318 LA build log

[Ant]

Just wanted to share the slow build of this 318. I know there are plenty of people and articles saying you can build this or that on a low budget, and we all love the idea of a cheap budget engine build. But the truth may be if you are buying a used engine that is not running, you going to find more junk like what I have. Although depending on location and luck, I'm sure there is a good cheap 318 or 360 core out there in the wild, but I wish I had that luck, lol.

My journey starts with the search for a period correct small block. I'm searching everywhere within a reasonable distance from where I am. I was looking for 340's and 360's, you know because the old fucks tell you it's better value. Ok, sure boomer. People price things like too high, like 3500 dollars high for a wiped out non running because it can't ever run engine. Yup! All junk, that's the reality. Then one day I got word of a 318 my brother's friend has and he just wants to give away or it will become scrap. Yep, I'm the owner of that free 318 now and it was crap and not worth my time.

So moving on , after awhile I found a 318 and a A904 transmission for sale for like 600 or 650 bucks or something. Ok, it's cheap enough. I go check it out and at least on outside the engine seems ok, the orange paint job sucks and is flaking, but at least it was not scrap. The seller told me it was a good running engine and all it needs is a good intake and it's good to go. Both engine and transmission was good to use... WRONG. The clutch packs in the transmission were toast and the engine needed machine shop work. Oh no! What was wrong with the engine? Well...

The engine had water in it, not good in the cold.

One of the pushrods was bent.

Witness marks of the vavles hitting two pistons(that explains the bent pushrod).

The engine was clearly rebuilt and had .030 over pistons.(not a bad thing)

The good amount of water in the engine was my major concern as it was stored in a shed so a freezing winter could do some damage, so I stopped taking it apart and sent it to the machine shop. I got a call weeks later with some good news and bad news. The machine shop owner said the good is that the block is not cracked and the bore taper is fine, which I checked too. The bad news was the main bearing caps are loose in the register. I went to the shop to see and it was not a little loose, it was very loose. So since I don't feel like finding another junk motor, I let him fix everything wrong with it, but to save some money I did not have the engine assembled, he only installed the crank.

For the cost 2400 US dollars I got:
Cleaned and checked for cracks.
Repaired or replaced main bearing caps.
Lined or align honed/bored.
Cylinders honed.(I could have done that)
All surfaces checked and measured.
All new bearings, all of them.
One new connecting rod and pins pressed on.
Cam bearings installed.
New rings.
New double roller timing set.(more on that later)
All the valves were cut.
Two seats in one of the heads were replaced.
All the gaskets.
New oil pump.
Cleaned the oil pan.(sand blasted).

That's a lot so far, the owner of the machine shop is good guy and knew I was a mechanic, so he trusted me when I said I would assemble it, really that does not matter, because he got paid.
So... 2400 bucks and still no hot rod parts. Hmm... This is the reality with very old used and abused engines, and I'm not the only one who has pointed this out.

Anyway I have more, but I'm tired of typing. Build progress will be in part two, which means I need to remember all the stuff I did with it. So stay tuned.

Below is a photo of when I bought the engine.

 

[Ant]

Alright, part two.

My experience with engine performance is mostly for stock factory engines, so I pretty much just fix stuff that is not performing like it normally should in a normal factory daily driver. I've done the some form of easy basic hotroding before to my own junk and some tweaking to my daily drivers. So I figured if I can hotrod a Ferd, then I can hotrod a Mopar. Lol, we will see about that in the future.

While the block was still at the machine shop, I got the heads back and ready to port. My porting experience is not much, really just porting an intake manifold a little bit in the past is my experience. It was time to study. I've read multiple articles, watched multiple videos and read posts on the forums all for the diy head porting. I'm not doing anything crazy, but I need to work with what I got, which are stock 675 casting heads with 3 angle cut seats.

I took my time, just doing a simple clean up first removing any imperfections, then took care of the other inefficiencies, did a lot of blending and gasket matched the intake port. I did not do any polishing on the exhaust, just a rough cut and I think it should be fine as it is better than before because these stock ports are terrible with casting slag and weird sharp, jagged, ugly molding imperfections.

These photos were taken early, since then I have done a little more work to the heads.

Assembling the bottom end, and I was tempted to flip the pistons backwards, but I did not. I checked the ring gaps and positioned them in the positions stated by the manual. Also, I put the rings on by hand with a small pick. So no, I did not buy the stupid piston ring tool to put the rings on, although it might be nice to have.

That timing chain you see in the photo was not going to work because the cankshaft had been moved up when the block was align honed, so I had to buy a timing set for a .0010 crank offset. Cloyes is the brand I bought and it fits perfect.

 

[Ant]

I forgot to add more stuff.

Installed the valve springs at as close to the correct hight I can get. I needed some shims of different thicknesses and was lucky the machine shop had plenty in stock. These springs with the dampers I bought from Hughes to use with their cam as they suggested. I'll have part numbers and a whole list when the engine is finished.

Also did some grinding on the rocker arms so they can clear the larger springs.

Also, I forgot to show what happens when a long burr is out of balance. It became a noodle and vibrated so much it would have become dangerous if I had let go of the tool. That is why I NEVER TIE THE ENDS OF THE EXTENSION CORD when using power tools. When **** goes wrong, you need to unplug that **** fast.

 

[Ant]

Continuing,
I know that you can buy a used cast iron factory 4 barrel intake manifold for cheap, which was something I was looking for last year, until I picked up my cast iron 2 barrel manifold one day and felt the pain in my back. Yup! That was one of the two main deciding factors that made me buy an aluminum intake manifold. So since the choices for used aluminum intake manifolds sucked around where I am and ebay sucked as well, I bought a new Edelbrock performer intake back when they can be had for $380. Wait! That was last year! Anyway, I picked up a used Edelbrock AVS 650CFM off road carb, model # 1826 if I remember, with the tuning kit on ebay. It has the on road needle and seats in it right now with the old ones stored in a bag. So that's cool.

Sorry I don't have better pictures of the intake manifold. I did do some cleaning up on the inside and I did not expect an almost 400 dollar(Which is probably more now) manifold to be as ugly as this was, but I had to fix some of it.

BTW, this whole engine project started back in 2022 and it's almost finished, I'm just waiting for the new oil pan and some hardware. Then I need to do more painting and get a few other miscellaneous things.

 

[Ant]

Another update, I've been doing some painting. The picture of the motor I had already posted in another thread, the paint is Duplicolor Chrysler Blue. I also got a new oil pan from Kevko because the old one was a bit in ugly condition and I wanted a pan with baffles.

 

[barracudadave67]

Your doing a real nice job. Hope mine turns out as nice as yours. I'm working on a 360LA, for my 66 B-Cuda, The one in my avatar.

Dave

 

[Ant]

An update again,
The oil pan is the wrong blue. Because the paint I used was not from the same batch. Duplicolor must have fixed the issue of the paint not matching good enough and I painted the engine with the newer corrected paint. I ran out of the newer paint and used some old Chrysler blue paint, which is also the same paint that I used on the slant six in my pfp, which also did not match, but the newer batch is much closer to the original, which is still on the other side of my 225 slant six.

So, don't buy and use the older cans of Diplicolor Chrysler blue if you are concerned with paint maching ok. Buy the paint that was made this year.

Duplicolor Chrysler blue DE 1631.

Also, the pan on the engine in the photo is not the new one I just painted.

 

[Ant]

Another little update

I got sick last week, but feel 80% better now.

The guy at the autoparts store told me they can't get new duplicolor paint because the factory burned down or exploded or something last year ago. Is that true? I did some research, one of the Sherwin Williams factories in texas did, which was after I bought the better matching paint, but there are still multiple factories in the country, so paint is not completely gone everywhere.

Anyway, moving on to my f**k up. While I was test fitting the oil pan, the baffle would hit the sump tube. Sliding the pan back enough to have it sit tells me i need to cut more than a 1 1/4 inch into the baffle and maybe do some hammering. So I that is exactly what I did not do and I ordered a new oil pickup and the main cap bolt/stud for it. My cheap a$$ thought I could get away with using the stock oil pickup/sump and I wasted my time. Oh well, now I have another part to ad to the For Sale pile when I'm done.

 

[Ant]

to buy a timing set for a .0010 crank offset.

Correction, I found the box, it's a .005 offset.