Technical ***December 2023 Banger Meet Thread - Santa I can explain***

Jay Steel! There's a name out of the past.

 

Finally!!!!! Months of wrestling with 2 dead cylinders led me to trying to blame it on the carburetors, ignition, and even considered aliens at one point. I swapped the dizzy and converted the carbs to sidedraft to simplify problems, no change. I pulled the head and found the crap ass valve job. All fixed up and back on… the dead cylinders were slightly better, but noticeably still dead! Compression is good! Leak down is good! Ignition is good! But 2&3 header pipes are cold! WTF?!?!

My buddy stops by last nite and tells me to put the carbs back on the way they wuz… CURED!!! Who’d a thunk…?! The carbs bolted directly to the head was causing a misfire in the trailing cylinders in the firing pair (2&3). Finally idling smooth and sounding good!

 

We need a video!

 

Not sure how to do… try this;
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0afx32Rr2VwSM_n1dLU0MEo5Q

 

Looks to me like your gas pedal needs to be hooked up!

 

So much has been messed with on this thing… it’s almost like starting over! Now that I know it runs I can start buttoning everything up. Hoping to drive it when the weather breaks over the weekend

 

I got my A registered this month, it still needs some love before I venture out to far but it's a step
Eventually it may end up with full fenders, I would just need to get the stance right.

Another friend locally got his A tub with a banger on the road & registered today too, this is his first vintage hot rod.
Nice to have a few hot rodded bangers around town

 

I believe the 6.8:1 is the crow's foot combustion chamber. I run that head and use NGK BP7HS or NGK BP6HS. The 6HS is a little hotter plug. Specs on these are 14 mm and 1/2-inch reach, everybody offers a plug with these dimensions. Try a few and see what you like.

 

Thanks for the help

 

Santa came early up there Outback. Great job mate.

 

Sure has, will be a while before I can rattle down to see you

 

Would you say using a copper gasket and trimming would be my only option here?
Doesn’t look like my graphite one is going to work.

 

Check the gasket against the block
It looks to me the piston relief is not in correct location
Could be picture but it never hurts to verify the relief is correctly located
If not it is possible the piston could hit in corner
J

 

Not sure if anybody makes a large bore gasket any more. Sealing a solid copper gasket can be problematic sometimes.
You might check with Olsons Gaskets and see if they have a large bore gasket.
https://www.olsonsgaskets.com/

 

Looks very similar to the Jim Brierley head I just received. He recommends using a Best copper #509 which is probably what Olsons are going to supply.
Warren

 

Does a Winfield know where it is sitting? All the cars and photos seam to have the float bowl in the back or front, does having the bowls on the side matter at all?

 

I have one of Jim’s heads as well and the gasket fits much better on that head.
Fits the block perfectly.
Thinking the piston relief is slightly off.

I happen to have a 509 copper gasket for the Brierly head, so I’ll take a look at how that fits on the Winfield.

 

Does anyone have a set of STD bore JE pistons part # A-6108-M-STD Dennis Piranios used to sell?

 

Definitely interested to hear your thoughts once you have that installed. There's one or two photos on the other website, I like the looks of the combustion chambers.

 

This was heavily considered prior to making the intake manifold. I was able to dig up many pictures of original race cars with sideways carbs, and also the Winfield catalog suggests mounting a few applications backwards. This is a Model T… how many G’s could I possibly pull…? Would it actually make a difference?

I have about 300 miles on the car with this setup. The car performed well for the first 150-200 miles, this is including the Lincoln Nebraska hill climb where it didn’t skip a beat! Then poor valve sealing began causing drivability issues. Along with refusing to idle and complete loss of low end torque I was having a left turn fuel starving issue, but this was getting progressively worse as time went on. So may have been somewhat related to the loss of vacuum and carb popping during off idle transition. I have not had a chance to finish her up and test run, but am curious if the left turn issue will return…?

 

I had the same issue with my repro Winfield head. The combustion chambers are not very accurately located. My solution was to have the head cut flat to remove the counterbores to eliminate misalignment between the gasket and the head. The gasket still overlapped the edge of the combustion chamber in a couple of spots. I install the copper gasket (use a copper sandwich gasket not the composite style shown) with the crimp face down against the block deck. That procedure gives you a solid copper gasket surface where it is exposed to the combustion chamber. You also need to check how far the pistons extend above the block deck, a compressed copper sandwich gasket is about 0.060 thick so your squish or quench area above the piston is dependent on how far above the deck the piston is if you remove the counterbore. Pistons 0.030 above the deck will work, but lower is better. You will find the 6.8 head to be somewhat prone to detonation with the tight quench area that results from trying to get the gasket to fit better.

 

Not really what I wanted to hear, but looks like I’ll need to consider my options. Thanks for the help.

 

To relieve some of your concern I will say that the detonation I have experienced isn't frequent or normal, you have to be careful not to over throttle at lower rpm's. I run hill climbs and have never had detonation on a run because you keep the revs up, but I have experienced it during street driving if you gas it too hard at too low an rpm. Otherwise it is a great head, I run dual Holley 94's and a Brierly 1R grind cam and it makes for a very driveable combination for cruising and for more brisk activities......

 

Not a YouTube aficionado, but here it goes;

Merry Christmas
J

 

A little back ground. My RPU with me in it comes in at about 2000 lbs. Stock rear end, T5 and pretty good motor, The motor was built by Bert's Model A in Colorado. It has their 330 touring cam, insert bearings and counter balanced crank. I have just acquired a Jim Brierley 7:1 head and a Charlie Yapp dual Equalizer intake. I plan to run a progressive linkage. I like driving it reasonably hard on the street and enjoy the occasional dirt drag. I am running 600-16 radials on 35 wheels. Now to the point. Up until now I have been running a 97 on an Ansen downdraft but with the dual progressive setup, should I stay with dual 97s or would I be better off with dual 81s. So before I spend too much money on another 97 or a pair of 81s, I was hoping to draw on your experience.
Warren

 

wuga, going to Bert's tomorrow to pick up a an engine similar to yours. Over the years, I've run Mooneyes EFI, a pair of old 81's and 97's and a pair of the "new" 97's. Finally settled on the Weber 32/36 carb for both my A's. In fact, bought them from Bert's. Easy to tune and they have progressive response built in. There are adapters that allow you to use a 97 style aircleaner on the Weber

 

I have webbers here which I ran on my 261 6 cylinder and when I was having problems with the banger, I installed one on the Ansen. It performed very well but I did not like the look on a traditional engine. I finally got the 97 working well and want to continue using the three bolt carb. I just don't know if on my new setup, two 97s will be too much.
Thanks
Warren

 

Is anyone running an oil, bath, air cleaner on their hopped up four banger? I have a single Stromberg 97 on mine and was thinking of trying one out but before I do, so I wanted to check and see if this may be a waste of time and would be better off to stick with my smaller Edmonds air cleaner.

 

Has anyone had trouble with the billet Pertronix distributors…? I recently put one of their billet VW dizzies in the speedster and am having trouble with the centrifugal flyweights. They are getting tangled up while running and causing the advance mechanism to lock up. I reached out to their tech support but thought I would check here too

 

Kevin- it looks like the top weight has moved up over the top of shaft plate rather than sliding along the edge. The top weight looks "cattywampus" on the pivot pin??? The bottom one looks ok. Also if those contact edges are rough on the wrights and the center plate where they contact one another, they don;t slide on each other well.
Polish the contact areas so the cam action can slide.