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

I noticed your BC plates.
Part of my family lives in Burnaby, I was there in ‘86 for the Worlds Fair.

 

I am about 25 minutes drive from Burnaby out in Langley. The 86' Worlds Fair was good times back in the day.
Greg

 

Terrific thread - anxious to see the fruits of your labor!

 

It has been a while since I have posted an update. We did a major push on my last time off. I work two weeks on and two off away from home as a helicopter mechanic. My last couple shifts have been busy supporting forest fires out in British Columbia. It has been a busy year so far. While I was home we moved the car to my father in-laws workshop and pulled the old motor and transmission out. Everything came out nicely. It was a bit slower going back in. I am probably a little too much of a perfectionist and we spent a fair bit of time cleaning and repainting anything that needed it. We also took the opportunity to swap out the front springs while it was on the hoist. The 4 speed swap adds to the work as well. I have been working on the Mcloud hydraulic clutch pedal setup. I have a separate post about that in "You Shift em" forum. We bought Hooker super comp headers for this installation and they fit quite poorly. I expected to put a couple dings in them to clear some tight spots but the #3 tube fits really badly around the crossmember under the engine. I had to beat the hell out of the tube to clear the crossmember. It is crushed to nearly half the diameter for about 6". I don't know if there is a better fitting header for these cars but these certainly are not a bolt in. I had them in and out 20 times trying to make them fit. I was really hoping to have the engine running before I left for work again but just could not get that much done. Hopefully we will make some noise pretty quickly after I get back home. Here are some pictures of the progress.
Greg

 

Here are some pictures of the headers and the 4 speed swap stuff like the pedals and floor hump. The dents in the headers in those pictures were just the start. I had them out dozens of times clearancing different spots that had interference. They took a beating. When I get back We need to do the wiring, and plumbing of cooling system and fuel lines. I need to weld in the floor hump and get the transmission in then bleed the clutch system. Hopefully it will move on it's own by the end of my couple weeks off.
Greg

 

Engine masters did a video on the effects a crushed tube had on headers. They found that a nearly closed tube didn't impact power output at all.

You can watch it on FB for free or on Motor Trend if you are premium.

Exhaust Header Bash! Testing Power Loss From Dents - Engine Masters

 

Yea. I have seen that episode. It is just a shame to have to beat it so badly to fit it in. I am sure it will have basically no effect to horsepower. I have had to massage headers before for several different cars. I generally don't much worry about it. These took the most massaging I have ever had to do. That #3 tube needed to be further back by about 1/2 to 3/4".

Greg

 

I always thought the 66-67 where not that much different from the 68-72 as most of the big block stuff bolts up pretty nicely. I wonder if you could have possibly slid the motor back that 1/2"? It might have been a bit of work for no more gain than the ease of mounting the headers.

 

It did cross my mind to try to move it back but I had already crushed the tube to clear before I considered it. It is a bit of a pain trying to get the bolts out of those frame pads on the crossmember. It is especially a pain in the ass to get them right off and put them back on trying to fish the nuts back up inside. In hindsite it would have been worth a try though.
Greg

 

It's a lot easier without the lower control arms in place. What I did was stick a string through and pull the bolts up through then wrapped a thin copper wire around them to keep them from falling in the frame. Now that I have a large collection of rare earth magnets, I'd probably have stuck one of them on each bolt to keep them in place.

 

Awesome work, thanks for posting all of the great pictures! That sucks about having to bash in the headers, especially after all the extra fees to get them there. But that engine sure looks nice in there, keep it up!!

 

The Buick red 350 contrasts nicely with that pretty blue!

 

I agree. I was not a fan of the colour matched engine and accessories that the previous owner did. At least it is pretty clean under the hood.
Greg

 

dont understand the headers dents. change our 67 to a 350 4spd w/hookers and no issues. maybe old vs new hookers?
my headers were in my buddies 65 350.

 

I don't know. I purposely bought these headers as they were supposed to be a good fit. These were terrible. Even if I would have moved the engine mounts back I would have had to put some dents in different places. #3 tube is just totally wrong. The rest is reasonable.
Greg

 

If you still have it you should list that 300 for sale on BritishV8.org and MGExperience.com

It's a very preferred engine for swapping into an MGB. Better with the alloy heads and intake but even the base 300 is a good engine choice.

Jim

 

We will try a post to see if we can get a few dollars for the 300 but the market around here for that stuff is likely small. We will also see if we can get a few bucks for the ST300 transmission. This one is a switch pitch and looks like it has been gone through recently.
Greg

 

I am back on some days off and have had a couple afternoons working on things again. I managed to get the 4 speed cutout done. I installed the bucket seat mounts. The transmission is in. My wife worked hard to clean up the heavily undercoated, filthy and rusty crossmember. It looks a ton better now. The driveshaft was much the same. A crap load of undercoating on one side and rusty on the other. I have been busy on a ton of little things as well. I don't know where the time goes but it disappears fast. Hopefully another couple days of work and we can make some noise.
Greg

 

I took some pictures of most of the spots I had to crush the tube or trim something on the chassis to fit the headers. I did not take a picture up top but on the passenger side I trimmed the control arm a little on the top both front and back as well as put a dent in the #2 tube for the control arm attachment stud. Now that the engine is in and everything is tight there probably would have been just about enough clearance to leave it alone but it helped getting the headers attached.

This one is drivers side lower back control arm mount. It is not uncommon to trim these for big block header fitment. These headers hit that pretty hard. I trimmed 3/4" off that corner.


This picture is passenger side header to frame. I had to crush the tube there as it hit pretty hard. Again this is a common spot to have to clear on big block headers as well.


This one is passenger side back lower control arm pocket before I trimmed it. I knocked off about 1/4" on this.


This is the really bad spot. #3 tube hits the engine crossmember really bad. The tube is crushed down to near half diameter where it rolls over the top corner and then the tube had to be crushed about 5" long below that though not as deep. I still only have about 1/8" clearance there.


I am not worried about the dents hurting performance but was disappointed it took so much fitting work. I have fit several sets of headers over the years and always expect to deal with some spots of interference. This was one of the more difficult ones. 64' to 67' chassis are definitely tighter than the 68' to 72' ones.


Overall I am happy with how the engine is installed. Hopefully this info helps people out in the future. Maybe these headers are just an anomaly too. Who knows.
Greg

 

Here are some pictures of the passenger side upper control arm area. I trimmed the corners of the upper control arms a little and out a dent in the front tube where the forward control arm bolt comes close to the tube.
Greg