First off this will probably be the first of many questions I will be posting over the next few weeks. My truck has kind of been on the back burner since we bought our home. I've forgot alot of the details I used to know over the past few years so thanks in advance for all the patience & thanks for the responses.

Yesterday I purchased a rebuilt 400 with 12k miles on it. It has stock internals with perfomer carb,intake,cam,& timing chain. It was out of a '79 ltd.

I started comparing it it the '79 351m in my truck & noticed a 3/4" spacer behind the water pump. It appears that it will cause issues with my alt. & p.s. pump brackets. Can I just remove the spacer or do I need a different water pump? Does this spacer affect any thing else like the harmonic balancer & lower pulley?

The block has a cast numer (D7TE A3B). I believe the D7TE means it's a 77 or later truck block but all the id charts I've seen don't list the A3B?

The dist. in the new motor is also different. It appears to have electronic ign. but the cap looks smaller & doesn't have the plastic riser ring under it. Is there a difference from car/truck? I'm going to try to find the part numbers off it this afternnon.

I've got a bunch more questions/problems but I'll save them for another day. Thanks again!

 

D7TE is a '77 up truck block. You can find the date code (if it's from the Michigan Casting Center) in the relief on top of the block, behind the intake manifold (next to the oil pressure sending unit). Should be in the format

7K22

where the first number is the year (1977), and the letter is the month ("I" wasn't used, so "K" is October). You want post March, 1977 (that's when the casting flaws in the lifter valley was corrected).

 

The block is from the Cleveland foundry (CF). The code that is located behind the intake reads 7A593739.

The dist. is a motorcraft 12127.

 

Is the water pump spacer between the fan and the pump? If so you can use different ones to get the right clearance.

 

I just put a picture of the front of my motor in my album. It shows the spacer behind the water pump & it shows the different dist. Thanks for the help.

 

I don't think I have ever seen a spacer like that. Good luck with the Great Pumpkin!

 

Looks like there is also an extra spacer on the front of the alternator. IIRC, some of the water pump bolts were not long enough to make it all the way through the spacer. Looks the spacers were added to match up the pulleys for whatever reason.

 

I have one of those spacers laying arond, Tryed to sell it on ebay 2 times and no bids. I think it was on a 351M that came out of a van. It had air, sagana power steering pump mounted up top, big alt. & a smog pump on it. I don't recall now just why it was in there.