The Mean Green Stingray Gets a new 427

Come back soon to see the install of this little beast in Travis' '69 coupe.

First Page

April 27-29: My dad came up to help with the install and it took a while but we got it in.  Talk about shoe-horning it in!!!  There was a lot of 'clearancing' needed, mostly on the headers, to make it all fit.  As it is, the driver side valve cover is actually against the brake booster.  It's going to be very difficult to get the covers off so I'm going to look for some fabricated covers that are angled more on the side to make removing them easier. We weren't able to fire it up this weekend because we had a water leak on the intake manifold that couldn't be fixed in time.  For now we fixed the crack on the heater outlet with JB-Weld but we'll have to test it when it dries.  It also appears that the balancer has been all the way on all along.  I have to space the alternator out to make the pulleys line up properly. Also, the entire assembly is still too tall, even with an L-88 hood, to clear.  I think what I'm going to do is just space the filter up so that it seals against the hood with no filter top lid.

Original car

Painting block

Assembly Pg 1

Assembly Pg 2

Install Pg 1

Problems/Repairs

Exhaust

Dad checking on the filter assembly clearance.  As it is, I won't be able to use the filter lid and will just have to seal the filter straight to the hood.  This baby is just too tall!

Here you can see the minimal clearance between the carb and the hood.  I'm going to cut those vent tubes down a little.

Dad helping with more stuff on the install.  We've done a few of these engine installs in the vette but dropping a Big Block is a whole other ball game.

Here you can see some of the clearance issues we had with the headers.  It took about 4 hours in all to get them in completely.  We had about 3 spots we had to ding in order to clear things.  This shot is taken from below on the driver's side and the motor mount was preventing the header from bolting on.  We put a pretty good ding in the tube and still there's just enough room to put a few pieces of paper between it.

This shows the problem we had with the heater hose inlet on the intake that prevented us from starting up the little beast.  When we first turned the key on and check the water pump for operation and leaks (electric pump) we saw water coming from the plug.  We tried more pipe sealant tape but that didn't fix it.  We then tried a different plug and now water was leaking out the side where there had been an original repair on the intake.  So then we tried blobbing a little JB-Weld over the crack but when we screwed the plug back in it cracked the fix.  So from the picture you can see that we ultimately just clean it all up and completely covered the plug, crack, and area with JB-Weld.  I'm now just waiting for it to cure before attempting again to start the engine.