Polishing a turd.

[cleatus12r]

Less turd-ish.

Roller cam and crankshaft installed.

[cleatus12r]

Wow. I have never had this much trouble getting something like this done. The entire valvetrain of this engine has been nothing but a thorn in my side for the past 2.5 months. The short block is done though. The distributor gear is done and the oil pump, pan, front cover, and water pump are installed. The lifter retainer spring plate mounting bolt holes were fun but fits like a million bucks.

Debacle:

First, the wait for the cam. Nobody had one and after ordering directly from COMP, I waited over a month for most of the parts to show up. Mainly I was waiting on the lifters as I had to have them at the machine shop doing the lifter bore bushings. Well, they didn't have the retainers and keepers in stock so I figured (like most normal people) that the stock ones would work. No dice. The new springs are larger diameter and the inner ones don't fit with the rotators on the exhaust valves. Great. Call COMP back and order recently back-in-stock retainers and keepers. Oh, that'll be $90 instead of $34 since the "kit" was broken up initially. Fine. Gotta have them.

The retainers and keepers showed up yesterday so I busted out a head and thought I'd start changing the springs. First exhaust valve.....no issues as it went together beautifully. I pulled the intake valve from the same cylinder............AAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!! 4-GROOVE keepers on the intake valves!

Called COMP again. No stock on the super-locks with 4-grooves. Ran around (as much running can be done on the web) and finally found a set of them although I had to buy the full 16-valves' worth kit instead of 8 for $64. Yep, get 'em on the way as I have to have them...........

So now I will have a full set of spare 10 degree "super-locks" for a 335-series laying around for the next one I do. This has been such a rough experience I think I'll just buy remans or sell off cores to people from here on.

Here is a picture of the valve springs. I have never done a roller cam retrofit in something and I cannot believe the seat pressure difference from the stock flat tappet springs.

Left is the stock spring, center is the new spring with dampener, and right is the new inner spring (that required a different style valve seal that I had to buy separately too). This roller cam better be worth it!

[cleatus12r]

COMP Cams has lost my business forever.

I realize that due to the manufactured shutdown plandemic that there will be shortages and delays but here is a timeline of stuff that has gone down with this company from the onset of ordering to the current time of 2:30 PM 10/12/21.

8/24/21 - Purchased roller camshaft kit direct from COMP.
9/21/21 - Called COMP to see if they had an ETA on the kit. Short lifters, retainers, and keepers.
9/22/21 - COMP called me and miraculously had lifters in stock now. Still no retainers or keepers. The sales person does the order a la carte just to get me the parts. The kit was $910, I was charged $890.


See previous post for filler to today.....

10/12/21 - Jeg's sent me the 4-groove keepers for the intake valves. Got heads assembled and installed on block. GETTING SOMEWHERE!!!! I set out to install the pushrods that CAME WITH THE 351M/400 roller KIT. They're an inch short. REALLY!?!?!? Of course the stock ones are way too long to work with roller lifters. I called COMP AGAIN....waited on hold for an hour and fifteen minutes just to be put on hold and directed to a "tech's" voicemail. An hour later I get a call back just to be told that they don't know what pushrods I need. So, I offer to buy a pushrod length checker and that I want to get an RMA for the incorrect pushrods and when I find out what length I need, I don't want to pay the $200 pricetag for replacement pushrods when I was only initially charged $69 for the ones that came with the kit. "I'll see if my supervisor will go for that." Here I am waiting for a pushrod length tool (out another $48 including shipping) now....delaying my build/install by another two weeks at least and hoping that I don't have to throw away another $200 on pushrods. They've already screwed me on retainers and locks ($100 on top of the already $890 for the kit initially) and two months of time.

This engine isn't for me, either, so I have a pissed-off customer to add to the frustration.

[cleatus12r]

Ended up buying $225 pushrods.

An email from COMP said that the catalog says the pushrods in the kit won't fit a 351M/400 but the ONLINE catalog (as well as all vendors) conveniently left that out. Who buys anything from a paper catalog these days!?!?


Oh, and since I opened the box of pushrods.....I own the wrong ones. Perfect.

The almost correct-length pushrods and rocker pedestal shims (since the pushrods are .020" too long) might all be on my doorstep by Saturday.

Nope. Never again.

[Power Hungry]

Damn. It's a shame that this is where this industry has gone. Comp Cams used to be an industry leader, and now it's just the same garbage as everything else.

[cleatus12r]

The rocker shims came on Friday and the 9.050" pushrods came in yesterday. I had some time to figure out the shim thickness on a few cylinders and came to the conclusion that .010" shims were good to get plunger travel to about .050" .

So......

I'll get the intake put on today and maybe get the run stand pushed over tonight.

Seriously, after 3 months and 4 days since this project started, I am emotionally DONE with this ride. It better run and stay together for a while!

There's also about to be a 7th 7.3L in the stable.

[cleatus12r]

After three painful months (plus 5 days), it's ALIVE! With the fuel injection, it didn't even rotate twice before it popped off.

What a rollercoaster ride. Now I have to find a day or two to remove the old engine from the pickup and put this one in.