Mustang Sally Restoration: Block painted and Plastigauging the crank and bearing clearance

 Progress continues on the Sally 302 engine rebuild. The block has been painted black.

The brass freeze plugs are also installed.

Using a front and rear bearing only, Pops uses a dial indicator to check crank runout. It measured about 0.0002", amazing for 271,000 miles of wear and tear.

Here's the plastigauge strip laid down on the crank. 

The plastigauge kit comes with 2 sets of gauge material. The green material is in the range of 0.001" - 0.003" bearing clearance gap. The red set is from 0.002" to 0.006". Inspection results look like about .0035-.0037" range. The high-volume oil pump will fill that gap nicely.

Here's 2 inspections of a red strip. Looking like its between the 0.003" and 0.004" range. This is a really cool technique. It's very simple and manual process that provides very precise measurement information.

Here's an underside view of the 302 block for reference. I was asking dad how the crank gets supplied with oil. The crank journal webs have oil passage drilled into them. You can see the 2 holes in the middle and top side of the bearing journals.

Here's a close up view looking at the side. The one small hole in the crank journal area goes up to the cam bearing journal to provide oil to the cam bearings.

Mustang Sally Restoration: Parts back from the Machine Shop!!!

Big shout out to Reynolds Machine in Bakersfield, California for the relatively quick turnaround on all the machine work and balancing. Pops picked up the parts today and sent along some photos as he inspects what he's got.

First up is the bored (0.030" over), torque plate honed and decked. It was cleaned and magnafluxed as well and checked out just fine. Gotta love freshly milled iron! Looks great!

Next up is the factory 5.0L crankshaft. The bearing journals were polished and it was machined in a couple spots to balance it with the rotating assembly. The plan is to use factory sized crank main bearings.

The factory rods were assembled to the Summit Racing 0.030" overbore pistons. The bottom of the rods were machined down to remove weight as part of the balancing.

Another view of the factory rod and Summit Racing hypereutectic piston.

This photo of the underside of the pistons shows the machined areas for balancing. Every piston except the #2 piston had at least one balance spot machined and some have 2 like this one on the right.

Here is the cleaned up block with machinist notes to "Bore, Hone, Deck"

The McLeod clutch was mated to the re-surfaced flywheel and balanced. You can see the weight welded on and the blue markings to ensure they are reassembled where they were balanced to ensure smooth operation.

Here is the kit for all new cam plug oil gallery plugs and freeze plugs.

The block will be painted before re-assembly.