I need to pick up two brass freeze plugs to block off the exhaust and preventing those gases from traveling thru the intake manifold. It takes a couple of minutes to warm up the engine, but after that no problem. I block them off so my nice bronze manifold doesn't turn black.

Go to any Cadillac dealer and ask the nice man behind the parts counter for "cooling system treatment tablets" These are the miracle pill of the 80s still in use today.
They are really just ground ginger root, compressed into a horse pill. GM reluctantly began offering these in the early 80s after introducing their HT-4100 "wet sleeve" V-8, the predecessor of the Norstar and such. They were faced with catastrophic returns for coolant going everywhere it shouldn't, were trying all kinds of sealing compounds from Dow (which required complete disassembly to install) and were losing the battle when an experienced dyno mechanic, an old school wrench told the young engineers to "put some ginger root in it"--they laughed, kept on trying the next technological miracle, dealer reports kept multiplying. The mechanic went and got some ginger root, ground it up, put it in a test car (one of the many that were piling up daily) and VIOLA! the problem went away. The green engineers couldn't believe their eyes, tested the S__t out of that car and it held. The next week GM was the no.1 consumer of ginger root, cranking out horse pills to ship to the dealers. They put two in each engine, one per side at the Livonia engine plant.
I put one in each cooling bank of every engine I rebuild, and no problems. If you have a freeze plug leak after rebuilding it will stop (permanently) after about 15 minutes of running at temp.

I guarantee you it will be the best $6 you will ever spend.
One week after you start using the pills you can open the radiator and see no evidence of them ever having been there, no coating the rad core, robbing efficiency.


Check it out

The trick with any and all freeze plugs is to coat the backside that contacts water with a nice thin coat of black RTV silicone. I've done this on every engine I've worked on that I had to remove the freeze plugs. This seals them up, and resists corrosion. Also, I use brass freeze plugs exclusively. I've never had a problem with them, ever.

Others may have different experiences, but I've not had good luck with brass core plugs. Though the situation may be different with the cup-type like your 327 has, I have many of the dish-type brass plugs begin to seep not too many months after installation. I've assumed this is because the brass begins to compress or relieve under the constant pressure of the fit, whereas steel holds its shape.

Does anyone know the size or have a Napa/Kragen/Autozone part number for the core (freeze plugs) on a 327? Preferrably brass ones.

I am going to pull them out before I paint so I can scrape out any accumulated rust from inside the engine.

Thanks,

Paint has been ordered, as well as some other stuff I needed.

U do NOT need high temp paint on water cooled engines.
According to DD customer service u can use DD Centari enamal on engines. NO PRIMER.
I used 15 year old Renshed Mason Acrylic enamal that was unopened about 5 years ago on my Packard V8. It has held up excellent for 5 years and well over 8K miles. Pics have been posted here and at AACA several times over the years.

All u have to do is get a matching color.

Their Engine Enamel FAQ advises:

Quote:
(ALL CAPS is their typing not mine.) Apparently the paint in a quart can is pretty thin stuff.

BTW, I found that I got a lot less overspray (less waste) with a detail gun when painting something like an engine (or door jams, around hinges, etc.).

Quote:

kev, I wanted to get a nice smooth finish and I found that the brush left stroke marks. The block is rougher finish and they didn't show but on the smooth head they did.

For awhile now I have not relied on any outside software (or its developers) for the Forums or any other part of the website. So the forum is safe from Upgrade Hell.

I took Open Source software, and modified for this website. If you were to download the latest open source version of this Forum, you would see that it wouldn't have Spell Check, or have the ability to jump to the newest message. Those were features I added myself.

The Model Info Pages, Parts X-Ref, and Owner Registry were custom written by me. All of the content was of course from you guys.

All of this was done to provide a unified login to the website, very little downtime, and only one throat to choke if there is a problem, mine. The only service blips I have really seen is when my ISP is having actual server or switching problems. But that is pretty rare.

When making any updates, I back up all the PHP files locally. Make the changes, and test. If something goes south, I simply put the backup PHP back in place. No harm, no foul. Most of the time, this is done in the late PM California time, so there are very few people online at that time.

The fact I am a Software developer by trade allows be to make beneficial improvements to the website without having to resort to major upgrades and the problems that come with them. Relying on outside software is a nightmare, so I feel for the people that have to.