My Plan B engine for my Sport Fury is another 440 that I pulled from a '77 New Yorker about 8-10 years ago, and has been in dry storage since. Another ~100K mile engine, but 9 years newer than the one from my Fury. I'm going through checking this engine before I clean it up and install it for the remainder of the cruising season, and noticed some weird looking details on the crank.

ID pad shows Maltese cross and X:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr
Crank seems to confirm 0.010" undersized mains:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr
Additionally, there is this "R" on one of the counterweights. I can't tell if it means anything:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr

Lots of little diamonds, hearts, stars, etc. on the rod big ends rather than numbers. Interesting stuff I don't recall ever seeing before.

I'm doing a plastigage reality-check on bearing clearances, and what's striking me as unusual and maybe troubling is a strange little tab on the rod cap. Looks almost like a piece that didn't get machined fully, but as far as I can tell it's on all of the caps:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr
Does that just lock in to the notch on the rod, or should I be worried about this? My concern is that it might keep the cap from seating properly, but it has lasted for 100K miles so far...

Lastly, two rods on the 5-6 journal don't move side to side on the journal very easily. All the other rods will move within their side clearance with a finger push, but these two won't. A tap with a rubber mallet and they move just fine, but not by hand. Again, I don't know if this is a big deal, there is clearance between the rods and crank journal, and it's been that way for 100K miles. I can't plastigage this journal because the caps have to move around too much to remove them compared to the other caps. Everything shows 0.0015" clearance so far, so I'm going to assume this journal is in that ballpark, too.

Overall, a really solid engine so far, but I want to avoid doing any damage.

Thanks,

Clair

The Cross plus the X means the crank journals are .010 undersized from the factory. The little tab on the rod looks like a witness mark from the rod cap. If I were to use factory rods I would do the following:

1. Have the rods magnafluxed to see if the rods have any cracks.

2. Grind the parting line off both sides of the beam and radius all sharp edges on the rods.

3. Have the rods bead blasted

4. Have the rods resized with new ARP rod bolts installed.

5. The hell with steps 1-4, buy some aftermarket h beam rods with .990 pins.

In its role as the plan b engine, I won't be taking this one apart unless there is something terminal-looking on inspection. I can only vouch for about 15 miles of service on this engine, but it drove fine once I bypassed the fuel line from the tank. Original owner stopped driving it when something plugged in the tank, and it sat for a year or so before I got it, so the goal is to get the 100k mile engine back in normal service while I rebuild the numbers 440 from the Fury. If something comes up terminal on this engine, it's going to be a long wait until I'm on the road again...

Problem with most of the aftermarket rods and all of the really cheap ones is they are 6.760" long. I own a new set of CAT I beams that I bought for something like $82.00

One way to find out if the bearing with the funny spot at the parting line is to use Plastigage and torque without lube.

R.

That's pretty much what I was doing when I found the strange behavior. I just want to make sure this engine is happy before I go through the effort of cleaning it up and installing it. The rod caps are so hard to slip off of the bolts that the plastigage gets tweaked. Every other rod bearing came in right at 0.0015", and the crank journals looked as good on this one as on the others.

I haven't had a big block apart this far in, well, decades, so I just want to make sure I'm understanding what I'm seeing. Need to go see if I still have my books on the shelf...

After looking at the little tab of metal on the rod cap some more:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr

I'm starting to think that's a remnant of the rod machining process, probably when it was ground to final size. It matches nearly perfectly with the notch on the rod - you can see the discoloration from the old oil that got behind the bearing shell on the rod.

Back to my concern, if this bit of metal isn't perfectly aligned with the notch, it seems like it could keep the cap from sitting square on the rod.

Should I grind or file this piece of metal off? Since it only seems to be on the cap side, I can get to them pretty easily.

Thanks,

Clair

Couple more pics, but from a different rod this time:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr

1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr

Here you can see how the tang on the left is butted up tight to the machined face on the rod, but the tang on the right gets oil behind parts of it.
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr

Close-up of the shiny stripe on the right tang - this is where the little ridge on the rod cap hits the bearing tang:
1977_440_Engine by clair_davis, on Flickr

I think I need to grind these ridges off of the rod caps and replace the rod bearings before I put her back together...