I'm with Lumpy 63. Dressed properly, no one will ever know. Plus this engine has kind of a neat story and I'm a big fan of "using up" stuff that's laying around.
When it comes to camshaft selection for big blocks I have to admit that I'm overly paranoid about flat tappets. Even in the good old days I had big blocks that suffered from flat-lobe-itis. I just don't trust them. My solution is, of course, roller tappets. How can I do it on the cheap you ask? An add came up on Facebook."Parting out freshly built 375 hp 396 ci, 4 bolt main block, forged pistons,steel crank, roller cam and lifters, Procomp heads, no intake manifold. Dropped valve, has hole in block and one head. for parts only. best offer". I went to buy the lifters and bought the whole thing for $350. Kept the Comp Cam and lifters and sold the rest to a Camaro friend for $500. He sleeved the block and rebuilt it. Beyond all odds the cam was just what I would have ordered if I had the choice. I'd rather be lucky than good! I slid the cam into my 454 with the matching slightly used timing set and checked it's position with my degree wheel. It was too far advanced, which is unusual, so I retarded it a few degrees to get it right.
A few years ago Speed-master had their annual black Friday sale and while looking through their stuff I just couldn't resist buying a pair of big block cylinder head castings. They were nearly half price. I'd heard not to buy assembled heads because the parts they use are not too good but that the castings were pretty decent. I bought the pieces to complete them from Competition Products and I think after all was said and done, they cost about $750 for a pair of heads ready to run. They were a deal! The bad part is they looked nothing like the GM L-88 heads used on Project X. Or do they? Studying the end of the heads, I observed a blank canvas, so to speak, to carve out what I needed them to look like. To try my theory I took a Sharpie and drew the casting pattern of a GM head on the broken Procomp head left over from the 396 talked about earlier, and after about 45 minutes with a carbide bit on a die grinder I had roughed in the look I needed. This is going to work! Next, the casting above the exhaust port was too square looking, but after a few more minutes with the grinder I rounded them down, removed an extra bolt boss and then, just for effect, I put the "Winters" snowflake on the top of the exhaust ports like the Chevy heads. I simply made a bondo mold of the snowflake from a GM aluminum intake manifold and with some JB Weld, I cast them onto the exhaust ports. I bought a pair of aluminum pipe plugs and cut them down and glued them to the front of the heads, and, as Ned Flanders would say, by golly they look pretty ding dang doodly good! I don't think anyone will ever suspect. You may wonder if the JB Weld will stay. Well, I've done this before, and while I don't know if it will last forever, it has lasted 24 years so far on an iron set I did. Sure I could buy some real L-88 heads but whats the fun in that? Besides, they're pretty expensive, and they don't work all that good, and I already had these. As I've said before, I don't have the money but I do have the time. Even though these are oval ports (more on that later) they flow considerably better than the GM pieces. One last tiny detail, Looking at the magazine pictures you can make out a 7 digit number stamped on the end of each head. Enlarged I could almost tell what they were, but using the process of elimination I think figured out what they probably were. Using my Harbor Freight stamps I duplicated them. It's too bad they get painted red because they really look good bare. I cleaned up the valve pockets with the grinder and called it a night.
Never would have thought of doing that, but that's a really good detail, and I bet when it's all painted, it'll look just like the original casting, more or less.
THAT'S THE ATTENTION TO DETAIL THAT ALOT OF PEOPLLE NEGLECT!!! I still for the life of me, can't understand why those beautiful head's were painted in the first place!
Don’t forget to use magnetic paint. A needle scaler or some sandblasting will give that texture if you are trying to hide it. But that looks very nice.
So I have a magazine correct rectangular port intake and need to use it on oval port heads. It will bolt right on and start and run with no problem. Many have done this before and so have I. Of course if you ask the professionals they will always say it shouldn't be done, won't work, will run like crap, etc. You can't have a port that goes from large to small, there's too much turbulence, it kills the flow. Well, maybe so, but it still works pretty darn good anyway for some reason. But I'm going to follow the experts on this one and do something about it. I found out from a professional head porter the stuff they use to fill in ports that are shaped wrong, or are to big, is some stuff called "Splash Zone" . It's an epoxy filler sorta like JB weld only thicker so it doesn't run off. It's pretty stinky like ammonia. It comes in small cans and you mix it 50/50.Takes a few hours to set up. The porting guys swear by it. It's not supposed to fall out, will take over 300 degrees of heat and is fuel proof, and works easily. You mix it up and stick it into the port and then you can wet your finger with water and smooth it out. Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it works good. This stuff is originally intended for repairing boats and can be applied under water and will harden underwater! We're livin in the future man, I'm tellin ya. So to start with, after cleaning and preparing the ports, I turn the manifold upside down and take some aluminum tape and block off the upper 1/3rd of the port. I set the oval port gasket down and put some bolts in to hold it in position. Cut and fold the foil tape around the gasket opening to provide protection for my $18 gaskets, and mix up the goo. Then spread it into place with a popsicle stick using the gasket as a "dam" to form off of, and with my wet finger, mold it to shape. A few hours later remove the gasket and tape, dress it up with the grinder, making sure to blend everything in nicely. Finally, grind out the rest of the port to oval shape. It occurred to me that maybe by necking down the cross section of the port to the head, I was restricting the overall port somehow, going from rectangular to oval. But if you look up the port about 3 inches you can see the port starts out under the carb, as a near square, and as it reaches the mating surface it flares out to rectangular. I just made it closer to the same size all the way through. I think it'll be fine. One last thing, Why oval ports? I've run both types and ovals work better for me, simple as that.
Last weekend I chopped out the ladder bar set up and moved the springs back out board of the frame rails. Then ground off a bunch of unused brackets and stuff. I set the engine in the frame and mocked up a set of headers Next thing to do is scrub the frame down and paint it. Another spoiler alert here, I'm going to deviate a little from the magazine car in a few spots. As accurate as most of it will be I can't find any Bill Thomas style headers so I'm going to substitute a nice set of Mickey Thompson "Super Scavenger"headers. If you haven't heard these running before you are missing out. They have a very unique sound. I've had these for 30 or more years hanging on the wall so now is a good time to put them to use. A nice side benefit is the spark plug access is excellent.
One more update. I just sold the "brand new 14 years old" 555 cubic inch race engine that came with the car for $10,000. I probably sold it too cheap. It cost over $17,000 14 years ago, and today's cost would certainly be much more, but since our drag strip closed, there just isn't much demand for stuff like this around here. And like my friends dad used to say "You don't have to squeeze every nickle till the Buffalo shits."(that's a really dated saying!) That brings the cost of the entire purchase down to a very reasonable $5974.77 for the car after selling off all the stuff I'm not using. I've still got a couple of truck loads of misc. parts that might be worth a few thousand more dollars, but will likely take years to liquidate. I can live with that.
The magazine car was still stock (springs outboard) in that respect and used clamp on traction bars. The way this car was wouldn't look right and It won't have a large tire so the extra room is not needed.
Sold another aluminum rear end center section on E-Bay and the 3 gauge instrument cluster for 779.84 bringing the new total to $5199.93. I really think I'm gonna make my goal of less than $5000.
The engine is finally assembled. It even has the correct deep groove Camaro pulleys mentioned in the article and a generator. I also used the OEM style hose clamps on the bypass hose. I took snoc653's advice and bought a $19 needle scaler to texture the heads. They look great. The engine color is 1964 Corvette Riverside red. It looks too orange in these pictures for some reason.
Man, I can't tell you how thrilling this is for me... you are really doing this right, my favorite version, can't wait to see it come together, thanks for doing this
The extra detailing on the heads looks very good under paint. And of the people who still do drag racing, it seems like the old style big blocks just aren't as popular anymore, so I don't fault you for letting that one go for what you did. You're into it pretty cheap at this point.
That engine Looks AWESOME!!! Can't wait to see a video clip of it running!!! Keep your eyes peeled for a large diameter deep groove generator pulley too, to keep from tossing the belt at high RPM's, it'll help to keep the generator from slinging solder too.
Ha i bet this motor wont see anything over 4500 rpm.(Unless his wife is driving).She is the driver between the two of them.
Santa came early! Look at what I've got. A Tremec TKX. Another deviation from "correct", but this is gonna make this thing great! I'm going to let you in on a secret. I want to take this car on a Drag Week and a Power Tour. Both are "Bucket List" items. Over-drive will be a necessity, as will the low 1st gear to launch this tank decently. The car will look "dead nuts on" to walk around it, but will have a few changes underneath to make it more comfortably drive-able. The real car had a Saginaw 4 speed at this point in time and it didn't last long. I'm not willing to repeat their mistake when such a good substitute is available. Certainly the most expensive single item I will buy for the car.
The shifter tower will rotate around to place the stick forward of this position. I think it will clear the seat well.
Big day on Saturday. I hooked the frame to my rotisserie and wire wheeled it , scrubbed it up good and painted it.
After painting it I drug it into the shop to patch the holes left from the previous spring pocket modification.
There are times I really wish mine was a 210 I also think alot about pulling the blown sbc out and putting a big twin carb rat in it... 150's RULE! Ditch the SBC unless its a 301-302 version.
The Jalopy Journal
