It just so happens that I have two sets of the D00E heads so I have a little "wiggle" room in case I screw something up.

How about the rods, pistons, bearings, lifters, pushrods and cam? Any suggestions?

 

The 351 is a stout platform, there's really no need for any bottom end upgrades until you eclipse the 500hp and/or 6000rpm marks. So in terms of a rebuild just use whatever bearings it needs to get back to factory spec after machine work and then put a standard volume oilpump in it.. Hi-volume pumps just put extra load on the pump drive shaft for no good reason. There are lots of choices in pistons but unless you plan on forced induction or N2O in the future cast pistons will do. There are also lots of cams to pick from but something like the comp 25-238-3 will produce good power overall.

 

Thanks for the advice! This engine will be NA and certainly not on the bottle. Just going for a basic rebuild with reliability and durability in mind. I figure while its apart I may as well find out if there are any mods or updates I should make, but it seems like this will be a straight forward build.

 

Hey, bro. Those heads with a stock rebuild with hardened seats will work for your application. It's really easy for us to spend your money with goofy tweaks, but be assured that the heads you have are good heads. They used to be sought out by people rebuilding their 302's. Both the valves and the ports are bigger.

A stock-type rebuild with a 351 4v cam will probably make you the happiest. If you have a little money to spend on tweaks, there are two suggestions I would make that would get you far more hp/dollar than head work.

Stroker crankshaft. Using the stock rods, and stock replacement 302 pistons, you can stroke your 351 to 393 ci. The crank will cost about $190 plus shipping.

If your crank needs to be turned, and if you're buying new pistons anyway, this is an extremely cheap alternative. You might not want to do this because you'll probably get lower gas mileage with a bigger engine. But if you're after cheap, usable horsepower (monster torque), consider a stroker crank.

Roller cam conversion. You can swap in the hardware from a 302 roller cam (including the cam!) and pick up BIG torque. The one extra cost is having to convert your D0OE heads to screw-in studs. This upgrade might be a little bit of a stretch if you're just starting out with rebuilding engines, but the result has to be felt to be believed.

For the roller cam conversion, you want; lifters, 'dog-bones', spider, cam, valve springs, pushrods, and possibly the rockers from a 302 roller engine, and you'll have to deal with the distributor gear. I'm fuzzy about the cam retainer, so do your research before beginning that adventure.

One tip about rebuilding an engine using 'closed chamber' heads like your D0OE heads; zero-deck the pistons. If you do that, you'll get higher compression and less tendency of the engine to detonate. Better power and economy.

You'll need to know which block you have. The early 351 blocks are slightly shorter than all the later blocks and that matters when you're buying parts and trying to zero-deck the pistons. '69 and '70 blocks are the short ones. The D0OE heads came on the '70 block, so there's a chance that's what you have. Again, do your due diligence when buying pistons so that you get the right compression height for your block.

So, to sum up - a stock rebuild with a zero-deck pistons and hardened exhaust seats and a stock type 4v cam will be the cheapest. A stroker crank is the next cheapest power upgrade. A roller cam is doable, but slightly challenging. Then you can go nuts with head work.

If you're doing your own work, I'd suggest you degree the cam. You can download an image of a degree wheel, print it out and laminate it to a home made aluminum disk. Buy a cheap dial indicator from Harbor Freight. If the cam timing is off, you can buy offset keys to get it set back to right, or buy a timing chain set with offset keyways.

Oh, and the stock Duraspark ignition is a very good one. A cheap, junkyard alternative to MSD, Mallory, etc. But you'll have to send the distributor off to be re-curved for a non-EGR engine if your distributor came from a later engine.

 

Paul,
Thanks for the great info! I'm goning to have to take some notes and do a little homework! I'd say it also looks like I need to find a broken down Mustang to harvest some parts.

I was unaware of the difference in the length of the blocks. My engine is a D4 casting which should be a 1974. We believe the engine originally came installed in a 1976 model Torino. I have the complete engine from pan to manifold and the spare set of D0OE heads, that as you mentioned came from a Mustang guy that was going to install them on a 302. He told me they were GT40's and came with a brand new, in the box, set of Crane 99156-16, Rocker Arm Studs and Crane 36650-1 Pushrod plates. Free of charge under the stipulation that I use the parts on this build. I've gots lots of pics and am trying to reach the magical 25 posts so I may share them.

Economy and reliabilty are priority over high power on this build. I plan on using the engine in my soon to be daily driver 1964 F100. The truck will see lots of highway miles as I live in Phoenix and we don't have regular roads, and nothing is closer then 20 miles from home. I should mention that air conditioning is in the cards as well. I figure if I do my reasearch I can build this truck to last pretty much forever, your help is greatly appreciated!

 

Well then I am sure you already have consider small upgrades to the valve train like pushrod guide plates. Upgrading to some good ARP rocker studs and some proper length hardned push rods. Those upgrades will add durability and life to some of the top end parts. If you don't have one consider renting a degree wheel for a day or say and degree whateer cam you are going to use. Make sure all your top end parts are properly adjusted and everything is on par. Normally from the factory these types of things are in a pretty good range but mistakes have been made before.

Feel free to correct me someone I got too many numbersin my head for my own good but no lift rocker valve clearance on these motors is .022 right?

Another thought is make sure are your spark plugs are where they oughta be the easiest way to do this is take a marker and mark the side opposite the node opening and have it line up with your intake valve. You will get a better burn so more horse power and better fuel economy awesome stuff.

 

Yeah, Nick, you've got the good stuff; D4 block D0OE heads. I'd do a stock rebuild, with zero-decked pistons and a 4v cam and call that good. Pocked-porting the heads is the only other thing you might consider.

 

A few things that I will add:

Roller cams are nice for several reasons. I personally will not build an engine without one anymore because modern off-the-shelf motor oil has had the ZDDP almost completely stripped out of it to meet government emissions regulations. ZDDP is the slippery stuff that specifically helps lubricate parts with high load sliding friction - specifically flat tappet cams and lifters. If you want to run plain motor oil these days without ZDDP additives (special order only), then you need to run a roller cam. It is all too common to wipe a lobe or three off of a flat tappet cam these days with a new engine when using plain motor oil. With all that said, I would stick to a flat tappet in this build if I were you. Installing a roller cam in an old flat tappet block isn't as simple as just drilling a couple holes for the spider tray bolts and putting it together. Roller cam blocks have taller lifter bores to accomodate the much taller roller lifters. If you try to run stock spec roller cam parts in an old flat tappet block they will stick too far out of the lifter bores. There are two ways to make it work, but they're both $$$$. Several cam companies manufacture small base circle cams for doing the conversion with a stock tray and parts, but they are half again more expensive than a regular roller tappet cam and the selection is extremely limited. The other method is to run a standard off-the-shelf roller cam with special link bar conversion lifters. This, IMHO, is the easiest and least expensive method as you don't have to worry about using a tray or dogbones at all, but the lefters are pricey also. The best deal I've found is for Howards lifters and they run $300. If you're going to tie up that much money in it, you're probably better off just finding a '94 and up 351W roller cam block and eliminate the hassles altogether. Last note about roller cams: you can't run a standard cast iron distributor gear with them as the roller cams are steel billet and will chew an iron gear up in no time. You have to run a steel or bronze gear with them. Unless you want to find a roller block, I think for a driver and mild street build you'd be better off runnning a flat tappet and investing in some ZDDPlus additive for your oil.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned on the D0OE heads is the Thermactor bumps. This is the Achilles' heal of these heads as far as flow is concerned. Look into the exhaust ports from the manifold flange and you can clearly see a large bulbous protrusion from the roof down into the port. This thing needs to be taken completely out. Removal of these bumps coupled with some other basic cleanup will make a huge difference in their performance.

 

Thanks again for all the replies fellas, I've been working a bunch of hours a a new job and haven't been able to check in as often as usual.

I'm going to do a bit more research about that stroker crank idea and will be getting started porting the heads this weekend. We should be dipping the block and other greasy bits into the hot tank on Tuesday morning and firing up some tools by the afternoon.

I went fact finding and discovered some valuable information about the ZDDP additive in oil. As mentioned, it's critical for proper lubrication of flat tappets. Without resorting to extreme measures of chemistry, I found that my local NAPA carries an assortment of "Racing" oils that have the ZDDP and are priced about the same as the synthetic oils.

It does look like I'm in the market for pistons, valves, springs, rockers, and push rods. Do you guys have any suggestions for specific parts I should look into?

Quick edit: The stroker idea is out. Too many parts to source and kits are around $1000.

 

Well I believe we have discussed this once but what type of pistons are you looking at.

For valve springs do you want double springs single coil wide wire?

Are you going to run guide plates for your push rods?

 

There is also a castrol oil in 20w50 grade blended for classic cars and says on the bottle "for off road use only" which is as they say formulated for classic cars with higher ZDDP levels.

The other option is you can do what I planned on doing with my build and just dump a bottle of comp cams break in oil with every oil change. They said this will bring the ZDDP levels up and its safe to keep in the oil till oil change.

The other option besides that is some restoration shops sell this ZDDP Plus which is an additive in a big bottle that you just dump in your oil which raises the ZDDP Level.

Personally buying the additive or the better oil is more cost effiective than getting a roller camshaft and all the pieces.

The other thing is if you do go roller make sure if you use a 302 camshaft use a 302 HO, cause the plain 302 uses the same firing order as the 289 where as the 302 HO has the firing order of the 351W.

On your question about bearings make sure you go with I believe it was lead or tin plated bearings. I have to check my notes to see which one exactly but the soft metal coated ones provides better protection for street engines as well as having a form of natural lubrication for dry start ups that wont hurt it. The harder bearings intended for racing dont scratch as easily but anything getting on them will gouge your bearing surface of the part be it the crank journals, rod journals, or the cam journals.

The oil pump stay away from high volume and high pressure. High volume is needed for engines turning very high RPM but if your not turning 6,000+ RPM you dont need high volume. The other thing is pressure, you dont need high pressure unless you are running excessively large clearances than stock on your bearings so you need a higher pressure pump to maintain normal pressure. If you run high pressure/high volume oil pump on a stock spec build with stock spec bearing clearances you will put excessive stress on the dist gear as well as the cam gear. You could also potentially break your oil pump drive shaft, seen one guy said that happened to him.

 

Single coil springs should be ok for this application, and yes, I do intend to run guideplates.

 

sorry about the double post.... made a mistake editing...

 

Rusty, I would've quoted you but I'll save a little space.

About the oil. The additives, "classic car" specialty oils, and the like appear to be the same as the "racing" oils I found out about at NAPA. At $4 bucks and change a quart, its already on the shelf... man, thats hard to beat.
As for the cam I've been looking into "secret" grinds and the possibilty of making my own cam from a blank. Nothing to radical, just another one of my experiments. I am going to keep it a flat tappet engine, with better pushrods, valves, springs, guieplates, comp cams studs(pn 99155-16), standard volume oil pump, and hog out the ports.

 

I use Valvoline VR1 oil in my older flat tappet motors. Very good ZDDP levels, not too expensive. O'Reilly's/Autozone, etc. usually stock it.