How To Rebuild Your Ford V-8 351C-351M-400-429-460.pdf - Index of

1 and Assembly
I saved cylinder-head teardown and
inspection until now because once you
start disassembling your heads, you
should continue working with them until
the job is completed. This greatly reduces
the possibility of losing or mixing pieces.
Head reconditioning is a precise, tedious
and dirty job requiring special tools and
equipment. It's best to limit your head
work to removing and installing unless
you have the equipment and experience
to do the job. You may do more harm
than good if you attempt to do more.
Leave the precision work to the specialist.
It'll cost you no more for him to strip
your heads too. However, if you have
access to some or all of the equipment,
by all means do it yourself. You can then
inspect all the parts so you'll have an idea
of what work needs doing to get your
heads back into shape.
Rail-Rocker-toSpringRetainer Clearance-
If you have a pre-1972 429, it will be
equipped with the rail-type rocker arms.
Check the clearance between the rockerarm
rails and the accompanying spring
retainer. This dimension should not be
less than 0.0625 inch (1/I 6 inch)-original
clearance is about 0.080 inch. The
reason this check is so important is it's
possible the valve-stem tip and rocker
arm will wear to a point where this clearance
is reduced to nothing. Consequently,
the rocker-arm rails bean to bear on the
spring retainer, eventually causing the
keepers to come loose. If this happens,
the valve is free to drop into its cylinder,
resulting in considerable engine damage.
In fact, a dropped valve can literally destroy
an engine, so be attentive when
making this check.
Locate each rocker arm in its normal
position on its valve-stem tip and measure
the clearance between the rails and the
spring retainer. A six-inch scale is handy
for doing this, or use a 0.0625-inch-
Pivot-guided, stamped-steel rocker arms used in all lator 335 and 385 series engines.
Drawing courtesy Ford.
thck piece of sheet metal as a feeler
gage. Discard any valve and rocker-arm
combination under the 1116-inch limit.
The reason for replacing the rocker arm
too is that excessive wear on the valve
means the rocker arm is also too far
gone-it will also have worn in an erratic
pattern. So, if the old rocker arm were to
be used with a new valve, excessive wear
would probably result due to high valvetip
loading.
TEARDOWN AND CLEANUP
Keep the Rocker Arms and Their Fulcrums
Together-When removing the
rocker arms, their fulcrums and the
attaching nuts or bolts, and possibly
oil baffles, remember to keep each
fulcnim with its rocker am. String them
on a piece of wire, less the ones you've
found to be excessively worn. Just like
camshaft lobes and lifters, rocker arms
and fulcrums wear in together. Consequently,
mixing them up will result in
galling.
Adjustable and Non-Adjustable Rocker
Arm-To repeat what I covered in the
parts identification and interchange chapter,
there are two basic types of rockerarm
setups-adjustable and non-adjustable.
With one exceptidn, the adjustable-type
rocker arm is used only with a mechanicalcamshaft-equipped
engine-the 35 1 C
Boss/HO and 429 SCJ engines. The exception
is the hydraulic-cam-equipped
429CJ which was originally equipped
with adjustable rockers. This didn't last
too long as they were changed to the nonadjustable
type with positive-stop studs
beginning withenginesbuilt after 10-3 1-69.
Guide plates are used to stabilize the
pushrods and rocker arms on all these
engines.
Unlike the adjustable rocker arms,
non-adjustable rocker arms are only used
with hydraulic camshafts. The difference
is in the type of rocker arm. The first
type is the cast-iron rail-guided rocker
arm used with a positive-stop stud as installed
on '68-71 4291460s. Next is the
stamped-steel, barrel-type fulcrum secured
to a notched rocker-arm stand by
a bolt. This type rocker arm and fulcrum
is found on all 351C-2V, -4V and CJ en-