearing down the motor. Turns out the knuckleheads turned the intake gaskets upside down and gooped the **** out it with RTV. As soon as the RTV gave way, all hell broke loose. So, I got it down to the intake gaskets and saw what the deal was.... decided to take the head gaskets back, LOL.

 

Yeah I did. I just referenced that to show that like a lot of people think, SBF are all the same. That is certainly not true. Also 351w used 1/2 bolt holes to mount the heads, where the 302 uses 7/16 head bolts. Sure the parts can be used, but not just grabbing random parts and throwing them on.

I know you are very specific with your work, so I wasn't including you above. I was just was stating a general fact. They certainly are your fathers old SBC. LOL Anything would work together except the pistons and even then you could swap cranks. As they used to say, ANYBODY can work on a Chevy. It takes a mechanic for work on the rest. PMSL

 

Guy was probably an old Chevy mechanic. LOL

 

Lots of people try using 7/16 bolts in 351 heads. Bad, bad, bad idea. Buy the bushings!

 

Probably!

 

At least the bushings but they are better off to get the bolts with the 1/2 core and 7/16 threads at the bottom. They supposedly keep everything lined up. I don't know if that is true. The corner dowls will hold the head in position and the heads bolts will hold it still. Sometimes I think they make all these different ways to do things, just to avoid someone else's patent. They all work, some just look and give you a better feeling. Others scare the hell out of you when you see them being installed.

 

This conversation has me thinking of Fords 6.0 lol. The head bolts in particular, but Ford used the wrong size and the dowels wern't enough to pick up the slack.

 

I always blame this fiasco on Navistar when the Chevy and Dodge guys want to talk about the 6.0 and 6.4 issues. LOL.

 

In 3 days I get to see this dude light up his guitar with Joe Satriani.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WUfwySI508

 

What a day. Spent my day redoing my home network. I switched over from DSL to Cable, and had to redo everything. I had three devices that will not see, nor would they connect manually to my new router. Damn near ordered a new router.... and just before I made the Louisiana purchase, a thought slammed me in the face. All of this stuff connected fine to my old modem/router combo. Soooo, with a little magic, I've got my new router feeding into my WAN port on the old router so I can connect the 3 devices. I'm not too sure why the 3 can't see the new router.... but the new router has a lot newer security, etc.

So yeah, it was quite the day. Lots of practice.... lots! LOL