65 Comet with 390

The Era of The Square Body Racing Comets
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

Post by loman »

Thanks Lou. If you can post the part # for the SEM stuff that would be great. I'll suggest it but I think I am being overruled by the crew chief and I'm just going to let him do what he wants instead of debating with him.

Over the weekend I was able to finish welding the tunnel in. And today I found out the rocker arm shaft shims finally showed up, so I will go over to the crew chiefs house tomorrow and check it out.
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popscomet
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

Post by popscomet »

you hang in there with that crew chief,,,,POP
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Lou's Comet
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

Post by Lou's Comet »

loman wrote:Thanks Lou. If you can post the part # for the SEM stuff that would be great. I'll suggest it but I think I am being overruled by the crew chief and I'm just going to let him do what he wants instead of debating with him.

Over the weekend I was able to finish welding the tunnel in. And today I found out the rocker arm shaft shims finally showed up, so I will go over to the crew chiefs house tomorrow and check it out.
SEM # 29392 black seam sealer. Works well and is only like $14/$15 @tube

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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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popscomet wrote:you hang in there with that crew chief,,,,POP
I'm trying pop. I know I'm lucky to have a crew chief. We tend to have different ways of doing things and butt heads. But at the end of the day we have a beer together and all is good.
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popscomet
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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loman wrote:
popscomet wrote:you hang in there with that crew chief,,,,POP
I'm trying pop. I know I'm lucky to have a crew chief. We tend to have different ways of doing things and butt heads. But at the end of the day we have a beer together and all is good.
you dang tooten that's the way me and DWAYNE are......nothin comes twix us !!! been that way since he was a little boy !!you can cut my right arm off,,,as long as DWAYNE is around...I don't miss it !!!...…..pop
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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Nothing really picture worthy, but we reinstalled trans yesterday and got driveshaft measurement. I bought some brake line so I can rerun the passenger front line and install line lock. Rolled car outside and pressure washed engine bay. Set front seat in and got rough location for the shifter. After some beer thinkin we ordered different rocker arm adjusting screws. We are going to swap out the ball adjusting screws and replace them with cup style adjusting screws. This way we can order a one piece pushrod and not the goofy cup style pushrods.
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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Update, we got the drive shaft made. I finished the mock up of line lock and new front brake line. I just need to finish mounting the line lock and bleed brakes. We also made a new dipstick tube that now clears the crank, oil pump, and windage tray.
We got the new cup style rocker arm adjusting screws and went to measure for push rods. The crew chief called Crower the other day to verify the FE lifters we purchased will pump oil up through push rods. They told him we were good to go. Well, today we started to measure for pushrod length and notice that the lifters do not have a oiling hole where the push rod sits. The factory FE lifters do not have that hole either because they are designed to oil from the rocker arm shaft assemblies. So we are thinking the Crower tech steered us wrong. I have been warned more than once to only trust FE info only from a person who knows FE's and not your general tech help person. I'm not saying Crower is wrong, but I am definately going to double check every thing. Tomorrow I plan on getting some old lifters from a 351 or 460 I have laying around and do some comparing to the stock FE lifter.
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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Checked out the new driveshaft today and found out the wrong u joint was installed or it was made wrong. We gave them my old rear unjoint that was in my old driveshaft. We asked them to make new driveshaft and the rear unjoint needs to match the one we sent along that was marked with tape and a paint marker. So crew chief is going to take it back this week.
Crew chief is also going to call Crower again and discuss lifters. We did some comparing and looked at jegs and summit and we came to the conclusion that all ford lifters sbf,BBf, and Fe are the same size physically only the fe lifters have no provision to send oil up through the pushrods.
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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I put the mock up motor back in car today so I can make an engine travel limiter. After I got it in, I didn't feel like getting under the car so I decided to mock up the water pump and alternator. I have 2 different FE water pumps, the only difference is one has a locating pin which I'm guessing is for the top alternator bracket. The other has a threaded hole. I chose the one with threaded hole so I have a place to mount the adjusting bracket for the alternator. I also only have 1 of the original alternator brackets but I found one in my junk pile that I can make work with a spacer. Then I took my spare water pump pulley and put it on. With the way the pump is cast the pulley rubs on it. So made a spacer to shim it out for clearance. Also the Crew chief went back to drive shaft builder and was able to get the correct rear joint to fit the rear end. Making slow progress, just need to concentrate on the push rod situation so we can button up the motor.
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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Not much progress was done today but the crew chief and me came up with a plan for the cooling system. We went through our radiator pile and found one we think we can make work. Crew chief is going to flush it out and pressure test this week. If it is good, we will use that radiator, a pusher fan (crew chief has a couple laying around), with a stock water pump with the cheap Moroso style water pump that I have a couple sitting on the shelf.
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popscomet
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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that's cool....always try to use what you have in stock on the shelf....that's why you saved it in the 1st place !!pop
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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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loman wrote:After some beer thinkin we ordered different rocker arm adjusting screws. We are going to swap out the ball adjusting screws and replace them with cup style adjusting screws. This way we can order a one piece pushrod and not the goofy cup style pushrods.
2 steps forward 1 back. We have been staring at the rocker arm geometry over the last couple of weeks and not really content with what we were looking at. I think Fryedaddy mentioned that on the TFS heads the rocker stands sit higher than stock. I did some reading on the FE forum and saw it mentioned there as well. So we measured the TFS head and it is definately higher than the 352 or 390 stock head. A friend came over and looked at it as well and he agreed the geometry wasn't right because of the added height on the TFS head. So we took 4 of the stock rocker arm stands (they measured the same height as the aluminum ones with my new rocker arm assemblies) and my buddy machined .200" off of 2 and .250" off of the other ones. We then reinstalled the shaft and checked the geometry at the 2 different heights. We are much happier with the geometry with the stands being .200" shorter. With the better geometry the ball and cup pushrod setup looks a lot nicer and so we have decided to go back that route. I'm going to order 1 pushrod and then double check everything. If we like it, I'll pull the trigger and buy the rest of them and then get all the rocker stands machined down to size.
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vicegrip
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

Post by vicegrip »

My thinking is that you want to shoot for the rocker to be perpendicular to the valve stem at mid lift as long as you have to cut the stands anyway. Try to get the pushrod length so there is the least amount of adjuster screw showing on the bottom as practical. This helps reduce side to side pushrod movement.

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loman
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

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vicegrip wrote:Try to get the pushrod length so there is the least amount of adjuster screw showing on the bottom as practical. This helps reduce side to side pushrod movementway .
That is the first way we tried it. The instructions said and I read somewhere else to have only 2 or 3 threads showing on the bottom. When we set it that way with the stock height stands, we didn't like how close the pushrod got to the rocker body at full lift.
We then adjusted the screw so there was a lot of threads showing and this gave us plenty of clearance at the rocker but the pushrod to rocker adjusting screw angle just didn't look right. That's what lead us to cutting down a couple of stands and we are going to check one more time and then I think it will finally be pushrod ordering time. I've learned a lot already on these FE's but I have a long way to go.
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vicegrip
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Re: 65 Comet with 390

Post by vicegrip »

Cutting the stands will definitely give you more pushrod clearance at full lift. Wished FE's were stud mounted rockers.....Take some of the heartache out of it. :)

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