Well my 3.0 rebuild was humming along nicely but now I've hit a snag. I labeled the heads with a sharpie (driver, passenger) and sent them off to the machine shop figuring they would keep it straight. Well they came back unlabeled, maybe the sharpie wasn't the best idea but now I have to deal with it .

They appear to be identical, am I correct in thinking that they are interchangeable. The only real problem I see is that getting the clearances right is going to be a bit of a pain and I'm concerned about the cams being switched between heads. Any suggestions?

Ross

 

yeah def stamp some # on it next time of course there shoulde be a next time very soon im no 3.0 expert but i dont think there interchangeable? shouldent be anyways, test fit one without the gasket and see??

 

If the camshaft caps didn't come back bolted on the heads then you have a problem. The heads themselves are the same but the cam bearing caps are different. The left head has a cam bearing cap in front (#2) that has a mount for the distributor and the right head has a cap in the rear (#5) with a plug over the same area. If the heads came back with the caps mounted then put the distributor mounting head on the left side.

If the caps were not maintained in the original positions, I would take the heads back to the machine shop and have them align-hone the cam bores to make sure there won't be problems with bearing clearances and alignment. Mixing up the caps can cause major problems. EVERY cap must be replaced in it's original position or align-honing is required.

I haven't ever encountered a machine shop that mixed up the cam bearing caps so hopefully you'll be ok.

 

Damn, not the news I wanted to hear. I delivered bare heads to the machine shop. The caps are numbers and laid out on the bench. I guess I will have to call the shop.

 

You have distributor holes on each head??

 

Yes, and so do you. Both heads have the same U-shaped extended area where the distributor would go. The actual hole is in the cap. The cap for the left head has a mount and hole for the distributor while the cap for the right head has fairly flat and sloped cover to block off the U-shaped area. With the caps off, the heads are identical. Take a close look at the front cap of your left head and the rear cap of the right head. They are both exposed and not covered by the valve cover.

You can see what I'm talking about in the FSM picture showing the heads in the EG section.

 

Since you have the caps separated by left and right, I would put the cams and caps on the heads-you have a 50/50 chance of being right-and take them to the machine shop and have the check the alignment and clearances. If there is a problem, they can switch the cams and caps and recheck them. One or the other should be good. Shouldn't cost much and you should be back on schedule.