It looks like I will be swapping a 350 into 67' Skylark.

Yes if the uncle is around he likely wouldn’t be to happy about the price you paid LOL! The HP numbers from the old racing engines Daryl built may not be very accurate compared to today’s measuring equipment, but they were making some steam for sure.

 

I poked around a little with the Borescope again today. It looks like the engine uses TRW L2343 Forged pistons 0.030" overbore. It is really hard to move the camera around in there but it looks like it has some small valve relieves cut as well. I would bet money on decked block and maybe even heads machined a bit. I can see port work in the intake runner with the camera. It has to be at least 10:1 compression if not a little more. The battery died on the borescope so I will charge it tonight and see if I can see more tomorrow.
Greg

 

Nice little hot rod engine there! Good thing you have the clutch as that thing may be a bit rowdy at idle.

 

I have the engine more or less ready for the install now. Not much else I can put on other than the valve covers and plug wires. I have a couple of runs in the valve covers so I am going to sand and respray those before bolting them down. I can't put any accessories on yet as I will be using the 300 accessory drive and components. It sure is a much better looking engine than when we started. The headers just showed up. I mostly have to get the transmission stuff ready now. I need to make a bracket for the external clutch slave cylinder and service all the shifter linkage. Unfortunately I will be tied up with work and a brief holiday for the next 6 weeks so I will not be getting much progress done.
Greg

 

Awesome!

 

It has not been easy finding time for playing with cars but I have been picking away at little things. Spring was here last week so I repainted the one valve cover I put a bunch of runs in. I guess when I did the original paint job I must have forgot where I was at and put two coats on at once on that one valve cover as it was the only spot I had runs. It had runs and sags all over. While I had paint mixed up I decided to spray some 430 valve covers I had ready for paint. I also sprayed some Nailhead valve covers I had planned to put up on the shop wall as a display pieces. Paint came out perfect this time. I have also been working on the 4 speed stuff. I cleaned up the bellhousing and painted it. I took the shifter off and blasted most of the pieces then repainted them. The Saginaw got a good cleaning and a coat of cast iron paint. I reassembled the shifter on the transmission. I added new bushings, adjusted all the rods and stops in the Hurst shifter and it shifts really nice. I used this short little stick on the bench just for setup. I will have a more appropriate shifter on it once installed into the Skylark. Our Hooker headers are here but of course I bought them just before they went on a super sale so I paid way way too much for them. I think we have almost everything ready for the swap now. Since we have to change the exhaust a bit for the headers I may pick up some exhaust pieces to do an X pipe setup.
Greg

 

I blasted rust off the flywheel and pressure plate assembly. I noticed the pressure plate had stacks of washers zip tied to the mounting lugs. I also noted the flywheel had a raised surface. It made me think that the pressure plate was designed for a flat flywheel. I ended up looking up clutches and found that the clutch kits mentioned raised surface and flat flywheels. That confirmed my suspicions. I was going to order another clutch but decided that the clutch had been working before so it should work fine. The clutch friction disk as well as pressure plate and flywheel are in really good shape. I decided to do a better job of shimming the pressure plate. It turns out the clutch surface is raised 3/16" so I used some 3/16" flat steel to make some tabs to tack weld onto the pressure plate feet. The washers that were used last time were cheap industrial washers and had varying thickness. The shims I made would be more even and I would not have to worry about them falling out when doing the installation in place. It should all work pretty good.
Greg

 

I blasted the bellhousing and repaired the hacking that was done where the Pontiac/Oldsmobile starter would mount. The previous owner had an external slave cylinder and mount fabbed up and butchered the casting where the started goes on the left side. I ground it clean and made an aluminum cover over the opening. I was also going to use an external slave cylinder but when I started looking into fabing up a mount to set one up I realized I did not have a lot of room around the back tube of the header. I had 3 different slave cylinders I could have used and all would take up more space than I had. I decided to go with an internal slave. After looking at all my options I decided on the RAM clutches slave cylinder. It should work well.
Greg

 

I was hoping to find a clutch cover for the bellhousing but the only reproduction ones are for use with a Pontiac/Oldsmobile using this bellhousing. They have the hole for the starter on the left side of the engine and not the right like the Buick uses. I was sure I saw a guy on Ebay that made the ones to fit a Buick. I thought I saved his sales post but it seems I don't have it in my wish list. I may have to make my own cover.
Greg

 

Mike Garrison(RACEBUICKS) repros them.

https://mrbuick.com/reproductionparts.html

Under the 4spd parts section.

mike@mrbuick.com or PM him here.

 

Thanks for the info. I knew I had seen a reproduction out there somewhere.
Greg

 

We pretty much have the engine ready to go in the 67' Skylark now. We filled the pan with oil and spun up the oil pump to prime it. This deep sump pan with kickouts holds 8 quarts of oil. We bolted down the valve covers and took the engine off the stand to install the the flywheel, clutch and bellhousing. When I get back from my next couple week shift at work we will finally work on pulling the 300V8 and St300 transmission for 350 4 speed standard swap out. Lots of work to do there. My wife Nerissa, has been busy gutting the interior so we can do the driveshaft tunnel 4 speed hump modification. Then clutch pedal and steering column to deal with. We are pretty happy with how the motor has turned out. It will be nice to hear it run. We plan to dive into the swap a 2 or 3 weeks from now.
Greg

 

Looks good!!

 

That looks so familiar. I just got my 350 going. Good luck and post a video of it running when you get it going.

 

Greg, what a great project. Can hardly wait to see it at a car night.

 

I will be sure to get lots of pictures on the install. We will for sure have some video of it running. I will post here.
Greg

 

We spent the last couple days removing the motor and transmission. My wife swapped out the front coil springs while we had it on the hoist. She installed a new sway bar as well. We cleaned up the engine bay the end of the day. We have a few things to sort out the next couple days and hope to drop the new engine and transmission later in the week. Next up for me is to work on the MCloed clutch pedal and 4 speed hump as well as weld in bucket seat mounts for some strato buckets. I will get my wife working on cleaning more stuff up and swapping out the heater core. Hopefully if all goes well we can make some noise next weekend.
Greg

 

I always considered Canada and it’s Citizens as neighbors and family, I think it’s crazy stupid to put duty fees on stuff, I thought the US and Canada were buddies

 

There is usually no Duty on most car parts. The big added cost for us Canadians is Taxes on the parts coming into Canada, Brokerage fees from the shipping carrier, and the difference in the Canadian dollar to the USD. I can ship to a border receiver that will hold it for me and bring the parts across myself but I have to pay a fee to them there too. The other shitty thing is we end up paying Washington State tax then the Canadians make us pay taxes on the Value of the parts and tax on the Washington State tax. I hate paying taxes on taxes. Some companies like Rockauto and Summit have their own brokerage so they are reasonable for shipping to Canada but others charge you really heavy for Canadian shipping. Anyway you look at it, it is costly to build cars in Canada.
Greg