Colorado Pantera Club

Rebuilding a Ford 351 Cleveland

Hi everyone! In the Fall of 2009 your humble webmaster embarked on a complete rebuild of my 351C. After troubleshooting perpetually poor engine performance for a year, I finally pulled out the camshaft to discover multiple lobes were worn off and pitting. The quick fix would have been to throw in a new camshaft and a new set of lifters, but judging by the amount of material missing from the old cam, I decided a more thorough and reliable approach was to tear down the entire engine. I know from thermodynamics that conservation of mass is a law...and if mass is missing from my camshaft, it must have gone somewhere else in the engine (via the oil system) and that's just scary. So I figured it was time for a complete teardown, inspection, cleaning, machining, new bearings, new rings, and of course a new camshaft and lifters. Throughout the whole rebuild process, I photographed most of the steps along the way. I did this for a number of reasons. One, I wanted to document what I was doing to share on the internet. Two, I wanted to document what I was doing so that I have complete photographic evidence of everything that was done to the engine. Lastly, in case I ever do this again, I'll have pictures to use as a reference! Anyway, hopefully those of you visiting this page will find this useful. Last updated: 07/21/10 I've divided this up into little photo-essays as follows: Part 1: Engine Removal Part 2: Teardown Part 3: Inspection Part 4: Heads Part 5: New Parts! Part 5A: Complete Parts List Part 6: Assembling the Bottom End Part 7: Assembling the Top End Part 8: Installing the Engine in the Car Part 9: Break-in, testing, and tuning Part 10: Lessons Learned Photos and text by Matt Hannes, Copyright 2009-2010. Email me with questions or comments.

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