383 Help

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69'Barracuda

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Hey all, taking apart my first engine and it's a 68 383 that will go in my barracuda. Everything looks good on it and it's bored .030 over but when I was taking it apart I found this at the front of the block behind where the distributor goes into the block and it leads into the timing belt cavity. I'm worried that this is damage, not factory and I just bought the engine so I'm really hoping that's not the case. Is this something from the factory or damage. If it's damaged, what could have caused it and is the engine still fine to run with it like this? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

IMG_4313.JPG
 
Hey all, taking apart my first engine and it's a 68 383 that will go in my barracuda. Everything looks good on it and it's bored .030 over but when I was taking it apart I found this at the front of the block behind where the distributor goes into the block and it leads into the timing belt cavity. I'm worried that this is damage, not factory and I just bought the engine so I'm really hoping that's not the case. Is this something from the factory or damage. If it's damaged, what could have caused it and is the engine still fine to run with it like this? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

View attachment 1715084871
That's factory casting.
 
Normal factory stuff. Some just leave it and others clean it out matching it to the slot. Sometimes it's along the slots above the cam.
 
I used a dremel and took care of the casting flash there and in between the lifters.
 
Thanks for all the help, what's it used for? I just figured that a factory thing would have more of a machined look.
 
That block was machined 50 years ago and the basic design is 60 years old so you just have to accept the fact that they did stuff like that back then. 60 years ago they didn't have CNC equipment to finish machine blocks, they only had basic machine tools so they just did what they had to do and left the rest alone.
 
Here's mine after the dremel work.

IMG_1063.JPG
 
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