Hello, This is one of my first posts here, so i would like to say hello. I am 22 and i am now just barely being able to fund my project car. my dad and i are in the process of building a 1952 willys aero with a 394 olds with three deuces, 5 speed Tremec, 4.11 gears, etc. It should be completed around May. which means i am going to start my car. its a 1956 Ladawri body in which i am building a henry J base chassis. Gonna run a straight axle gasser setup. pic at the bottom of the car i am basing my project off. i am taking an engine blueprinting class locally so i will be able to get all the machine work done for free. I got a 427T motor for nothing with a good crank and in overall descent shape. Keep in mind i am on a college budget so i can't get to wild on price. going to go stock crank and bore .060 over. Was looking at the Sealed power rebuild kits in summit, pretty reasonable in price and looks like quality stuff what you think? Anyone run speed pro pistons? http://www.summitracing.com/parts/FEM-CSMHP727-300/ i am going to probably run Eagle H beam rods, reasonably cheap and i guess they are ok? One of my biggest questions is about heads, i have a set of bare iron ZLX heads, would have to buy valves spring etc for these. would i be better of selling these and buying used aluminums? also i have been cruising ebay and have come across Pro comp heads for about a grand, anyone have any luck with these? needs to be a pump gas motor so i know with aluminums you can run 11.1 comp give or take? http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/BIG-B...Q5fAccessories as far as valvetrain goes this is where i am going to see my expense go up. the car will see a mix of street and strip, but i want to make at LEAST 600hp. i am building a 427 cause i like motors that rev. do you think a comp cams solid roller at 714/.680 lift 278/282 duration at .050 will be streetable at all? i can handle a shitty idle, i am not real scared. what kind of springs pressure would i be looking at for this kinda lift 220# at the seat or so? what lifters seem to hold up best without going too nuts on price? sorry for the long post but i just need some opinions. i befriended an engine builder with a dyno so i will be able to get the Kinsler injection (mechanical converted to electronic) tuned in for free. any suggestions would be great, the car will be a stick with 4.56 gears in a ford 9 inch. i have the center section ready to go...if someone has a 9 inch house they are looking to get ride of for cheap let me know. thanks in advance
see if you can find a 454 block, the short deck height is easier to deal with as far as pistons, rods, intake manifolds.
You may have a hard time finding an intake.Truck blocks have a taller deck height.I had one once and sold it because there were very few parts like intakes and distributors available.I would not put money in a truck motor.Keep the steel crank and get another block like squirrel said.
Try to get a low deck block. Take the four bolt mains out of the tall deck and drill your car block for them and align hone. You will save yourself a lot of headaches.
Hey man - good on you for actually doing an intro post! I'm with the other guys on the regular deck block. The tall decks can swallow up a big 'ol stroker crank but swallow a lot of bucks in the process. Google pro comp anything and read all the bitching folks do about the quality. That's all I'll say about that. College dude budget includes injection? More power to ya! Comp cams can sell ya the springs you need. That car looks light, probably less than 3000lbs. It's gonna haul ass!
well you can build a killer stroker in that tall deck. use stock 454 pistons and a stroker crank to get a 512. you will need to make spacer plates to run a al. intake. for the distributor there are a few ways to go weld the intake and counter bore the distributor hole to use a standerd one. find one with a longer housing. i sold alot of the tall deck blocks to the tractor pullers. or you can keep the 427 crank which is forged steel and put it in a 454 block for a 427.
Hello and Welcome. As far as what you're doing,,well I've been there too !! Listen to the older farts. If you're on a tight budget,,You'll never break records or do something new to WoW the World,,,,just have fun.
I personaly would keep the tall deck block. Much easier to get big cubes that way. No replacement for displacement. There are plenty of parts available for a tall deck. I've run Speed Pro pistons and didn't have any problems. I've also run Pro Comp heads. I didn't have any problems with them, but I had a pro put them together/check them out. I've heard of people having to remachine new Pro Comp heads due to poor quality control. Mine were fine. The cam profile you mentioned is very similar to one I've run in a jet boat. Veeery lopey. My 468 with Pro Comp heads and the similar cam made about 650 HP. That must be one hellofa college budget to get a Kinsler MFI converted to EFI set up!
another idea is to build a mild engine with mostly stock parts and put a blower on it...lotsa HP, very steetable. I've been running a mild blown 454 for a couple decades, it's fun.
If you are on a tight budget use the tall deck and use the spacers to get a regular intake to fit. There are a couple of companies that sell them. here is one> http://www.jomarperformance.com/bbctalldeck.php Your other picks seem a little radical. We have a member in the club that has a street driven 10 second Nova and his motor isn't as radical as the the parts for yours. Just remember that in motors everything that is bigger, may not be better. Welcome to the forum
The recommendations I have for you would be the same I got when I built my engine. Great source for blocks are the late 80's Chevy 454SS trucks. A good percentage of them were four bolt (not necessary unless you are boosting or plan on high revs) and are real good castings. Scat cranks are reported to have better oiling than the Eagles for the good cheap crank category. Tall deck blocks are great for strokers but seems to be a bit of extra weight to carry around for no gain. I would sell it and get another block but if you want to build it you can. You will need the manifold spacers or correct manifold and the taller distributor, not a real big deal. Pretty much any of the aftermarket aluminum heads will match or exceed what stock heads can do. You do get what you pay for here, I've been a fan of my Brodix stuff. If you are intent on running pump gas, I would keep the compression down to 10:1 or 10.25:1, I ran a 12:1 427 with ported 781 heads and it would ping from time to time. Not fun. BBC have heavy valvetrains, anything you can do to promote longevity here will help a ton. Things like high quality locks and retainers. That's where most of my engine issues have been.
Some random & additional thoughts to what's been said: If you want to keep the tall deck block, the easiest solution is to simply use 6.535" rods with the existing crank, and 427 pistons in the appropriate bore size. Scat, Eagle, Manley, etc. all offer fairly inexpensive rods in that length, along with other manufacturers. One thing I would caution you about is that, typically, most 427T blocks have a lot of bore wear & decks that are wildly off from side to side & end to end. Since the machine work is free that's not as much of a problem, but they also often have cracks in the main webbing, which is. As others have said, you can use spacers for a regular intake manifold and the long distributors are readily available, though not always cheap. The true big block killer is weight, both with pistons, and as Steve said, valves. If you plan to take this to 7000+ on a regular basis, I personally would look at different pistons. All the TRW/Speed Pro/Federal Mogul 427 pistons are relatively heavy by today's standards; that's not to say they won't work, but it does add more stress. More of a concern, to me, is that most of them are made either in Mexico, or India...and in my opinion the quality is not what it once was. You could get SRPs or Probes for not much more money and have a considerably lighter piston. My opinion of Pro Comp products has been stated here before and isn't really printable....I'll only add here that if you choose to go this route, I would recommend that you buy bare heads and source the valvetrain yourself. As stated the quality of both their parts & machine work is a gamble. You may find, if you decide to do this, that the cost of buying the better parts and paying a professional for a good valve job and throat work approaches the cost of better heads; TFS makes some damn nice heads for under $1000 each, complete with excellent components. Brodix also offers a nice head for a bit more. Perhaps you will be able to do the setup yourself. You stated that it needs to be a pump gas engine. Without more details it's difficult to say for sure but it appears to me that you will not be able to make enough static compression to effectively use that much duration.....or, another way of looking at things, the fuel quality will keep you from being able to run as much compression as you would need. Solid roller cams on the street are a dicey proposition. You've stated that you don't want to go nuts on the price of the lifters. Right now the most durable, commonly available lifters (I'm not talking about Morels, Schubecks, or other unobtanium ) seem to be the Crower hippos or the Isky Red Zone lifters...neither are cheap. Some guys like the Comp Endure-X. I don't believe the Crowers are rebuildable, unless things have changed recently. You will need to be prepared to get them looked at on a regular basis. The three killers of solid roller lifters are: A) excessive idle time (i.e. traffic); B) valve float from inadequate open pressure (or bounce from inadequate seat pressure; C) lobe profiles that discourage valve control. Keep in mind that a streetable solid roller cam lobe is often quite different from one intended strictly for racing (given the same engine).... I've never heard the term "ZLX" used in connection with iron heads & am not sure what you mean?
The ZLX heads were marketed through Baldwin Chevrolet around 1970. They were a cast iron copy of the aluminum ZL1 open chamber heads. .
Hi kx454, and welcome! No info for you from me...These guys have it covered. Just wanted to say that it's nice to see a young new guy asking good questions, and experienced gentlemen giving good answers. Good luck with your project and school! - Rick
Thanks for all the informative responses, I probably should have mentioned that i planned to use a 6.535" rod with 427 pistons, as stated by Homespun, reason being that these are available off the shelf so they are (kinda) cheap. Does anyone have any preference between Eagle, Scat, or Manley rods? Manley's seem a bit pricier than what i was looking for. I want to use the tall deck also because sometime down the line i may want to build a big cube motor. The intake spacer seems like it should be relatively straight forward to make, i am not really worried about that. What bothers me is the distributer, does anyone have any pictures of how to make them work? Oh, and the injection belongs to a friend/motor builder for the willys my dad and i are building, and he said he will cut me a "deal". I am not sure what the deal is yet but i am hoping to not lose an arm and a leg.....if it looks like its going to be to much i will carb it. this was my original plan...i got scared away by the price of a blower motor+ the blower haha. again, thanks for all the great info
I have a set of Scat Hbeam rods in my twin turbo BBC and Bud Yancer of Mach Development is the one that recommended them. He has to stand behind the work and so far he has been very right. He was indifferent with the Eagle rods, said they were not that bad but if you are going to spend the money on a high RPM screamer that the Oliver rods were probably the best out of the box rods you could get. Cam wise, check out some hydraulic rollers. I run a custom Cam Motion billet with ISKY lifters but Comp has really stepped up and produced some very good stuff for off the shelf.
I'm with this fella. I like the tall deck 427, even if no one else does. The parts are not that hard to find and if push comes to shove you can use the low deck intake with spacers. All it does is make your runners longer. That's not a bad thing. I've used the Summit kit and never had a problem. I guess it depends on if you think that Fedral Mogul produces bad parts. Everything in the Summit kit is produced by companies that are owned by Fedral Mogul. Whether a cam is streetable is a matter of opinion. Some of them are real crappy on the bottom end so you have to keep the revs up but if you are of a mind that high rev cruising is a rush than you are in good shape with the cam you are looking at. I personally think that high rev cruising is a rush. Where you ruin into a problem is when you have to run ultra stout springs. I have a friend that runs a cam in his dragster that the springs are so stout that he has to back them off between rounds that setup wouldn't be streetable but you aren't in that position with the comp cam you are looking at. Your setup looks like fun to me. Welcome aboard.
Scat & Eagle both make nice 4340 H-beam sets for under $500, depending on what bolts you choose. I don't really have a preference, so long as the machine work is good. I'm partial to Scat cranks, of those two brands, based on personal experience and that of friends, when I'm looking at the lower-cost cranks. If the engine came with a distributor already, and it's a simple points type, you could simply convert it to electronics, if you are so inclined, and recurve it. Beyond that, there are any number of new or used tall-deck distributors out there for Mallory, MSD, etc.
I thought the tall deck blocks used a normal length distributor, but that the mounting pad for it on the intake sat down lower. But it's been a while since I saw a stock tall deck truck intake (the one with two thermostats) you can spend some bucks and get a distributor with an adjustable collar
I've seen at least one GM points-type that was longer. I may still have it. Dunno if all of them were that way. It would make more sense to drop the intake pad. Possibly most were done that way and some applications needed the taller distributor? Most of the tall-deck blocks I've seen were already missing many, many pieces.
Not exactly sure but I was under the impression that the 348/409 distributor was the same as the tall deck Gen IV or at least close enough. I punched in "tall deck distributor" into Summit and came up with plenty of new ones to fit your needs. Just need to pick a direction to go and do it.
I am curious as to why the BBC is so accepted in the HAMB world when this site is supposed to be primarily 1964 only? So, if the BBC is OK, then that includes all later model engines? or just BBCs? I've seen several posts where members get upset if someone posts something newer than 1965 or so but for 80s, 90s and newer BBCs members seem to look the other way. Why is that? I know the engine was released in 1965 but, as a 396 only. But, I see few BBC fans using a true vintage 60s 396. Steve
A guy I knew took a tall deck 427 out of a truck that his Dad used to move mobile homes around. He put it in a short wide bed Chevy. His Dad was plenty pissed, (he didn't really ask). Anyhow, we couldn't understand why it was such a dog and tried my distributor out of my 327 on it, it worked and it helped. So at least some tall decks used a normal length distributor. PS The motor sure had a lot of torque, (tire fryer) but, it'd lay down pretty early in the RPMs.
I know you said don't want to spend a LOT of money but..... A cheaper, better way to go would probably be to use use a standard 454 passenger car engine, put some a set of 2.19 intake &1.88 exhaust valve rectangular port heads - or some mildly ported (large port) oval port heads, and replace ithe stock smaller oval port valves with some bigger 2.19 intakes and 1.88 exhausts for a rectangular port head. - and then use standard off the shelf aftermarket pieces for the rest of the build. As far as liking the the shorter 3.75 stoke because of the way it revs, what do you want to do? Build an engine that revs, or makes horsepower? While the 1/4 inch shorter stoke 427 can theoretically rev higher than a 4 inch stroke 454,, it also *has* to rev higher just to make the same power. If your goal is to make horsepower, and particularly if your shooting for the 600 hp range you want the biggest engine you can afford to build. The only reason to build a smaller, shorter stroke engine instead of a bigger, longer stoke engine of the same type, would be if you where racing in a class were the rules limited the engine to a certain displacement. In that case you would obviously want the biggest bore combined with the shortest stroke that would put you as close as possible to your class-mandated maximum engine size. Short of that, a larger displacement engine, even with a longer stroke will always make more power than a smaller shorter engine' - or to put it another way, the larger engine will make same power as the smaller engine, but at much lower speed. . However, if you have your heart set on using that 427 truck block no matter what, it will cost you more money to build it, but it offers a lot of interesting possibilities depending on how much you can spend. First, due to the .400 higher deck height, standard passenger car style pistons, distributors and intakes won't fit the truck block, You can however buy aftermarket intake manifold spacer plates that will allow you to use a standard low-deck manifold on the high dexk block. Also Dart and several other companies make single-four and tunnel-ram type manifold specifically for the the high-deck truck block. If you use the high-deck block and the stock 3.75 stroke 427 crank you're going to need either .400 longer than stock rods and/or custom pistons- both relatively big $$$. For about the same money for custom 427 cubic inch displacement high-deck pistons, ,you'd be way better power-wise to use the truck block as the basis for a big-inch stroker motor. The truck blocks are usually good for a .100 or 125 overbore (sonic check your block first just to be sure it doesn't have core shift or other bore defects) and the extra deck-height combined with custom pistons, can easily handle stroke lengths in the 4.375 to 4.5 inch range and still maintain a reasonable connecting rod length. You'd need to have some custom pistons made up, but a *relatively cheap*,520 or 526 cubic inch motor - (emphasis on the words "relatively cheap" rather than "cheap" by the way!) - could be put together by using your 427 truck block and boring it .100 or 125 over and then using a stock 4.375 stoke crank from the 2001-2009 Vortec 8100 engine - giving you either a very nearly square or a dead on square bore & stroke of either a 4.350 or 4.375 bore X 4.375 stroke - still with stock length - or even slightly longer than stock aftermarket connecting rods - and a stock off-the shelf Chevy Vortec crank! Figure on spending 800 to 1000 dollars for custom pistons for this combo, but for your application, it might beat spending that plus another grand or so for an aftermarket stroker crank too. By the way, if you start searching for an 8100 Vortec crank, they came in both cast and forged versions - cast being the most common in 1-ton trucks and the like and forged versions found mostly in the larger medium duty trucks - as well as the marine and some industrial engines. Mart2406 =========================
------------------------- Sorry, but I have to call total B.S. on this one. All 427 tall deck motor *definitely* uses a longer distributor than the standard small or big block passenger car engines. If your 327 distributor just dropped in and worked, than you didn't have a a tall-deck 427! The only possible way a standard small block distributor could work in a tall a deck big block would be maybe, if - and huge "if" by the way - you where able to severely machine down the distributor mounting pad around the distributor hole in the intake in order to sink the distributor down deep enough to engage the distributor drive gear on the camshaft and the drive tang on the oil pump I doubt this would even be possible let alone practical - at least on a stock 427 tall deck manifold. Mart3406 ===========================
interesting....my 1969 chevy truck parts book shows that distributor 1111303 fits 327 and 366 engines.
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