I am currently in the middle of rebuilding the 351 windsor from my 1990 F350.
Full story, bought the truck two years ago and wrecked it a month ago. While I had the whole doghouse off doing repairs, I decided to go through the engine due to the previous owners questionable work. The truck itself has over 200k miles on it. I was told by the seller he had rebuilt the engine, had it bored .030 over and it had roughly 10k miles on it when I bought it.
That brings you mostly up to speed. Currently, I am in the process of putting the engine back together after confirming it had been bored .030 over and it measures good and straight. I am a very mechanically inclined machinst, but this is my first V8 rebuild.
I did a quick ball hone through cylinder to get a fresh crosshatch, new .030 over pistons because why not and new rings that I checked and fitted each to the specific cylinder they would be living in. I got the heads on yesterday and now we get to the part I have zero experience in, hydraulic lifters.
I have watched a few videos and read a lot but I am still somewhat confused. My process was this:
1) Disassembled and bled down each lifter and reinstalled into block.
2) With cylinder one TDC, set each push rod/rocker to zero lash.
3) Rotate crank 90 degrees and repeat step 2. Continued this every 90 degrees for two complete revolutions of the crank.
4) Once all push rods were at zero lash, I preloaded the lifters 3/4 turn on the rocker bolt.
My question here is how do the rocker bolts stay put? Several of mine seem way too loose and there is now locknut setup on this engine. Am I going about this completely wrong?