Just got the heads off the 8ba I recently purchased and to my surprise I can not find any cracks! At least not to the naked eye. What I do notice is that on a couple of the water holes, especially the large ones you could fit the top of your finger in, there is a bit of corrosion that has made the edges rough and less than perfect. Would hitting these at home to smooth them out be enough, or should the machine shop ( where it will be headed soon) do the work to make them all 100% uniform? A few other thing I noticed were the heavy build up on a fe of the valves... One even had about 1/16 white build up on top. Cylinder walls look smooth from what I can see so far. Either way, I am goons to bore it out for larger pistons. How much of a "lip" should be expected at the top of each cylinder? If you go from the top of the head down into each cylinder about 1/4 of an inch there is a lip of sorts. Very uniform and even on all cylinders. Thanks again for all your help,
The machine shop, at least if they are a good one, will clean the whole block. they stick it in a bath that takes everything off. just give it to them and tell them you want it all nice and clean. they will take care of it.
That "lip" around the top of your cylinders is your ORIGINAL bore size. Due to normal wear of the rings below that ridge, your bore increases slightly. The piston rings rubbing on the cylinder walls cause this. The machine shop will eliminate this ridge when the block gets bored for the bigger pistons. As far as the roughness, as long as it isn't on one of the sealing surfaces you wont have any trouble.
Since I obviously have no clue what I am doing here, and I am going to have a billion stupid questions about this build, would it be useful to anyone if I just started a build thread for this motor? Not to teach anyone anything obviously, but for a place for me to ask all my dumb questions, take pictures etc. that way in the future other people can look through it, find the answeres to the same dumb questions they have, and they can save face and not have to look silly asking them.
If unsure, just ask away. People love to help. You could check in at Fordbarn, Lots of flathead people on there.
Any build thread is a good one, especialy for the new guys. A lot of times some of us forget that there are people on here who HAVEN'T done this all their lives! Being able to say " I don't know" is the very begining of knowledge. (Its a "zen" thing) And the more clear pictures the better!
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