BeefMcGuns
New member
Greetings,
I have mostly completed the buildup of my 304 in my Scout II. Money was an object and as such, I did not go way over the top. I thought it might be of interest to the forum members to hear about some of the equipment I purchased, used, and my impressions. My goal was to make a strong motor that is reliable, pulls hard, and sounds good. Its hooked up to a 3 speed torqueflite 727. I live at sea level in the sf bay area of California.
1. Freshened up the cylinders: I did this myself. I was amazed at the hard gunk on all the valves. I tried many things to get it off and in the in the end, I put a soft wire brush disk on my drill press and lightly polished all the crud away. I never touched the stem or the valve surface. Fortunately, my guides were good. Lessons learned: the $15 screw down type valve spring compressor kind of works. But, spend the $60 or so and get the real clam shell type model. Much faster, easier, and safer.
2. Rv comp cam: bought the whole valve train kit from IH Parts America, the 260 grind, and installed the camp, cam gears, valve springs, and retainers. (cam bearings were fine). It all went in easily and no problems. I installed it "straight up" as in dot over dot. Some advance or retard it a tooth.
3. 4 barrel aluminum intake manifold: its at least 35 lbs lighter than the stock iron 2 barrel manifold. Needed to put in a bunch of pipe plugs in various holes but it went on easily. I was careful not to strip anything.
4. Rebuild the points distributor: basically I took as much apart as I could, cleaned out all the gunk, lubed it all up, and replaced the points and condenser. While I could have easily upgraded it to an electronic ignition, I kind of like having a purely mechanical Scout. By the way, its much easier to check the points gap with the distributor in the engine and using a dwell meter. Took a few minutes to figure that all out but when I got the dwell right, I could hear a difference in the idle.
5. Edelbrock 1404 carburetor: this is the 500 cfm with a manual choke. It worked out of the box and I only had to adjust the idle circuit screws and idle a little bit.
6. New plugs, wires, rotor, and cap: nothing special here, I'm of the opinion at our motor's stock compression and rpm limits that much more than normal is just a waste of money.
7. Headers: I found a guy selling a pair of hooker headers on craigslist. I installed them and added a universal h pipe kit and dual exhaust from summit. So I have headers feeding into an h pipe and then out through dual exhaust/mufflers.
And the results? Overall the motor is stronger and pulls harder when accelerating or going up hill. Its hard for me to quantify which "improvement" did the most but I suspect it was the cleaning up of the heads and cam.
I feel I have my 304 tuned well now and it definitely has a more lopey idle. Louder too. I can get a solid idle at around 850 rpms. Lower than that and it eventually dies. I can sit at a stop sign for minutes and the motor just idles fine while in gear.
My power brakes are slightly less effective at low rpms. I know I do not have a vacuum leak. This is subjective but when driving slow, I feel I have to step on the brakes a bit harder than I used to. Anything above 15 mph is no big deal.
I found timing my motor to be a bit of a challenge. The short version of the story is even after starting with the timing marks lined up and and the rotor pointing to cylinder 8, I needed to turn the distributor a surprising amount to get it to fire and then make it "perfect". I'm probably 40 degrees away from 0.
Overall opinion: I think it was worth it. I enjoyed the work and the results were worth the effort. My Scout is better than it was before and I have cruised about 100 miles or so breaking everything in. No mystery leaks or grinding noises either.
Here's the reality: all the work I did above "mattered" but did not result in a Scout that will spin the tires, accelerate to 60 in under 8 seconds, dramatically affect mileage, or do anything else magical. My Scout is ready for work and play but it did not become a hot rod and I really do not know how much stronger it is than before. In terms of seat of the pants feel, I now have instantaneous throttle response and when I put my foot in it, it makes a whole lot of noise and pushes me into my seat.
Thank you.
I have mostly completed the buildup of my 304 in my Scout II. Money was an object and as such, I did not go way over the top. I thought it might be of interest to the forum members to hear about some of the equipment I purchased, used, and my impressions. My goal was to make a strong motor that is reliable, pulls hard, and sounds good. Its hooked up to a 3 speed torqueflite 727. I live at sea level in the sf bay area of California.
1. Freshened up the cylinders: I did this myself. I was amazed at the hard gunk on all the valves. I tried many things to get it off and in the in the end, I put a soft wire brush disk on my drill press and lightly polished all the crud away. I never touched the stem or the valve surface. Fortunately, my guides were good. Lessons learned: the $15 screw down type valve spring compressor kind of works. But, spend the $60 or so and get the real clam shell type model. Much faster, easier, and safer.
2. Rv comp cam: bought the whole valve train kit from IH Parts America, the 260 grind, and installed the camp, cam gears, valve springs, and retainers. (cam bearings were fine). It all went in easily and no problems. I installed it "straight up" as in dot over dot. Some advance or retard it a tooth.
3. 4 barrel aluminum intake manifold: its at least 35 lbs lighter than the stock iron 2 barrel manifold. Needed to put in a bunch of pipe plugs in various holes but it went on easily. I was careful not to strip anything.
4. Rebuild the points distributor: basically I took as much apart as I could, cleaned out all the gunk, lubed it all up, and replaced the points and condenser. While I could have easily upgraded it to an electronic ignition, I kind of like having a purely mechanical Scout. By the way, its much easier to check the points gap with the distributor in the engine and using a dwell meter. Took a few minutes to figure that all out but when I got the dwell right, I could hear a difference in the idle.
5. Edelbrock 1404 carburetor: this is the 500 cfm with a manual choke. It worked out of the box and I only had to adjust the idle circuit screws and idle a little bit.
6. New plugs, wires, rotor, and cap: nothing special here, I'm of the opinion at our motor's stock compression and rpm limits that much more than normal is just a waste of money.
7. Headers: I found a guy selling a pair of hooker headers on craigslist. I installed them and added a universal h pipe kit and dual exhaust from summit. So I have headers feeding into an h pipe and then out through dual exhaust/mufflers.
And the results? Overall the motor is stronger and pulls harder when accelerating or going up hill. Its hard for me to quantify which "improvement" did the most but I suspect it was the cleaning up of the heads and cam.
I feel I have my 304 tuned well now and it definitely has a more lopey idle. Louder too. I can get a solid idle at around 850 rpms. Lower than that and it eventually dies. I can sit at a stop sign for minutes and the motor just idles fine while in gear.
My power brakes are slightly less effective at low rpms. I know I do not have a vacuum leak. This is subjective but when driving slow, I feel I have to step on the brakes a bit harder than I used to. Anything above 15 mph is no big deal.
I found timing my motor to be a bit of a challenge. The short version of the story is even after starting with the timing marks lined up and and the rotor pointing to cylinder 8, I needed to turn the distributor a surprising amount to get it to fire and then make it "perfect". I'm probably 40 degrees away from 0.
Overall opinion: I think it was worth it. I enjoyed the work and the results were worth the effort. My Scout is better than it was before and I have cruised about 100 miles or so breaking everything in. No mystery leaks or grinding noises either.
Here's the reality: all the work I did above "mattered" but did not result in a Scout that will spin the tires, accelerate to 60 in under 8 seconds, dramatically affect mileage, or do anything else magical. My Scout is ready for work and play but it did not become a hot rod and I really do not know how much stronger it is than before. In terms of seat of the pants feel, I now have instantaneous throttle response and when I put my foot in it, it makes a whole lot of noise and pushes me into my seat.
Thank you.