351W Rebuild Questions about rod markings

[spierce]

I have a 351W out of a 94 F150. So it's a roller motor.
when I rebuilt the motor I didn't pay attention to the rods like I should have.

I pulled the pisons and rods and lined them up according to the banks they came out of and kept them in order that way.

But when I cleaned everything up and went to put them back in the rods are not marked like 302 rods. the standard 302 rods are marked 1 -8 on the cap and rod. The rods and Caps were marked with letters on the 351. I checked the Haynes and Chiltons manuals and it said nothing about this. So my question is did anyone else have this issue?
and How was I supposed to reassemble the motor? what letter corresponds to what cylinder?

I don't know if I put the 1-4 pistons on the 5-8 bank and vice versa.
there is a little vibration up in the higher RPM's but at idle you can't tell

I do have a rear main leak on it now so I was going to pull the motor and fix it and I debated tearing it down and swapping the pistons.

Anyone have any ideas?
my last resort would to be to take everything down and get them rebalanced at a local machine shop but I didn't want to have to go to that extent.

 

[88mouse]

Really it don't matter where they go as long as the notch in the piston is facing the front, and the rod caps are on the right rods. Did you plastigage the rods?

 

[spierce]

plastigage

yea I checked all the tolerances on the crank to mains, and the crank to rods. everything is good.
The problem I was thinking I was having was a balance problem. I know from the factory all the pistons and rods can be off by quite a bit from one to another. so the factory balance may be off by moving all the pistons to the opposite side.
and I did make sure all the pistons are in the bores the right way and that the caps are installed correctly.

 

[88mouse]

yea I checked all the tolerances on the crank to mains, and the crank to rods. everything is good.
The problem I was thinking I was having was a balance problem. I know from the factory all the pistons and rods can be off by quite a bit from one to another. so the factory balance may be off by moving all the pistons to the opposite side.
and I did make sure all the pistons are in the bores the right way and that the caps are installed correctly.

If the notch on the pistons are to the front and the tolerances where right, there isn't a probablem with the balance of the motor. Maybe the harmonic balancer is bad check it.