ALLLRIGHTY THEN!
Yesterday was one of those days.
One of those days starts out w/ me sitting, spending money in cyberspace.
I bought a kit from an EBay reseller w/ (6) 60 lb hr injectors in it for 224.00.
I bought a polished Sanden 508 A/C compressor from another for 125.00.
Then I got on Rockauto, and bought my replacement Harmonic balancer, flex plate, a '00 Taurus 105 amp alternator, and a 95 cobra 15/16 M/C.
Then I went downstairs.
For the uninitiated, non- inline 6 cylinder fans out there ( all 99.99997 of you), a Ford 250 has to have its head removed before you can remove the lifters. Conversely, the 300 I-6 has a removable cover plate on the side so that you don't have to do that stupid s hit.
I decided to make my own removable cover plate for my non- cover plated engine.
The real reason for the need for that is to be able to gain access to the lifter galley to re-link the roller lifters after I get them in the hole, ( that has never been done by the factory) for the roller cam, ( that has never been done by the factory).
So in earnest, w/ my Dewalt 1/2" hand drill, and a 1.75 hole saw, I set out drilling a bunch of holes in .250 thick cast iron.
The next thing that has to be done is, to "flatten" the potential mating surface where the future cover plate will eventually sit. No easy task, when considering the only things I have to do that with is a 4.5" angle grinder, and a regular old mill file.
It ain't easy being me.
Living in Birmingham makes being able to get steel in various thicknesses, and strengths pretty easy. Several months ago, I picked up a small "drop" of 7/16" thick angle stuff in anticipation of using it for either my intake, or exhaust manifold.
I decided to use it for the cover plate instead.
Now I don't know what that steel was originally intended for, but it was the hardeset stuff I've ever tried to cut in my life. I swear, if there is such a thing as diamond steel, I had a 2' long piece of it sitting garage. Standard saw blades were useless, I had to cut it w/ a cutoff wheel on my angle grinder.
But again, I managed.
Next came the drilling, and tapping. 26 holes in all, all drilled and tapped at 1/4 20.
The plate you see on top is glued to the side of the block to add thickness to the deck for the head overhang. The new bottom plate was now thicker than the top plate.
On purpose.
Lastly, I added a .125 plate ontop of the top plate to bring the bottom and top to the same plane, so I could add several vertical gussets ( made from the same beryllium-kryptonite I made the bottom plate from)
The reason for that stems from concerns over whether or not I hurt anything integrity wise. I unfortunately will not know that until after its running, when it starts getting beat on.
Now because the top plate is glued, I could not weld those gussets in place w/o concerns of hurting the epoxy, so I had to remove it to finish weld it.
Once done, I bolted it back in place and turned my task to getting the distributor to fit.
* I'll have to do this on another computer, trying to do it on an iPad is driving me crazy.