Went after the heads today. Discovered that the comp cams springs we got didn't fit in the spring seat on the heads, so I had to cut the seat a little wider to accommodate. But also; my cam has a .480 lift and we had about .560 travel in the valve, but with the umbrella seals, which came in around .100, we didn't really have enough travel, so we had to cut the guides down also. Decided to cut them so that we can put positive valve seals on the intake and use the umbrella seals we had for the exhaust.
Switched gears a little today. Needed a block off plate for the fuel pump because I'm going to run an electronic pump; so I made this thing from some 304 stainless plate. The angle grinder slipped when I was cutting some of the pattern and you can see where I caught it pretty deep. Still deciding whether or not this is bothering me enough to chase it down Also, we had a scary moment when we first took the motor out and it fell off the hoist because a bolt that was holding it snapped. Granted we only had a couple 3/8 bolts carrying the whole thing; I don't ever want to experience that again, so I made these plates. They'll bolt on to the heads with the intake mainfold off and they have 7/16 bungs in with plenty of thread, so this should be plenty strong.
Amazing build man and the pictures add so much more to this thread. Cant believe im only just now seeing this but Ill be watching from now on! Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
Got the whole lower end of the motor buttoned up and got the oil pan on. Starting to look like a motor. Timing cover and water pump also on, along with the harmonic balancer. After cutting the seats down last week, I checked all the spring heights, and shimmed where needed to balance it all out. We're within 5lb. on all the springs, so I'm pretty happy with that. All exhaust valves are in. Going after the intake tomorrow; then hopefully heads go on!
Heads are finally done. Using ARP studs instead of the original head bolts, except the studs were too long and wasn't allowing the valve cover to go on, so I had to cut the studs down to fit and opted to not use the washers under the nuts. The nuts are flanged, so I think we'll be OK. Valve cover fits on the heads nicely now and all is good. Rockers all cleaned and end plugs replaced. One of the rocker shafts was a little loose in the end carrier, so I knurled the end of the shaft to get another 0.0015" on it and press fit it in, all snug and good now. Running solid lifters, so got all the pushrods dialed in today. Took much longer than expected; those intake pushrods are a son of a bitch to get to. Here was my cheat sheet to help me along.
We're getting close to finishing up the motor now. The valve covers are on and the heads are officially done! Got these valve tube seals. I liked the idea of having the o-ring between the tube and the valve cover, but had to do a little machining to get the spark plug boots to sit in there and not pop out. I just back-cut the tube seal housing a little to get that working well. I'm gonna be running a 4x2 Cragar intake and 4 Stromberg 97's. Tried getting the manifold on today, but the holes were just a touch off. I ordered another set of intake manifold gaskets and I think the little bit of extra thickness will get us where we need to be to bolt the manifold on. If its still off, I may just oversize the holes. Bought the rebuild kits to give these old carbs a few more years of life. The the float seat threads in one of the carbs was pretty hurt, but we fixed that by drilling the hole out, tapping it oversize and sleeving it with a brass sleeve provided by Uncle Max; it worked out great. The carbs were put in the ultrasonic cleaner and came out clean as a whistle
I Love the fact you took the time to take really nice pictures. It makes it a lot more enjoyable to watch the build process. Keep it up
Awesome progress Chen. Was quite a while since I last checked up on this thread, glad to see that it's coming along nicely!
I'm still here and still building. Life has a way of stopping me from finishing this thing every couple of years, but we're back on the horse; hopefully this is the year it happens. It's crazy to think that I've been working on this for 5 years now. Here are some things I've gotten done in the last couple of weeks since the COVID pandemic started: Exhaust is done: Coolant crossover taken care of. Fabricated this from scratch; pretty happy with how this all came together. Pedals are all done, but still need to make pads for brake and throttle pedals Cowl can be removed to get to all the master cylinders and electronics 10 Gallon spun aluminum fuel cell mounted in the trunk. hard mounted to the frame Fuel pump mounted on the frame kick up and connected everything with NiCopp lines Also all the body mounts are done. I have a 1" pad of rubber under each of the mounts. Here's an interesting mount I made for the rear of the car to accommodate the frame kick up More soon. We are getting close to firing it up.
The Jalopy Journal
