Well since I'm a fabricator/welder I don't think fabrication is the issue. I found the engine cheap so I went with it. I'm simply asking for good advice on the engine build itself. What I stated were just ideas thrown out there to see if they'll work. If not I'm more than willing to listen to veteran builders like you awesome folks here! Yes I'm doing the engine work myself and have done slightly larger than stock builds however a lot changes happen when you go throwing a turbo in the mix. More air and fuel compression ratios and all that good happy stuff!I agree with 96pushrod, you seem a little in over your head. Let's slow down and work things out. Is this like a Cleveland you inherited from your grandfather that you feel honored to carry forward in family tradition, or did you read a bunch of nonsense on the internet and blow up on a forum half cocked? I'm not knocking the Cleveland engines, they were very well designed, and the aftermarket has finally started offering performance heads for them after ignoring them for many years. However!!!, given the persistent availability of performance parts for the Windsor, it is by far the better performance choice. I mean, you are looking at dropping like $2k just to get custom headers built for that engine to fit in an SN body. Where are we on this?
Kurt
Well since I'm a fabricator/welder I don't think fabrication is the issue. I found the engine cheap so I went with it. I'm simply asking for good advice on the engine build itself. What I stated were just ideas thrown out there to see if they'll work. If not I'm more than willing to listen to veteran builders like you awesome folks here! Yes I'm doing the engine work myself and have done slightly larger than stock builds however a lot changes happen when you go throwing a turbo in the mix. More air and fuel compression ratios and all that good happy stuff!
This comes along every six months or so,...somebody wanting to install a Cleveland for whatever reason.
A Cleveland was the sht back when the Windsor had chicken peen exhaust ports. That was true if you had a drag car. But if going in a street car, a Cleveland was a poor choice. Matter of fact, it's documented all over the place, a stock 4 bbl head was a terrible port on a street car because it was TOO big..Couple that to the weird port floor bump, and manufacturers started making "port plates" to decrease the overall port size, and try to raise the port floor to compensate for the weird bump. Port velocity is poor, which equates to sluggish performance under 3000 rpm. Sluggish performance under 3000 rpm equates to suck ass gas mileage.
Put one on the street,...you'll get Christmas cards from OPEC thanking you for being such a good gas guzzling customer.
Add to that that clevelands have oil distribution issues, and back in the late 70's, the running gag ( if you had to guess what engine was under the hood of a particular Mustang) was if the thing was clattering..it was a Cleveland.About 60k miles and the things are noisy as hell. A Cleveland has to have its oil passages restricted to the top have of the engine, or the bottom half got starved.
Lastly, they are outright huge. Nowadays, the primary goal is to make power w/o having to lug around two hundred extra pounds...ever have to lift a cast iron Cleveland head over the fender? You'd remember if you did.
If you are having to buy heads for the thing, then yes,..you'll be able to skirt all if the factory design flaws, but..if you're having to buy everything...I just gotta ask.......
Why build a Cleveland?
I guess is was a sign of the times..back in the late 70's when I was young and dumb, if you built a Cleveland to drag race,you expected to spin the thing to 7k rpm...Eh...I'm going to disagree with all of that. I've worked on a good number of Cleveland engines in my time, and I don't think any of that is accurate. I think you are confusing the oiling issues with the 427 FE engine. It might be that the oil sold in the 70s was nothing like what is sold today, but C engines do just fine now. The canted valves on a C engine make it a hair bigger, but not much. I've never seen a Cleveland get noticably worse gas mileage or chug any worse than a Windsor.
Let's not forget that the C engine was a true 90 degree V8 built as a performance engine, and the W engine was built for pickup trucks. There is no doubt that it is easier and cheaper to build a high power W engine today, just because so damn many of them were made.
Kurt
I guess is was a sign of the times..back in the late 70's when I was young and dumb, if you built a Cleveland to drag race,you expected to spin the thing to 7k rpm...
When you spin a Cleveland to 7 k this happens: * taken from " Ford 351 Cleveland: How to build for maximum performance"
"The problem with this approach is oil starvation to main and rod bearing journals at high RPM. Main and rod bearings share oil with the lifter galleys. Traditionally, mains and rods always had an exclusive oil galley. Starvation really isn’t a fair way to put it, however, because high-performance street Clevelands have adequate oil supply to all critical points throughout the engine proving Ford engineers did their job well. However, when you spin a Cleveland to high RPM (above 6,000), oil starvation exists at main and rod journals mostly.
When Ford developed the 427 FE side-oiler, it conceived the perfect lubrication system for a high-performance V-8 with the pressure relief valve installed in the block instead of the pump, which kept pressure and volume high throughout the system. This, of course, made manufacturing quite expensive and impractical for mass production. The 351C oiling system is typical of most mass-produced V-8s of the era with the pressure relief valve in the pump where oil is control- leaked back to the pan before ever reaching moving parts.
This problem is corrected when you limit oil flow to cam bearings and lifters and divert more of it to main and rod journals where it is needed most. While you’re at it, you need to increase volume and pressure to some degree with a high-volume oil pump and some adjustment to the pressure relief valve as necessary"
It's everywhere you wanna look,..Google 351 c oil fix, and you'll get quite a few articles on the problem.
FWIW we spin our stock block 331 to 7200 on the regular with lots of nitrous.... but it gets refreshed every couple months.I think that is a fair assessment. Factory 351C engines were never rated to run at 7000rpms. If you spin a stock 302 block to 7000rpms, you won't have to worry about oil issues, because the main caps will have already walked right out of the block.
Kurt
An iron head 4V cleveland can make a boat load of power; with stock iron 4v heads. The blocks aren't particularly strong but seem to work ok for a lot of folks.
FWIW we spin our stock block 331 to 7200 on the regular with lots of nitrous.... but it gets refreshed every couple months.
lol thats how often the engine gets hurt, you dont spin a stocker that high without checking the bearings... grudge car and the scramble button gets the better of us.Is there are a particular reason you are running a stock block when the engine gets torn down every few months? I am glad to hear that you have had that kind of success with a stock block. I also don't see how refreshing it would help with the longevity of the block anyway.
Kurt
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