Thread: 350 Won't Spin

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Just finished building a 350 engine and after it was all together I tried to turn it over with a torque wrench set to 80 pounds and it wouldn't budge, it just torqued the bolt to 80 pounds, should the engine have turned over? How hard should it be to turn it over, could it be so hard to turn over due to the high compression (11.5 to 1)?

pull the spark plugs if u have vthem in and try again. did u properly lube all parts when assembling?

the eng should have turned. take the plugs out that will make it easier. probably something binding. before the heads went on how much did it take to turn the eng over. with just the crank, rods, pistons,and cam ?without the heads it should turn with no more than 25 lbs on the crank shaft.

Yep, as you were putting in each main and rod bearing you should have been turning the engine over after each one to make sure it was not binding. If you did that, how did it spin then? Are you trying it with the spark plugs in or out? Are your pushrods in place on the rockers?

That is why you should continually be spinning an engine over as you add each bearing or component. You will be able to detect any problem as soon as it occurs, and stop to correct it before you get it all buttoned up.

To give you some idea of how easy it should be to spin, I have the plugs out of my 350, and just the other night I put in the flexplate to convertor bolts, so I had to spin the engine over. A 1/2 inch rachet spun it over with very little effort.

Don

you have a bunged main journal. ( best guess )

as previous post said, you need to continually spin your motor during assembly to catch such problems in the future.

Did you check piston to head clearance? With high comp. there could be interference. Even a valve clearance thing could cause it.
Did you lube it well? Check ring end gaps? So many unknowns, hard to diagnose at a distance.

Like it has been said it is had to say from this far away.
Did you install the rods backwards??

Well we got it to spin the other day, I think we just didn't lube the cylinders enough, and when my friend painted the lifter valley he didn't clean the excess paint out of the lifter bores, so there was some pretty good stickage there also, do you think it may need one of those high torque starters because the one we have still turns it over real slow almost like the battery is dead, the ring gaps are correct and the piston to valve clearance is also good, we are going to prime it real good tommorrow and see if we can't get it to fire.

if it turns too slow, the pickup in the distributor won't give signal. Had this problem with a dodge 318. A high torque Summit starter was the solution.

Pull the plugs and roll it over on the starter til it lubes up. Don't overdo it, short bursts so as not to fry the starter. If it's a stick trans you could tow it to loosen it up a bit.

It turned today with the help of a 170.00 dollar high torque starter. Fired right up after that. Now its time for some fine tuning.

Congratulations !!!

Don

Thanks It sounds wicked and feels like it's going to be pretty damn fast.
If I can figure out how to I will put a soundclip of it on here for all of you to here.
I can't wait to get it to the track, our track is only 1,000 feet but it works.

Originally Posted by dcurtis

It turned today with the help of a 170.00 dollar high torque starter. Fired right up after that. Now its time for some fine tuning.

I think it may be time to "hit" the gym.