MCF: "French Blocks w/Shitty Intake Ports"??

Yeah, I pulled my valves last night. The bowls behind the valves are all pretty restricted. Need to strip the block completely and get hoggin'.
Will check the length on a couple more rods tonight. First one measured 6.891. That's 16 thou over what I thought it would be (7.000 - 0.125).
Mine's a 4" stroke motor.
Mart.

 

Porting!!! on french or american block you must do that job if you want good results!

 

Were the restrictions on the French castings placed there deliberately? I know the truck engines were designed to run with governors so perhaps the French military was looking to deliberately reduce the performance?

 

Hey Fellow Flatheaders! I'll thinking of posting some pictures of the ports on my 59L block - just to show you how my porting/relief work is setup for one of my blown motors. I've had the block in "mothballs" for 20 years - just starting cleaning up the ports and fitting the custom guides. The block originally came out of one of the Kenz&Leslie streamliners in Denver - I've done extensive work on it since then.

I have some more work to do (more contour work on my guides), but would sure like to compare where I'm at to other guys who are porting for high-end blown/race applications. I'd also love to see the results of an extensive port job on a Frenchy . . . nice to compare. I know that FlatDog has done some extensive port work - maybe we can all learn from one another?

Anybody interested in sharing porting pictures?

 

Flat Ernie: Use the Chevy 1.6" SS exhaust valve for the intake and exhaust valves.... use the lightweight Johnson hollow adjustable lifters abd you valvetrain problems will be solved! ... By the way, we use a 4.250" stroke and 3 3/8" bore (304 cubic inches) in 90% of the engines we build for our customers .. no problem!! We also CNC the valve bowls because they are excessively shrouded. Good luck... Jim # JIMCO (512-360-5405) Smithville, TEXAS