232 rebuild questions

I have a 4.0 head on the way, casting 7120. Decided the stock head was not worth investing anything into. So I supposed now I will be filling some water jacket ports and trying to find the correct length hollow push rods. Any tips on this process or any other issues with this conversion would be great!

Also think I found a piston that will work to move my compression much closer to 10:1 with the 4.0 head.
It turns out a ford SOHC 2.3 liter motor uses a piston with a 3.780 bore / 1.590 compression distance / pin diameter of .912 or .927. The piston is available for much cheaper than your typical amc, also can be found in hyper and forged versions. I will just have to machine the pistons to accept a larger pin (0.931), or bush the rod end. I will talk to my machinist soon to find out if this is a viable option.

Shaft mounted rockers... am I doomed?

kronik wrote: Shaft mounted rockers... am I doomed?

Maybe but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and hope you're as resourceful as I am. Now pay close attention.

farna wrote: No oiling issues. The head and/or gasket blocks the oiling port on the old block. New lifters will have an oiling hole for the pushrods. You will need new hollow pushrods -- and that is the only catch. Someone on here actually did this, and I think they ended up using Ford 351 Cleveland pushrods... but I'm not certain. You will need to get at least one adjustable length check pushrod and set up one cylinder.

Both before and after you do any work dedicated to putting this new head to use, take this issue to your machinist for help. He should have an open list catalog about the size of a new world dictionary to sort replacement pushrods BY LENGTH and they need the hollow provision for oil distribution like our 258 and 4L counterparts. You need your old pushrods to mock this up before modification(at least clean the head first) and you'll need a potential list of candidates to replace that old set as it will not be reused beyond this point. I went full caveman on this with my build and didn't even use an adjustable pushrod length checker, I used a square to estimate the length and check that against a list of stock replacement candidates via Mopar. You do not get that luxury and will actually have to go about this the hard way and get the actual replacement length.

It is likely a supporting candidate will come from the 351 Cleveland engine or possibly elsewhere. Whatever it is, it needs to fit to make this work and if you have some radical cam replacement, change it. Shaft rocker ratio is 1.5x while pedestal rockers are 1.6x so you'll have to do some math to recalculate the safe distance for valve travel. You don't need valves kissing your pistons and you don't need valve retainers chewing up those umbrellas, so make sure you look at and understand everything going on before you encounter any problems.

That is what I said early in the topic.A 4 liter head swap on a shaft rocker engine is not fast and easy.

farna wrote: I don't think it's an issue, but you need to check. A pair of adjustable pushrods would make it easier so you can set up one cylinder, but you still need to have a target range -- the pushrods only adjust about an inch.

Same. This is really all the first and finishing points amount to in this case for all the cam geometry. One of the things I liked to do with the 232 and that shaft rocker setup is replace all the worn junk with a BIG cam and twin Weber system. It would take it but the twin carb thing is more appropriate for a 258. It's too easy to flood. This will be a bit different with the 4.0L head but the geometry between a 232 and 4L is important. It was enough for me to stop and look at what I was doing with the 4.7L and all I was doing top end was going from a 4L head to a 4L head.

The difference in my case was the Harland Sharp rolling rockers and I'm not sure if the change was related to the new lifters or the elevated position on the pushrod seats but I needed to trim my pushrods as .060-.120" difference was a big enough deal to introduce flow problems and chatter. It just makes sense to bolt in what fits and works right. I expect much greater pushrod size differences on a 4L head swapped small deck skinny bore block. I haven't done any machining work to my head aside from my own hand crafting but I can tell you that .445" rise is pushing real close to the valve travel limit for my engine. I don't remember what the max safe distance is on the 232 but I would use the same caveman style measuring to get the numbers.

Your spring seat and bind height don't matter if you're not changing springs. What matters is the distance between the bottom of your retainer and top of the valve stem seal. What I did was install the stem seals, mock up the retainer and keeper into place without the spring and then mic the distance, subtracting a massive .062" for safety margin. This thread is reminding me of how fun that was.