Good luck with all that, Rhett. I wish you all the best. Hopefully, you won't do/post anything too controversial or it could get treated like a piece of meat tossed into a pack of starving wolves.
I don't know who did the safety wiring on those oil pump bolts but that is not how you are supposed to safety wire. Do an internet search and you can see how it is properly done.
I hope you do controversial stuff...with a plan and some common sense. Breaking the norms is how some make a living, revisiting old tech has it's rewards too. Thanks for pointing out the safety wire, I was afraid to say something over concern of the growing mass of torches and pitchforks near me. (although, I'm not aware of what other safety wire users' methods are) Bob is a stand up guy that does excellent flow bench verified porting.
Hey thanks guys...! Yeah, we already talked about the safety wire and its probably already re-done...but I appreciate the heads up if I hadn't known. And Gary, I welcome commentary on this build, and I'll be as transparent as possible about not only the build, but more importantly how it runs and holds together. I am all for opposing or alternative viewpoints and experiences, I just want anybody who chimes in to keep it positive and productive. So far, so good! I think I'm headed down to the machinists this weekend, so maybe I'll have some fresh pics. And 8ad, x2 on Bob. Good and talented guy.
This is exactly what I'm talking about! lol As you and many others probably already know, I'm no stranger to controversial topics, and am not afraid to delve into and/or defend them or myself against said torches and pitchforks... ...but it's not the torches and pitchforks that have me concerned, it's the huge iron gauntlet in the sky that looms overhead forever watching and will squash me if I'm too good at defending something. (ducks and runs for cover) :laugh:
And I'm back with a quick update on the motor: These pictures are a couple few weeks old, at the time we were mocking up the pulley alignment and finishing some head mods. in the close up, you can see the oil passage restrictor that Tommy fabbed out of a threaded plug, to cut back top end oiling. You can also see the trough cut through the rocker stands, to allow the oil to run to the back of the head to drain and cut windage. I did the bulk of the drilling, and that was no prize. If you ever do this measure and mark carefully, so you dont hit the shaft bolt threads in the stands. We used the alt pulley as a fixed point, and had to shim out the water pump pulley about .030 as we had milled the cover to block and cover to water pump surfaces to clean them up. Then with those two lined up, we went after the balancer. We are using a BBB 455 balancer, and there's Tommy at the lathe to to mill off about .250 to get the alignment. You can tell it's Tommy, it says so on his shirt. I havent been able to get down there for the past few weekends, but in the meantime Tommy has CC'd the heads and is working on valvetrain geometry - on the original motor, we had a problem with the pushrods rubbing on the valvespring at the perch. As it turns out, I misunderstood Tom at the time and got 3/8 solid pushrods but we are going to center the rods anyway to give maximum clearance for a solid lifter application (the intent is to be able to run hydraulics or solids depending on the event) We are going to run hollow 5/16ths pushrods in this engine, and thanks to Ken at Everyday Performance for letting me scavenge some non-oilng lifter cups out of his 430 to convert my LT-1 solids to non pushrod oiling. We're clearly getting close, and should probably be breaking this motor in on the stand in early April? Fingers crossed, and I'm starting to tear down the 65 to yank the original motor. More to come!
Soooo, in about 2 weeks?! With this last east coast snow storm, it feels like February again! How the heck do you drill thru the rocker stands? Do you drill thru the end of the head or use some sort of angle drill? Single valve springs for break-in only? Nice to see a build done by the 'Master'! Would be awesome to see a book or magazine article on his process...
youre not kidding. I'm over winter, and the weather has set us back a little. I'm hoping April, we'll see but if not then pretty soon. Tommy's been making a lot of progress. We're down to picking head gaskets for the right CR, and then ordering pushrods to match. Shooting for 10.1 if all the calculations work out correct. To answer your question, to get the angle right you have to go in right through the outer wall of the head. If you look close at the picture, you can see where the hole is tapped and plugged with a pipe plug and JB Weld. Then you grind the plug off flush and paint and it's invisible. I can tell you this though... the nickel (or whatever) content of these blocks EATS drill bits. And you need an 18" bit to keep your line, and even then you have to guide the bit quite a lot. I agree on writing an article, and the NE GS/GN club asked me to for their newsletter. If I do, I'll post it here too.
It Lives! The attached video is from the first time we hit the key (so to speak) on the new rebuild. Tommy says "fired up like it had been sitting overnight". No drama - no leaks, no noises, no smells. Did get a little hot, but the motor is still really really tight, and the run stand set up was a little sketchy, some real tight bends on the lower hose. We broke in the cam and seated the rings and called it a day. Good to see my old 66 "service replacement" Q-Jet back in action after a few years on the attic shelf. Sounds great with terrific throttle response, we installed the TA cam straight up. Tom feels the composite head gaskets are letting a little too much oil up top, so we're going to go with smaller restrictions in the oil passages to the rocker stands. The current configuration is stock rockers, hydraulic lifters, stock pushrods and composite head gaskets @ .043, Bobs heads and Q-Jet intake, which needed no port matching at all when we smoked it. Sounds great, but it's tough to tell what it will really sound like because the headers we used had no gaskets (but sealed actually pretty well!) and the stand exhaust uses 3 inch/30 inch oval mufflers that have a real funny sound all there own....it certainly wasn't overly choppy or cammy with the TA-25, but we just didnt have time to take vacuum readings. When we degreed the TA-25 it was ok on timing events, but about 5% shy on intake lobe lift, about 7% shy on exhaust lobe lift. I wasn't wild about that, but it does kind of put me further back in the range of stock specs which was the objective all along. Once this is in and has a season under it's belt, I'll be working with Joe to spec a cam..All in all, I'm really pleased and can't thank Tommy, Bob and Joe enough for all their help.
Sooooooo.......when is she hitting the track? We want some back country road holeshot videos too,Lol.
Congrats! Around 10.25 CR with the thick head gaskets? The lower lift of that cam will work well with the roller rockers. The extra ratio of the RR will give you lots more lift. Can't wait to see what it runs in the car!
Hey Doc! THIS is the motor to test the 3bbl on! Ken - Its got some break in oil now (Brad Penn? Tommy could tell you. For normal use, I generally use Shell Rotella 10-30 or 10-40 if I race in the summer....
