drilling magnum heads
I wanted to post some additional information about this, because maybe that can be of use to someone. So first of all, there are two fixtures. One is for drilling the center 4 holes, and the other is for the holes on either end of the head. There are 4, 1/8" NPT pipe nipples that thread into tapped holes in the fixtures to act as drill bushings to guide your bit. Here's the fixture on the head:
On the fixture for the center holes, the 2 end holes are drilled at the angle of the Magnum bolts to locate and secure the fixture to the head. The problem I had though is that there was a slight misalignment and I couldn't get them to thread in. If I pulled it away they'd start but there wasn't enough clearance to slide it back flush with the head:
It was very close and probably just need a slight bit of material removed with a round file, but these pieces aren't mine and I didn't want to modify anything. I reached out to Stephen and he said clamping it to the head instead of bolting it should work just fine, so that's what I did:
I'm not sure if it was just my heads, but in the end it worked just out. One more tip, when tapping the holes, you can re-insert the drill bit to visually help you keep the tap aligned while getting started:
And the 4 in the center portion of the head are thru-holes, so you don't have to worry about going too deep (don't know why it's rotating this picture, sorry):
In the end, this is what you want. The view from the camera is the newly drilled and tapped hole, and at the bottom is the factory 5/16" hole:
Hope that makes things a little clearer for anyone going forward. And thanks again to Stephen for not only making this tools, but allowing everyone here to use it.
Oh, and to Cornernfool, I'm almost positive you'll have to have the heads off the block to make this work.
I wanted to post some additional information about this, because maybe that can be of use to someone. So first of all, there are two fixtures. One is for drilling the center 4 holes, and the other is for the holes on either end of the head. There are 4, 1/8" NPT pipe nipples that thread into tapped holes in the fixtures to act as drill bushings to guide your bit. Here's the fixture on the head:
On the fixture for the center holes, the 2 end holes are drilled at the angle of the Magnum bolts to locate and secure the fixture to the head. The problem I had though is that there was a slight misalignment and I couldn't get them to thread in. If I pulled it away they'd start but there wasn't enough clearance to slide it back flush with the head:
It was very close and probably just need a slight bit of material removed with a round file, but these pieces aren't mine and I didn't want to modify anything. I reached out to Stephen and he said clamping it to the head instead of bolting it should work just fine, so that's what I did:
I'm not sure if it was just my heads, but in the end it worked just out. One more tip, when tapping the holes, you can re-insert the drill bit to visually help you keep the tap aligned while getting started:
And the 4 in the center portion of the head are thru-holes, so you don't have to worry about going too deep (don't know why it's rotating this picture, sorry):
In the end, this is what you want. The view from the camera is the newly drilled and tapped hole, and at the bottom is the factory 5/16" hole:
Hope that makes things a little clearer for anyone going forward. And thanks again to Stephen for not only making this tools, but allowing everyone here to use it.
Oh, and to Cornernfool, I'm almost positive you'll have to have the heads off the block to make this work.