Pokageek's Pain thread. 351 stroker (414c.i.) swap PROBLEMS.

I was given spacers...they are flat and about 1/2" IIRC for my front swaybay. They worked great.

Time for a recap of what drove me the MOST insane:

1. Time Waiting: 6 months to get the engine in car. That drove me nuts. I never suggested I wanted it quicker but should have.

2. Canton oil pan does not fit 94/95, swaybar hits. Had to RE-PULL THE ENGINE AND TAKE OFF OIL PAN!!! Had to buy another swaybar and got spacers from mootang I think it was. This was a small yet tremendous help!

3. PP fuel rail leaked like hell. Garbage.

4. ENGINE ROTATING BUT NO START!! After getting spark, I went to start the car but it rotated sounding like a saw blade with no compression! Had to pay a friend $200 to help adjust rocker arms correctly.

5. This still drives me nuts at stop lights. 94/95 runs rough with the cam that is in my car. Not a cool rough but a stumble like rough. Still sounds good just ...well whatever.

6. Squealing accufab tb. This kills the ride and the joy entirely. EVERY time u step on gas. I need to ditch it. $300 down the hole.

7. Harmonic balancer NOT compatible with frpp crank pulley. This made me spit my belts out like chewing gum. Went thru numerous belts trying to fix. Turned out SEVERAL pulleys were out of line. I couldn't relax cuz anywhere I went it would start to overheat and I knew I pooped my belt again.

8. MAF improperly tuned - cost me $150 in oxygen sensors. "When she warms up and on the beltway for a bit, it begins to run rough and really buck below 2k rpm..like it is on 7 cylinders and the check engine lights up. But when I got off the b-way, check engine light turned off again but still runs ruff When I start it up though, for the first few minutes it runs smooth.."

9. Belts continually coming off..never know when its going to kill my engine by overheating. Frustrating to even drive it. needed help with this and my builder was overwhelmed with business and could not make it down. This went on for literally months but when I had him do the rear he looked at it and found pulleys out of alignment and corrected. Never had trouble since.

10. Dyno trouble: Car puts out 300rwhp .. on first DYNO. VERY disappointing. $250 for a tune that squeaks every ounce out of the car to get me to 332rwhp..@4600rpm barely over a mild 331c.i. combo ... After all that.

11. Dyno shop suggests victor intake instead of pp because of large c.i. engine. Took 2 months to get it from supplier. Shell out another $650 for new intake and dyno... $250 for a tune... results...352rwhp. Very disappointing.

12. Distributor gear breaks in traffic, people screaming as I am going downhill backwards on a road with no shoulder. $200 tow to my house. $200 tow from friend up to SGS automotive to have them fix and figure out why no power. Replace distr gear and find out car has solid lifters when it should have hydraulic. Springs are too weak for cam. $1000 bill not including parts. Car puts out...350rwhp. That's right. LESS...

13. Everyone now thinks the heads are killing it. I shell out another $2000 for those. Put them on the car. I need 42# injectors cuz the 36# leave me no room to grow. Results remain to be seen on next dyno. I'll make another $300 trip up there again.

14. Prolly one of the main morals of this story is that my goal was to get a streeter to over 400rwhp. Do not try this with inexpensive heads unless you plan on porting them. The pro-comps were an unknown. We now know they might work fine for a 302. Forget a 414 c.i.

Morals:

A. Get good heads or don't expect the rwhp.

B. Find MORE than one KNOWLEDGEABLE source that is LOCAL to help you out along the way. If you are waiting on one person..you might be waiting a lonnggg time to get @#$% done bec of life's circumstances. The more reputable the builder, the tougher the time constraints.

C. Anything other than 302 based plan on adding $2500 over and above.

D. Supporting mods will choke your hp out if they aren't matched.

E. Be VERY clear as to what you want from your builder from day one. This includes rwhp and time tables and $$. If your builder is not sure if cost cutting parts will get you to your goal, don't expect to reach your goal. Only sure way is $$$ parts.

Yea I thought you could use that. Good luck!

"The pulley alignment sucks but I have dealt with that on motor swaps before and should not have been that big of an issue.....My Vortech pulley stuck out to far with my ATI dampner, ....solution was 5min on a lathe from my machinist cost $0. I just measured how far it was off and had him machine it. These are things that just happen and you had bad luck but why did you have to wait months for someone else to fix?" -

Exactly. Whatever I did wouldn't work after multiple tries so I had no option and didn't want to shell out more $$. My builder was an expert at this and did very nice work on other cars and said he could do it. He got busy tho.

"#12- distributor gear breaking? So what was the cause of that?? Something is wrong, I have Never had one break, what did they do besides replace it? If that’s all they did then it will happen again."

SGS fixed it by putting a bronze gear on it. Stronger. Moral - there is apparently don't buy a distributor from salvo, or buy a better gear. Heavy cams apparently EAT stock dist gears..at least mine did. I bought the distributor so other than no one telling me, that was really no one's fault.

"Then you say it has solid lifters and it should have hyd?? So how did this happen?? So you have a solid lifter camshaft that you didn't know about? When you adjusted your rockers didn’t you know then when the friend helped you? You have to adjust solids with the recommend lash specs for the cam….if this is not right it can idle bad like you are still describing. You have to adjust solids all the time not like hydraulics that you do one time. So you had some shop change your valve springs to match your solid lifter cam?"

No it had a hydraulic camshaft but the assembler put solid lifters in the engine. I KNEW something was wrong when I only had 1/8 of a turn in the rocker adjustment and when trying to start there was no compression.. They told me lots of cars only have 1/16 of a turn for play. I didn't think that sounded right but I took their word for it. So I drove the car around for 3 months not knowing it had the wrong lifters. When it wasn't putting down enough power, I took it to SGS automotive who told me the car had solid lifters, the wrong push rods and weak springs. I was beyond pissed... The builder tried to make good on it and he was a cool guy other than being busier than a 1 legged man in a gang fight. He should have paid more attention, he knows it, he tried to make good on it so I can't fault him for that. -

"The other thing is good machine work, I can’t stress this enough and if they are assembling your motor you would be better off using someone you know you can trust even if it costs more it actually will cost less in the long run."

Yes I am sure they do good machine work. Thanks for the props. -

Source of my power down issue is supposedly down because I had pro-comp heads on it that are great for 302's and suck for 414's. .. Well see...

It is on the road but not running tip top because it needs a tune for the new AFR 205cc heads, and for the new 42# injectors and a once look over after installing it all. I also bought an MSD 6A ignition box for greater spark. I have the 36# in it right now until I take it up for tune.

Thanks guys. -

Thanks for the input S351. I have never heard of the 28% calc u did but sounds good to me. I was going to go 225 but he said go 205. So here's my stuff:

Here are my specs, please add you opinion on cam:

414ci 10.45:1comp

Hyd Roller CAM SPECS @ .050" .586/.584 248/254 108cl 112lsa (power will be around 3200-6500rpm)

AFR 205cc heads. I am not sure what springs come with them. The heads are new.

1.60" Rockers

Edelbrock VICTOR intake

80mm TB

90mm Lightning MAF

42# inj to be installed day of dyno

stock rails

255 lph FUEL PUMP

I have the 351 R hooker headers. They match up and work fine I guess. Down the road I will get different ones maybe.

As to the builder. Again, the heads were my choice bec I was low on money. I took a gamble. This may well prove to be my low HP problem. I am absolutely sure the rest of the work is first class. This guy has done too many hot rods and race cars that perform extremely well to be judged by one issue. And if I had any trouble with my internals he would stand by me as long as I did not abuse the car above its limits.-