How many rpms do you want it to turn? With an unmodified head, your particular cam, stock exhaust manifold, and a single monojet carb - your engine should plane off , rpm-wise, at peak torque under load. You don't have enough cfm capacity in the carburetor or beyond to get above that level. I'd be surprized if you could top 3000 rpms under maximum load. Try putting a vacuum gauge in the truck and see if you get below 5" Hg in a hard pull at WOT. It may plane off, but will pull forever at that particular rpm. To get the most bang out of that engine without alot of fuss inside the head. I'd suggest an Offenhauser single four barrel manifold, a Holley 390 cfm four barrel, and a set of Tom Langdon's cast iron headers. Good, durable, reliable, and capable of putting a grin on your face. Don't trust the stock harmonic damper for your timing on a 292. The outer ring moves, and moves alot. Those cranks are long and subject to severe torsional rebound. The torsional rebound causes the elastomer between the inner hub and outer shell to get much hotter than it would on its V8 cousins - and that lets the outer ring move around. It makes timing a pain in the heinie. Find/make a reference point on the hub of the damper and fabricate a pointer to it. Or, get a damper from ATI or Fluidamper that has a static outer shell with the elastomer and inertia ring inside it. That moving outer ring is probably what's causing your headache in timing etc. Look at it carefully, if the rubber/elastomer looks "chippy", "drippy", or in anyway less than perfect - get a new one quickly. At a sustained 5000+ rpms, the stock elastomer will actually melt out and turn the outer ring loose. I've seen my Dad park his engine with the elastomer dripping out like a Wal-Mart bag on fire. Making those sounds like "zzzzip". A 292 Chevy is a great engine. A shout out to Twisted6, I remember him from Inliners International and he helped my Dad with info on his 292, many moons ago. He gave good advice then, and is giving good advice now. Hud
The rpm range for the cam is 1800-6000 Thats what I have for the engine - offy intake, 390 carb and Langdon headers. They'll go on the engine when I put it in a my nova. I'll actually need to go with a shorter damper when I put the engine in the nova b/c of fan clearance. I spoke with Twisted6 on the phone the other day and he told me I could use the damper off of a 250. I took at the ATI and fluidamper websites - do they sell them for the 292? I'm a little confused by this. Can someone explain to me step by step what I need to do? Do I need to pull out the cam and rotate the crank? I want the timing marks to be lined up and the lifters for the #1 intake and exhaust to be at the bottom, correct? Thanks for the help.
You will only need to pull it out just enough for it to clear the crank gear.BUT be very careful to not Let it drop as you pull it out.If this motor is on a stand You can Hold the cam from the underside as you move it.You can then crank either over to get the timing gears set where you need them. Also remember as you remove it ,it will also turn because of the teeth on both gears.are not straight cut. Bring the Crank timing mark to were it should be Then slide the cam back in so that the marks line back up.Then go ahead and reset your dist to #1
The ATI balancer works off a hub, then the balancer ***embly bolts to the hub. A 350 chevrolet balancer will fit the 292 crank snout, so the hub for a 292 is a non-custom item. The ATI folks are good with the tech, so talk to them about what balancer you would need to address your clearance issues, but you don't need a custom hub - the sbc will do. Custom hubs are what cost you the $$$$ from ATI. You can use use a junk sbc balancer to work out your clearance issues and distances for whatever belting you are going to run. Who knows, you may be able to use a stock 350 balancer for your application. You have the right parts, its now just a matter of bolting them up and getting them tuned in to each other. You'll be pushing the rpm range of your camshaft in no time at all. Hud
your timing marks look like they line up to me, you just need to turn the engine over 1 full turn so the dimple in the crank gear and the one in the cam gear intersect, then pull your distrubuter out and drop it in the correct place, pointing at the #1 terminal on the cap.
Well, I finally got everything back together, but I think I put the carb together wrong. Take a look at this video. Any ideas what I did wrong? I pulled the top part off and didn't see anything obvious. How can you tell if a harmonic balancer has 'gone bad?' Here are some pics. Here are some pics of the multiple timing marks. When I had it together last time, I believed that #2 lined up with '0.'
I bought a new harmonic balancer and a used distributor. From running it around the block a couple of times, I feel like the problems I was having earlier are taken care of, or they are at least reduced. I am having some new problems though. When I ordered the new balancer, I decided to buy a 2 grove balancer instead of the three groove balancer. We decided to go this route (after some discussion with members of this site) b/c I was going to have some radiator clearance issues with the 3 groove. This engine is going to be installed in a 63 Nova, with has considerably less engine bay space the the 70 c-10 that the engine is currently installed in. After getting the balancer installed and in trying to install the fan belt and powersteering belt, I realized that 2 groove quite different than the 3 groove balancer, which has thrown off the geometry of the belts I was able to 'shim' the fan pulley with a couple of large washers, but don't know what to do about the alternator. Shimming it with the washer is just meant to serve as a temporary solution until I can figure out how to fix it right. To me, it almost seems like I installed the balancer backwards, but is this even possible? Doesn't the back of the balancer have a 'snout' like thing on it that it is hidden by the timing cover when installed? Did I get the wrong balancer? Should I fab something to move the alternator forward? The water pump also seems to be making noise when I was running it. Since the water pump on it wasn't replaced during th rebuild, I decided to buy a new one. I ordered on online from rock auto, painted it black and got ready to install it. When I was ready to pull the old one of, I saw that the pumps are different. After doing some searching online, I see that there are 2 different pumps for 292s. Can I use the one I bought, or do I need to eat the cost on this one (I figure I can't return it b/c I painted it) and order the other one? I ordered the one that was supposed to fit a 1970 c-10. The other one available fits 62-64 C-10s I believe.
Someone asked for more pics. Here they are: As you can see the alternator is way offset, even though I have shimmed the fan pulley.
The Jalopy Journal
