The g/f's dad picked up a 63 t bird and asked me to change the intake/carb and distributor. I have never touched a FE so dont know what to charge him or whats involved/how long it should take??I know mine to pull is a 20 minute job.
first understand that the stock FE intake is cast iron and weighs in at about 100lbs, thus you might need either a second person, or an engine hoist, to pull the intake off the engine. otherwise it is basically an intake swap on just about any other engine. a few issues though;
1: the valve covers also bolt to the intake as well as the head so you have to remove those.
2: where the intake meets the head you have to deal with several sealing surfaces at the same time, so be careful lining up the intake and make sure the valve cover rail lines up properly between the intake and the head otherwise you will have a leak there. and that is all four corners by the way.
FE s are leakers it is very hard not to get a leak .the intake and head are split down the middle .rbohm is right a castiron intake is very heavy and will probably take two people to replace .also the dist. goes through the intake so you have to center the intake with the dist before you tighten .
its not that difficult,just heavy. you just want to make sure the dist. will drop in without binding. the intake can be slid back or foreward very slightly so you have to kind of center the dist. in the hole then tighten the intake down and thats realy the only thing to watch for
Definately when it's a girlfriend's dad that changes the equation. If you are charging him you must not be on too friendly of terms and you and the girlfriend aren't super serious. I think you're right not to do it in those circumstances.
If the two of you were doing it together over a few beers that would be totally different.
The FE intake is heavy, the one you are looking at is between 70-80 lb bare. Survival Motorsport owner Barry Robotnick wrote a book and in the book he goes through the steps to properly install an FE intake. Jay Brown fepower.net forum owner also wrote a book on FE intakes he dyno tested on a number of engines. In his book he also goes through his procedure to install an intake. I'm sure you can get this info elsewhere, but when it's the g/f's dad, nothing beats being prepared. You could also see if someone that has done this before lives nearby and can help. It's a lot easier with four good hands. The network54 fe forum also has a lot of guys that have changed dozens of fe intakes.
Definately when it's a girlfriend's dad that changes the equation. If you are charging him you must not be on too friendly of terms and you and the girlfriend aren't super serious. I think you're right not to do it in those circumstances.
If the two of you were doing it together over a few beers that would be totally different.
he offered to pay me because the last guy that was supposd to do it backed out for some reason.I think he relaized its not the average 302 swap. If somebody offers to pay, im all for it.Got burned tooo many times for a freebie.I work better alone because i do things my way and being questioned when somebody knows less get a little frustrating.