Bellhousing

[ragrod]

I indexed my bellhousing and am almost 70 thousands out, I question if offset dowel pins can fix this much. Any suggestions? I am looking for 5 thou. correct?
Randy

[Canuk40]

Hi Randy,

I pm'd you on this before seeing your post. For the benifit of everyone else, here's my recommendation:

Call up the Tech line at Ford Racing 586 468 1356 and ask them to fax you the dimension drawing for the back of the 302 block. They will do so happily. All the dimensions are there to allow a machinist to overbore the dowel holes on center and then sleeve back down to the correct pin diameter.

Bit of a hassle, but nothing compared to yanking out the whole deal when it locks up the throwout bearing. The first indication you're in trouble will be an ever increasing amount of pedal pressure. So good thing you're checking it out now.

Your part is extraordinarily out of dimension btw, more than twice I ever come across. Hope that helps

Cheers

[Straight 8 Racing]

I have a copy of the drawing used here in Australia by Holinger Engineering who build gearboxes & Bell housings for the V8 race teams who all use the 302 block, hope it helps

Iain

[Paul Thompson 'Hooligan']

Thanks for that Iain - Most useful...

[ragrod]

Well several sets of offset dowel pins later, I must have put that bellhousing on and off a hundred times. I was almost going to go with 15thou, but another 1.5 hours of messing around and I have got 4thou. In the end it took a 70 thousands offset dowel in one side and "0" offset in the other.
It only took 12 hours to get less than 5 thousands !!
tomarrow I start filling bolt holes, bellhousing to block, as the shift is to much for factory holes.
I only hope the starter location is not badly affected by the shift.
And the beat goes on!
Randy

[Canuk40]

Hi Randy,

There have been changes to the starter mounting plate supplied since we started way back in 2003. The original CAV part had oversize holes so there was no positive location of the starter. Therefore the starter mesh was dependant upon the clamping force of the screws in the cast aluminum bellhousing.

This works fine on stock 302s, not so fine on high compression bigger displacement mills like the Ford Racing 392 we put three starter drives, two complete starters and one flywheel ring gear on before figuring out there was A) machining errors on the bellhousing, B) No support for the starter to prevent it moving if the engine kicked back on cranking.

We now heli-coil all the holes in the bellhousing for mounting the ZF and the starter, use offest dowl pins to center the part and use our own Starter Plate, CNC cut in thicker steel to locate the starter in correct mesh and close off the bottom of the flywheel openning.

The result is an engine that cranks and starts like it should without eating starters. Starter life will be extended and easy cranking will benifit stock engines as well, even without the offset bellhousing issue.

We do sell these plates for CAV bellhousing to ZF for 149.00. The plate aligns to the block on the strait part of the offset dowel pin, the bellhousing locates on the offset end of the pin. Problem solved, too bad you cant see how cool the part looks (new part on left in pic below) when assembled.

Cheers