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After discussing the 327 with my buddy who helped me get it, I think I'm going to go ahead and have it sleeved to 3.5625. The logic behind this is, it's going to cost around $800 to sleeve this engine, and finding another 327/359 block isn't easy to do. Along with that, if I do plonk down the cash when/if I find one, I'll be buying another unknown engine most likely, and be right back where I started from, plus be out X amount of $$. So, cost-effectively, sleeving seems to be the way to go. And since his father in law owns a machine shop, I may be able to do it cheaper than I could any where else. He also told me that if you sleeve every cylinder, the end result is stronger than if it wasn't sleeved at all. Anyone heard of this before?

The good thing about sleeving is that you have a lot of the work of blueprinting the engine done and you will also have uniform thickness on the cylinder bores which will be be a plus on a motor that will be running boost. Just trying to be positive. The benefits may also include better metallurgy in the sleeves.If any one can get it to work ity will be you.

Provided I don't find any more "surprises", I'm starting to think that sleeving is the way to go.

On another front, I grabbed the trusty tape measure and came up with 70" for the overall length of the engine and trans, then laid my tape measure over the chassis to "visualize" the engine and trans being in the car. It looks like just a minor opening up of the driveshaft hole in the "X" member and the whole shebang will fit in there just fine. This weekend I hope to get the engine and trans mated, and "test fitted" to the chassis to see just what I'm in for. I'm pretty hopeful that it'll work just fine.


Other than that, the only new news from the Laboratory is that I removed the filler plugs on the front shocks and filled them with PB Blaster to get them loosened for when I drop that heavy motor in there. It's hard to do stuff when you get off work at 11pm, and by the time you get out to the garage it's 1am and you don't want to start banging and clanging and have the wife come out yelling at you reminding you of the time!

"have the wife come out yelling at you reminding you of the time!"

At least she'd just yell & lecture, whereas the neighbors would call the cops.

I've had that happen before! When I used to live in Enterprise, Ks, I had a neighbor who would watch for when I turned the garage light on, then he'd call the cops. He lived four houses down from me and on the opposite side of the street, and since I was friends with the next door neighbor and he hated my next door neighbor, I was automatically a target. The difference between this house and that one is, my garage is completely insulated and finished, so you can't hear anything from across the street. (We've tested that!)

I had the cops called on me about 4 or 5 times, and every time the cop would come by he'd have to knock on the garage door. I asked him each time he came by if he heard anything, and he told me "No, but if there's a complaint I still have to come out." So I said "Ok, whatever you have to do, I'll keep it down". Funny thing is, the next week the offending neighbor got his dog taken away for "excessive barking", don't know who might have called that one in!!

I've dealt with too many a$$holes to play nice anymore!

After work tonight I decided to do a little work to the 327 so I pulled the pan off:

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Since I haven't bought an engine stand yet, I had to pick it up and stand it on it's rear end by myself, so I needed my version of Popeye's spinach: (Don't worry, I had just opened it!)

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After I got the pan off, things looked pretty good, better than I expected judging by the top end:

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So a little investigating, and I found that the oil pickup tube had been off the pickup, then I noticed the pickup was broken, presumably when the oil pan got it's big dent in it right under the pickup:

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So then I decided to look for other damage, and found that #8 connecting rod is broken, and the piston is all the way at the bottom, touching the crank:

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