All Small Six Starting new build

[awasson]

Yes the one @Otto identified at the back of the block, to the left of the frost plug behind the camshaft needs a threaded plug. Mine has a threaded Allen key plug.

The one on the exhaust side of the block to the left and above the C6DE also needs a plug. I have a square headed, pipe threaded plug in mine.

 

[Montytm26]

Got everything assembled pretty much and painted. I have an issue that hopefully someone might have encountered too. I purchased the billet thermostat housing and the water pump pulley doesn’t have enough room to seat on the water pump. The housing is the same height as the OEM. I’m not sure if the aluminum head sits further forward? Any suggestions?

 

[DON]

My guess is the billet is thicker than the cast housing. How much is it off?

 

[Montytm26]

My guess is the billet is thicker than the cast housing. How much is it off?

I’ll have to have about 3/8 to 1/2 spacers to bring it out far enough for clearance.

 

[DON]

Whoa!! That’s quite a bit. By the way, you don’t want to space out the pulley- that would throw off the belt alignment, I was thinking grinding down the housing, but I doubt there is enough material for that to work. Do you have the oem housing? Does it fit? You might find a smaller pulley, it would just spin the pump faster.

 

[Montytm26]

Whoa!! That’s quite a bit. By the way, you don’t want to space out the pulley- that would throw off the belt alignment, I was thinking grinding down the housing, but I doubt there is enough material for that to work. Do you have the oem housing? Does it fit? You might find a smaller pulley, it would just spin the pump faster.

I’ll have to pull it off and check. I know overall height is the same. I thought about a smaller pulley as well. Any idea where to start looking?

 

[DON]

If you could take what you can off the mating surface, then dimple the outside of the housing for the rest??
It runs in my mind someone stated a ranger pulley is smaller. Info from a serpentine conversion so don’t if the early Rangers had v belts.
A job for the machine class with a CNC mill!!

 

[awasson]

I think the new head sticks out more than the old log heads did. I could only find a couple of photos of when I built mine last year but it looks like my stock head sits back further than yours and the photo of the pulley shows it pretty close to the housing.

 

[DON]

A measurement from the installed pulley to the thermostat mounting surface on the head, from each head style, would tell the story. Maybe two different people, working with the two different heads??

 

[Montytm26]

I think the new head sticks out more than the old log heads did. I could only find a couple of photos of when I built mine last year but it looks like my stock head sits back further than yours and the photo of the pulley shows it pretty close to the housing.

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Yeah I think it does too. I played around with some shims last night and I think I might be able to manipulate the housing enough by some machine work to get everything to fit correctly. I’ll see what I can come up with without having to get too extreme with it. Worst case scenario I’ll shim the water pump pulley out to match the balancer on the outside groove since I was only using one belt.

 

[vssman]

Yeah I think it does too. I played around with some shims last night and I think I might be able to manipulate the housing enough by some machine work to get everything to fit correctly. I’ll see what I can come up with without having to get too extreme with it. Worst case scenario I’ll shim the water pump pulley out to match the balancer on the outside groove since I was only using one belt.

If you do that, make sure the pulley still engages the snout on the water pump. Otherwise, you’ll put a lot of shear stress on the screws holding the pulley on.

 

[drag-200stang]

I would not space it out. See how thick the housing is a point of interference to see if notching it would work. If that is too thin, see how much room there is for the t-stat to open fully, if there is room, weld some material on the inside, and then make clearance notch.