Cobra Lads - building a JBL ford 427 shelby cobra kitcar

The Lost 427 Cobra Pics Found!

The Lost 427 Cobra Pics Found!
Recently I decided to send all my old-school paper photographs out to get digitized or scanned. I think we had something like 2000 or 3000 photos and all were hand-scanned and tossed onto CDs and DVDs. In those pictures were 20 or 30 JBL Cobra build pictures from 2000 and 2001. It seems like 100 years ago. Some of the pictures are just when I started to build, and then all the red pics were right near the finish when I had my dad helping me wet-sand the paintjob that I did myself! Our wet sanding skills were not as developed as they could of been so eventually I took the car to a professional painter who helped bring out maximum shine.

It feels like this adventure was 100 years ago! This cobra is now in Europe, hopefully racing up and down the Autobahn. If you would like to see some of these long lost pics, please click here.

The Butcher and The Engines

How many engines has the butcher melted? The correct answer is "three". Hee hee. Here is the story. My very first engine was a CHP 427w crate engine. It was years ago and at the time I think it cost right around $6k. If I had to guess, I would estimate it at the 435hp range. I had a lot to learn back then and accidentally reversed the lines to my remote oil cooler. It's amazing how long an engine will run without oil! I always had great oil pressure, but none was circulating in the engine cavities. My first engine blew on the back stretch of the big track at Willow Springs. Tears in my eyes as I limped in, one piston missing. Dean Woodruff from House Of Cobras was always very kind to me and had the engine torn apart at the track less than two hours later! The Trickflow Twisted Wedge Heads were fine...I basically needed a new block.

Cobra Lads Redesigned

It's been at least a couple of years since I posted to Cobra Lads and I wanted to give the site a new look and move it from my home server to TypePad. I'm hoping the new look is a little more professional and modern. The old site was me blogging by hand kind of before blog software existed. lol There are some pros and cons that come with the move but overall I think the new layout should work out well. Some of the old links will not function and my 50 old Butcher story pages will not have active links in them so the stories won't make as much sense, but all the pictures are in the photo albums. There are now over 50 videos posted too! Sadly I can't put them into a nice category or they disappear...seems to be a beta bug with Video Egg and TypePad.

I hope all your cobra builds are going well and I hope you enjoy some of my stories and adventures on this site. I was the first person to build a JBL stage one. I think I built it around the years 1999 to 2001 and I sold my cobra around 2002. I really enjoyed the learning and testing and engineering aspects of such a project.

The JBL Cobra Crosses The Ocean

The JBL has crossed the ocean and found a wonderful new home with Jan in Norway. Some of Jan's sites include Automuseum Norway and Vrom!

Jan writes:
We are planning to expose the butcher at vrom.no.

Hee hee. More pics and entries can be found here. I can't think of a better new home for the viper red JBL.

Butcher's JBL with the 383 TNT For Sale at HOC

The Butcher's viper red JBL is with Dean at House Of Cobras and awaits a new owner. Many believe the JBL is the best engineered cobra racing chassis. There are only a handful of JBL's in existance. None of them have 600HP. The Butcher's 383 does not have 600hp...but its got 570! >) You might make the case that this is perhaps one of the fastest road race cobras ever build.

"We gave this car the Best Engineering Award at this years Run & Gun as it the most advanced chassis that we have ever seen. From a design standpoint, it stands above anything here. And it's track performance proved that we were correct in giving this award. This car is Awesome!"
Kit Car Illustrated, 1995 Run and Gun

"Even though you asked for 'first hand' experience, I thought that I would tell you what I found in my research for the best handling Cobra. My own car, a Superformance, holds the road pretty well on 17" low profile tires (~1 G), but there is another manufacturer's car with clearly superior specifications for lateral G's: JBL. If you look at the JBL suspension, and I have, you will see that it is unique among Cobras. The published specification is about 1.4 G's for lateral acceleration about 40 % better than I've found anywhere else among Cobra manufacturers".
Randy Klein

"The four fastest Cobras that I have ever put a stopwatch to out at Willow are: -A Shelby Spec racer, -Scott "Coyled"'s Hi Tech -Gordon Levy in a small block based FFR. -Chuck Miller in his 351w crate powered JBL Cobra"
Robert Evans

Robert Evan's comment talks about Chuck Miller's JBL as being one of the consistantly fastest cobras at Willow Springs. Chuck's JBL uses a bone stock ford 351 crate, rated at 385HP. Imagine the same cobra with even more power, using the 383TNT rated on the Westech Engine Dyno at 570HP@6800! Weeeee!

The Butcher Stood Hesitantly

It was a clear and sunny day in southern california and the Butcher decided to leave the cave. Just last week he had an idea...finish installing the engine, fire it up, and try to pawn the spitfire off on his old friend "Little Buddy". His plan was going well. He was loaded for bear with an ample supply of Red Line synthetic oil. One does not want to reverse oil lines three times. He pushed the car into the driveway and stared at in the sun. Would the engine fire up, or would it explode. He decided to stand there a little longer, nervous with anticipation.

He grit his teeth in fear their would be an explosion. The engine was ready and it was now time. Here is the initial mpeg of idling with some minor interest in smoke. LOL The smoke was just arp lube burning on the sidepipes. The nervous butcher looks at the oil smoke but also enjoys the hearty pounding of american horsepower! What do all these guages do? Asks the Butcher. He then gives the beast a few revs...a small radiator leak catches his interest. The last vid is just the camera being on without me knowing. The lense cap fiddle with some revs.

Westech Dyno, TEA Trickflow Heads, 569HP

The CobraLads had an awesome time at the Westech Dyno in Mira Loma. If you read any car mags with dyno tests, the odds are that you are looking at Westech Dyno since they do the bulk of magazine article work. I posted the long version of ths story to the cobra and ford forums. Now for some additional details and notes on the adventure. Here are some pics. The one thing that always amazes me is just how accurate dyno2000 is. It takes so time to get used to using it as their is a learning curve, especially with cams and head data entry.

With dyno2000, I predicted 579. The one trick I use with the software is to always select small tube headers into open exhaust. This generally is the closest to most real life pure dyno tests. Superflo has a terrific dyno viewer program that you can download here. If you want to see an exact 569 run, here is the file. Click the No.2 button to get the adjusted correct figures. The first full pull scores a 530HP. Steve the dyno master then worked his magic, searching high and low to find more and more power. He started with timing. Usually you can find an optimal timing zone between 30-36 total advance. My engine was dead rock solid in that whole range. We could not even budge the graph. The next test we thought we would change the oil out from the corn syrup Valvoline Race 20w50 to watery 10w30. Once again, we were surprised that this did not budge the graph. If did drop oil pressure 10-15 lbs. I think we started around the 60 mark and dropped into the high 40s low 50s at idle by switching grades. Next was carb adjustments. Steve was amazing as he adjusted the Holley 750 for all it was worth. First we jetted up and down. We started with 73 square (all four jets the same at 73). Steve decided to keep the holley square and go up to 75 and then I think even 77 as we were lean on one side at 73. Once again we weren't finding much HP but we were getting the fuel ratio and curve perfect. Next Steve dove into the black magic air bleeds. Soon HP was being found.

The numbers kept climbing. In three hours we went from 530HP to 571HP. We forgot to record the 571 run. The last tests we did were fun air filter tests. Since I have very little space under my hood, I run a 2"x11" K&N with Xtreme flow top. We ran a test with the 2"x11" and the silver lid. Me, Scott and Steve were flabbergasted. We were sure huge HP would be lost. The graph only dipped 7HP from peak! Next Scott snugged on the Xtreme flow lid. Once again we were totallay shocked! The engine pulled 569HP! The air filter even cleaned out the bobble at 6200 a little and showed the engine wanted to run even higher. In the end, the day at the dyno was a huge success. If I ever build another engine, I will definitely be taking it right back to the engine dyno. You get your engine totally dialed in. You also get an incredible education.

Did we leave a little HP on the table? There are a few areas we could of scored a little more HP. Early in the tests two header bolts fell on the floor and this melted one header port. I am sure it was not sealing as well for the remainder of the tests. Next we had the Danny Bee belt drive system. Since this was my first time at the dyno, I was far too nervous to try anything but standard procedure. Next time I would pop off the water pump and retard timing. I think 5-10 HP would be found here. I think we lost some HP with the shallow race oil pan. Steve wasn't positive, but we kept getting a bobble at 6200 rpm range that would recorrect. This can usually be a windage tray issue. Joe Sherman who won the first small block Engine Masters Challenge is quoted in saying "Using a pan like this with its matching oil pump and pickup--also from Moroso...we've seen gains in horsepower over factory pans, sometimes as much as 25 hp." The one thing I noticed about his pan right away is the curve!

Most windage trays are flat and yet the crank is curved. Its a trade off in cobra since you need a low pan often for ground clearance issues. The last easy area we left HP was rpm! It was the end of the day when we did the K&N filter test. If you notice in that run, we stopped the revs at 6800 and the engine was still gaining 2HP per 100rpm. I think there was probably 4HP sitting right there! Crane calls for maximum revs of 7000 and valve float at 7500 so we had room to test. We were no were near valve float as yet. Those are my stories for now. I'll be back some day top say how you get from 570 to 600 with the pump gas small block. I learnt this from Steve at the Dyno and reading the Joe Sherman story several times.

JBL Headers and Headers By Ed

The Butcher had just read an encyclopedia on header design at the little known website Headers By Ed. He liked the info so much in fact, that he ordered the 4 pack of additional info. Ed makes some great points that the Butcher had to agree with. Headers need to be long 28-34". Headers need to be equal length. Stepped headers are not as great as people thing. Collectors should be long. Ed even had this cool welding technique where he super heats the ends and pushes the 4 tubes into a clover pattern before the collector. If you want to know about headers, the Butcher suggests mixing a double rum and coke, and then spending 2 hours at Headers By Ed.

Billet Aluminum Timing Pointers

There are timing pointers, and then here are CNC red anodized "pee your frilly white panties" billet aluminum timing pointers. The Butcher is all about billet. Oh sure he could use stock for 1/10th the price, but then the delicate balance of karma would be all out of whack. This red RR Richard Racing timing pointer was calling the Butcher's credit card. "Buy me now Butcher and you will be at one your engine". The Butcher did not want to anger the billet gods. Once installed, karma for the 383 TNT was excellent.

Gilmer Cog Belts

It was widely known that the Butcher had a Cog Belt Fetish. Some cobra owners enjoyed timing chains. A few folks enjoyed the whir of robust timing gears. The Butcher was one to always be different. Gilmer was his god, and he worshipped the gilmer cog belt. Light, strong, and no slippage. Once you went cog belt, there was no turning back. Yes waxers liked the shine of a march pulley set, but the true road warriers would settle only for the gilmer.

Dynosim and Cam Data

This is a very old post and I really need to do a video or something on entering the data. Maybe in the next few months I'll try and do that.

The earlier version of this page was overly complex and had one or two errors on intake centerline and lobe center angle and so the page was due for an update with the new version of DynoSim. DynoSim was originally Dyno2000 and was Desktop Dyno before that. The newest version of the program is the best and the Virtual Engine Masters version even better still. It gives you an engine masters score which can be used to optimize a HP or TQ range. There are six pieces of data you will need to enter any cam into DynoSim:

Intake Duration
Exhaust Duration

Lobe Seperation Angle
Intake Centerline

Intake Lift
Exhaust Lift

You'll also need to know if the cam is measured old-school seat-to-seat method, or the more modern .050 method. Most manufactured give data for both. On the comp cam card above, look at the bottom of the card to find the Duration at .050 and you will see that it is 232 and 240. The old-school measurement is at the top and is 282 and 290. Use 050 if you can to be consistant. The lobe seperation angle is 112 degrees and that is at the bottom as well. Now if a cam is installed "straight up" then it has an intake centerline of 112 as well. Most are not and the recommended intake centerline on this cam is 108 degrees and this is also in the bottom paragraph. You enter this data just like this...

On the crane card you have to make one calculation...and that is the lobe seperation angle. On this card, again go to the bottom and you will see the stats at 050. The duration in this case is 246 and 254. The lift is in the third paragraph at the top and is .579 and .598. The intake angle is in the same spot as the duration and it is 108. Crane does not give us the lobe seperation angle, instead they give us the exhaust angle of 112 and so we divide the two to get 110 as the seperation angle. This is how this data is entered: And that is how to enter cam data into DynoSim. The big catch is the intake centerline. One more thing to note is the Lifter Acceleration Rate...let DynoSim estimate this.

Why SB Ford Distributor Gears Fail

It was a dark and stormy night. Deep in his lair, the Butcher performed the last of his subtle distributor installation experiments. Suddenly the truth appeared before his eyes. He now believed he held the secret of the unexplained Ford distributor gear failures. It wasn't the high volume oil pump, it wasn't the alignment of gear teeth, and it wasn't oil starvation. The mysterious gear death was most likely caused by diabolical.

Several people have emailed me, and there seems to be some confusion. I wrote this story to try and help people who have had mysterious distributor gear failures for no apparent reason. These gear failure posts come up about once a month on the cobra message boards. I personally have not had distributor gear problems in my engine.....I blew them up too fast :) What I mean is, my distributor gear teeth were shaved because of engine oil starvation and not because of the reasons I hope to explain below.

I've checked my theories on this subject with three Phd engineers who own, design, or admire cobras, and we all agree. We do not believe gears are failing because of the gear metal choice! Yet on every message board, that is the favorite piece of advice that cobra owners give to one another. Folks fail to read that several steel cam gears have destroyed steel distributor gears. Therefore, I don't think it is the damn metal! I feel the gears are failing because of the following two reasons

1. the distributor gear is forced into the bottom of the block under load after clamping.

2. the oil pump shaft bottoms into the distributor shaft, causing the total shaft legnths to be too long, and then the system is under load after clamping.

These theories are presented below. Some cobra friends have emailed and suggested to me "why did you not use a steel gear?" Sorry for not making this clear... THOSE ARE STEEL GEARS :) One is an MSD and one is a Crane and both are steel. But again, my gears are sheared for very different reasons than what is occuring on the message boards. Below are my thoughts and ideas on this subject...see what you think and decide on your own why the occasional sb ford distributor gear fails.

Super Update 2 - Wayne Maybury on ClubCobra!

Wayne writes:
I had to bring this topic back up.

I visited my engine builder last week and we were discussing various things when I told him about Andy discovering the problem with the length of the MSD distributor which resulted in gear problems. He laughed as we walked over to the far side of his shop. He uncovered a 351W which had been raced all summer in a dirt modified car. This is a Ford Motorsport block with all the right parts.

He told me to look at the distributor. Under the distributor flange was a .030" spacer that he had made at the beginning of the season. When he dynoed the engine, he noticed that the distributor actually turned, changing the timing and stalling the engine on the dyno. He thought that he had forgotten to tighten the hold down bolt but that wasn't the case. It was tight, but since the timing hadn't been adjusted yet, it wasn't really tight. When he played with it, he discovered that the gear was binding on the bottom so he made the spacer. He was very lucky since no damage was done. He also mentioned that the measurement given by MSD wasn't correct.

"It appears that "The Butcher" was right on. Way to go Andy."...Wayne

This week I made some MSD distributor mods. Let me show you these modifications and how they revealed what is most likely causing unexplained distributor gear failure. Last week I thought it was tooth alignment...this week I tend to think it is more than that.

Last week I was dreaming about shims and shimming. I then open up my MSD catalog and see that those damn bowtie folks have all the luck once again. They can get MSD distributors with a slip collar. This means that they can easily set the depth of the damn distributor! This means you can get perfect gear teeth alignment. I WANT ONE! Check this pic from the MSD website.

I marched down to young Jorge's machine shop, where I have a cocaine habit of $500 a month, and asked if he could make such a part? He said no prob. I told him what I wanted and the next day the part was ready. Jeorge spun the unit in the lathe and removed the ledge, and then built a collar to my specs. I was very excited and pleased.

By now I have come to expect problems with any proto-type designs. It usually takes 2-3 tries to get a part to work and this was no exception. On this first try, the screw stuck out the side just a tad. This was enough to hang the unit in the air maybe 50/1000th. I also found out my old clamp would be way up in the air.

Day two came and I had the new and improved collar. A smaller screw and it was sunk further in. Now check out this boss highboy clamp. A perfect fit. I can feel it. Aye Carrumba. At this stage, I am ready to put this damn distributor so perfectly in the hole that the teeth are going to align so well that I should get an award or something! =) Well not so fast. Trouble was a brewing.

Here is the infamous MSD pink spec card once again. They want 3.996" - 4.005" from the collar to the bottom of the teeth (not the very bottom but the teeth bottom). Want to see how far I was off and how far many people are off out of the box...look at the shimming that would of needed to be done OR if you left it 'as is', the teeth would surely wear up high. That gab is where the old ledge would of been, now trying to get to 4.000".

Here is the secret Butcher tip. A lid of a spray can makes a great distributor stand. Originally I coated the gear in oil. I will have to say that this makes a big mess. If I did it again, I would keep the cam and distributor die, and only use machinist blue die. This is much easier to read. Some folks also like yellow paint. I like the die since it dries fast when I hit it with compressed air and is easy to see on some gears.

I know have a distributor perfectly adjusted to 4.000". I put it in the hole, and tighten the clamp. I then spin the unit by hand since I am still building the engine, and the cam gear does not have a belt or chain on it. I think to myself "man O man, this is a damn bear to spin". The cam gear was really tight and I could hardly spin it by hand. I was worried that I had done something wrong. I decided to loosen the distributor clamp bolt. Now things were loose as butter. I tighten it again and the gear is very hard to spin. What in the world is going on?!

And then it hit me. At 4", my gear was bottoming out in the hole. 4" was too long and the clamp was compressing the unit. This is just a few thousandths. A regular cobra with the engine already in, would never be able to turn the cam by hand and feel it binding. The only reason I stumbled onto this was that my engine is still apart. Normally a person drops in the distributor, cranks it down and drives off. Under engine load, the gear would spin, but it has to be under much added pressure once it is compressed like that at MSD spec!

I decided to try the test anyway and see the teeth pattern. Notice here it is not bad but on the high side. I would love to set this gear at 4.005" but I can't. That would really bind. I decided to keep moving the gear up to the lowest point I could find where it is not binding. I ended up at 3.990". This is pretty damn close to 3.996, but not perfect. If I wanted to be crazy and waste more time, I could run down to Jorge and have him machine some material off the gear. I rather run it as is, and watch it closely, and do that only if I need to in the future.

I save my first two steel gears that failed because of oil starvation. I still wanted to check them out. These gears both had 500 miles on the. Both were getting heavily worn. This gear has a tooth wear pattern that is higher, but the teeth are less warn. This gear had a very nice wear pattern , but had much heavier wear than the first. My theory was that the first gear was higher on the shaft and spun freely, where the second gear was probably to proper spec, had great teeth alignment, but I bet had the compressed binding issue. Are you sitting down? Holy sheep shit. This is exactly what happened. Here is the side view and the one on the right had scrubbed itself down on the block.

The problem I believe is that the MSD gears might be a touch long. Leaving the gear at 'out of the box height' is probably better than trying to set it to 3.996 - 4.005", even though it is probably high from a tooth alignment perspective. The best solution would be to have a small amount of material removed from the bottom of the gear since there is a small pad there, and then go to spec and blue die the gear to check the wear pattern. The worst thing that can happen is having the gear be down in the hole too far, then as the distributor is clamped, the gear is rammed into the block, binds, and heavier than normal teeth wear occurs. I am not positive, but I have to think that this is the unexplained reason that maybe 1/100 cobra owner's gear fails for no apparent reason.

I'm not sure how to tell if the unit is too long other than the way described above which is not practical with completed engines. Perhaps careful measuring or perhaps some clay on the bottom of the gear. Wait! blue die on the bottom of the gear and then install unit. Then spin the engine over the few times and check bottom of gear for wear. This inner circle had blue all on it before this picture, and so clearly it was bottoming out.

UPDATE: Wes, Grover and I have been debating some of these issues in email and on ffcobra.com

Grover writes
Again. The gears are
spiral they have a large thrust component as they transmit power. The
bottom edge bottoms out on the block and turns it into a thrust bearing
surface to take this load. It will obvioulsy and correctly wear the blue
off. A 45 degree spiral gear will transmit 50 % of his force into rotation
and the other 50% into thrust (up an or down the shaft) Do you see this
phenomen?

Wes then had a super idea of using green plastigauge on the bottom of the gear during installationg to check clearance. I think this is an excellent solution that is very easy to apply. Here are Wes's comments.

Wes writes:
I wonder if the dye may be somewhat scrubbed off from just turning the motor because of the down thrust load that I talked about above (unless the motor is turned backwards). Would merely installing the distributor and clamping it (not turning) with a bit of Plastigage stuck to the slightly greasy bottom of the distributor gear do the measuring job? Have you ever tried it?

Mr. Fixit also wrote into ClubCobra with an excellent additional reason why the distributor gear system can be installed improperly under load. Mr. Fixit has seen several engine where the oil pump shaft was either too long, or the distributor shaft pocket was to short. Upon clamping, the shafts force excess pressure to the oil pump and distributor, causing extra load, and the teeth once again wear at an accelerated rate.

Moroso 18" Pro Cam Degree Wheel

Now if you actually thought the Butcher added 18" Moroso wheels to his car, you will need to repeat after me "I promise not to be a waxer, I promise not to be a waxer, I promise not to be a waxer". This, my friends, is the big bad Moroso 18" PRO cam degree wheel. Goodness sakes alive. I got about 142 stories to tell tonight. I better get out the Jimmy Beam and diet coke. This week I have pics and stories revealing the secrets of

Cam Timing
Distributor Gears (a forum favorite)
Tremec Rebuild
Danny Bee Gear Install Shenanigans
Armando Oil Pans

There have been countless debates on which metal gear to use, and is an high volume pump ok. I'm going to avoid those topics since I have posted my opinions on them previously, and instead I want to present the case of one reason why I believe a lot of gears fail. Now my failed gears were caused by oil starvation. That is not what I am talking about tonight. Tonight we are talking about proper tooth alignment. Here is the key to it all. This is the scanned MSD addendum on distributor gear installation. You old time butcher readers may recall that the Butcher once tried to use a big hammer to install his first gear =) Making a good mess out of the MSD shaft. I sent the unit back to MSD for repair, expecting a large bill. Those awesome folks at MSD sent back a new shaft and the gear installed...no charge! How the heck is that for customer service! That was like 3 years and 3 gears ago.

They are so worried about people like the Butcher, installing gears that they encourage people to send them back for the switch, which they do free. The key to this document is the dimensions given at the bottom. 3.996" - 4.005" I happen to have my unit with its new gear and am checking these measurements out as we speak. I saw a great tip where Tom said to cover he gear in white lithium, spin it in the engine and look for a wear pattern. I tried this with some ARP moly and mainly made a good old mess. I believe I could see he wear pattern up high. Now this is easier to test when building an engine. I guess once the engine is installed, you could spin it with the starter, or drive around the block. One thing I was able to do was...sping the cam gear by hand without the distributor in. Then I added the distributor and spun the gear....crunch, bind, chew. It did not feel smooth! I have no doubt that this gear will be toast if I run it "as is". You are skeptical, like the Butcher, and you want proof...that is a good thing. Read on. It is time to measure but first...you must press the shaft in, because there is play. The measurement is to the bottom of the teeth, not the very bottom of the gear with the small ridge. Here is that ridge again. I am like 3.950" and maybe even less! I forget the exact measurement but I am short by a good amount. Now this measurement has nothing to do with anything, but into the distributor hole is 4.056". What does all this mean? What it means is that the gear will most likely be high and this will cause uneven wear patterns. I believe it will wear the bottom of the gear teeth.

Is the sky falling? No. There are a few solutions. Here is what I am going to do. You certainly could do nothing and drive around, check the gear every once in a while and see how it looks. Then if things are wearing, then try to fix, but I prefer to fix now and I do not like the binding feeling I am getting when manually spinning.

Run down to Jorge the machinist (sub your local machinists name in there) and get him to pull the gear. 90 degrees from the current pin hole, drill a new hole higher on the gear. I want to come in on the high side of 4.005. Why high? It is very hard to stretch a short shaft, and it is a lot easier to shim up a long shaft. Get Jorge to install the gear at the higher position. We are still not done. You could try and hit spec and that is ok, but I like to have more room to work and spec might be out a little. So I will make my distance long and then shim up to perfection. Next get some shims like maybe 1.575 ID and 1.80 OD. Take your distributor to the shop so the machinist can measure since I am making numbers up at this time since I can't see the pics too well =) And have those shims in 10/1000ths increments or less if possible. Now you can shim to get exactly the range said by MSD....or run the gear with lith etc and look for a perfect center wear pattern. I plan to do that and also feel for binding.

Now am making all this shimming stuff up? Is this some new wave cult? Ah No. Here are distributor shim kits for chevy...just for this very thing. You could also shim the small shaft..but I then would fear dropping that shim into the engine. One is called a shaft shim and the other a housing shim. I am a housing shim kind of guy. On some chevy distributors, you can get an adjustable height collar, and this also solves the riddle.

Now hear are some pics that will help make things clear. Here is deep inside your engine (even though it looks like a garage shelf). The distributor meets up with the camshaft gear, just like this.If the gear is to low, or too high like this, nasty things happen. When two tribes go to war, the tough guys win. Rock beats scissors and scissors beats paper and Steal beats Iron, Iron beats brass. The weaker metal will wear. And this is why it is usually a good idea to run a gear metal equal too, or lower than the camshaft gear. Camshaft gears are not brass for a reason. Now here is a pic looking down the distributor shaft hole and you can see the cam gear on the left and the hole in the bottom that the snout plugs into. In that hole is also the shaft that goes to your oil pump. So your distributor, besides sending off sparks, is also in charge of spinning that pump as well.

One of the best warning signs of distributor gear wear is erratic timing. Your timing will not hold and it will not stay set or be hard to read with a timing gun. Your car will have different idle speeds at different times. These can be signs that that gear is worn and getting sloppy and should be investigated. Those are the pics and stories on the teeth meshing of distributor gears.

Jorge and I finally solved the riddle of the Tremec bushing. The bushing comes too tight. We called Tremec and they called out 1.500" - 1.501". We cut the bearing to that and it was still way to tight. The secret is to get it to that dimension, AFTER it is pressed in. Here is the bushing in its new home, with proper 1.500" - 1.501" ID. How am I ever going to remember how to get this thing back together? I fortunately had the excellent Tremec manual in hand. I laid stuff out neatly on the desk. Man this thing looks cool and complex inside...the butcher would not be touching these things. Old gasket goo had to be removed. Do not forget those shims that were cleaned. Speaking of cleaning parts in brake cleaner...you know you are a "Butcher" when you graduate from the aerosol can to the 1 gallon =) You can see some discoloration on the tailshaft where they bushing spun and got this a little hot.

This is from Carroll Smith. When it calls for Anaerobic flange sealant, most folks might reach for loctite 515. It is red and works well. But the craft folks know to go with 518 purple. The difference is, purple gets firmer, and peels off nicer like rubber, rather than a red gooey mess. Carroll Smith said 518 was his very favorite. I use a sort of finger painting technique since I want to make sure I cover a lot of area, and I do not want lots squishing into the cavity. That housing is going to go on here. I lubed the 3 thingys at the top and also replaced the 6 O rings that went around those and seal the case. The bolts were torqued and I used a little 518 on them as well. They say to do this in several places in the manual and it works like a loctite. The sealant takes up air space and also dries rubbery so I think would dampen vibration. Now the tricky part. These three fingers get caps on the end that control he gearing. They are installed with fun roll pins that are hammered into holes. One down and two to go. Hey! That looks like a damn fine Tremec 3550.

Me and the Armando pan have had a love hate relationship. I loved it, then I tried to install it, then I hated it, then I set it back for repair, and now I almost love it again. Out of the box, it did not install and the holes were off. I made a template of my exact bolt pattern and sent it in with the pan and Armando redid the pan to exactly match that. I wish I had taken a picture of the pattern. First I installed studs, then tapped a piece of cardboard onto the studs with a rubber mallet. I then glued on oil pan gaskets to the cardboard, over the studs. I then removed the pattern and installed oil pan bolts! This was a perfect pattern of my block and made it easier for repairs. The pan got back. Corvette Ansel was over and we thought we would try and re-install it. I warned Ansel that there was a high chance of four letter word spewing since these things never go as planned. The pan would not go on. There was interference. We did a lot of Quincy medical examination and found 3-4 areas of interference.

There was a rail internal in the pan that was catching the stud girdle. I opted for the big convincing dead blow hammer and wailed on the ridge for an hour. This angled it downward. This cured clearance issue #1.

The girdle was hitting is a couple places. Proof of this was that the pan would go one when the bolts and girdle was removed. It was especially hitting the oil pump. It was hitting it a lot. Here is my girdle. Here is the Ford Racing girdle. Are you thinking what I am thinking? Damn straight. Out came the Milwaukee sawzall, and waaaa laaa. I now had 9 studs tied in, instead of 10, but things were so much easier to deal with.

I drilled a few holes a touch bigger and things were now working out. Me and the Armando pan are good to go. There is one last issue to take care of and I will use this to transition to the next story. That arc does not quite match that arc just yet and that could mean a leak.

Now here is main cap #5 on a block, and inside this lives the rear main seal. Go back a butcher issue or two and there are pics of a two piece main seal. So where the hell does this thing leak? Well I'll show you. It mainly would leak at the circles, and possibly the oil pan arc. Well damn Mr Butcher, that looks easy to fix...I can just take a caulking gun and add some more silicone. Yes, that is what you might think....but there is a catch. You can't get there. There is a massive flywheel bolted to the crankshaft, and so access to those areas is impossible. This is the no fun problem of a rear main leak. You can see a little gray in those pics...that is silicone...all books and gaskets say to put a little to help prevent the leak.

Now there is some hope. 90% of the time you probably can get to the rear main, or the oil pan arc. To get to the arc, just drop that pan, goo it up with silicone, and reinstall. You can also get o maincap #5. You could remove the 2 or 4 main studs or bolts, drop the cap, clean it, re goo it, and reinstall it. This is far less labor than pulling the motor. What's the catch? The catch is, if you have a regular build, this will work, if you used the notorious stud girdle, then it will not work since you will have to unbolt ALL your main caps, to get the girdle off, and then the crank is going to fall on your head and a pile of other things. I plan to really silicone up the oil pan and even re add some additional silicone to any suspect areas before I add that flywheel. Really the leak is just annoying. It is just oil escaping the engine and will not hurt anything but could fly onto the clutch and things if it is a fast enough leak. A slow leak probably could be ignored, but check with your mechanic or advisors since I am the Butcher and take my suggestions with a bag of salt =).

I am getting further with the timing belt system. I next had to install the lower gear which was an interference fit. This means that the gear is smaller than the snout of the crank shaft and you get it on with an installing tool like a damper. I read that the interference should be in the range of .002 - .008. I decided not to check this and try to install the gear. I got it on about an inch and thought "man, this is really tight". I kept turning and ratchetting the gear down more and more. I was using washers and spacers and a damper install tool. Pretty soon I would estimate that I was leaning on the torque wrench at the 180lb level. I am sure several of you are saying "this is a sign to stop". Yes, for some, but for the butcher, I was so close. Soon I was worried that I was about to collapse the engine stand. I decided the gear had won. I would simply use the damper removal tool and pull it off. Ohh ohhh. the tool was the wrong size!!! It fits a damper, not a gear. Let me tell you, that gear was so stuck on there, I was sure I was going to have to take the engine apart and remove the crank and take it to Jorge. I went to bed. The next day I awoke refreshed.

I decided to try and get Jorge the machinist to build me a Danny Bee Lower Gear Removal tool. And there it is. My theory was to put a bolt through the center, then lock two nuts together, and then spin the gear off. The plate in the center is held by three studs into the gear. This sort of worked. It took 3 hours to get that gear off. Several issues complicated the deal. The locking of two bolts was no match for the spinning bolt. It also took a lot of voodoo spacer techniques to make it all work. In the end, I was surprised to find that I was successful in removing that gear. I took the gear to Jorge who removed material to get to the .002 range. I took the gear home and tried to install. This was way tighter than a damper, I thought. I kept going and got it on. The next day I re-read the instructions. Ah ha! I had misread them! The interference was supposed to me .0002" = .0008" ...no freaking wonder I could not get that gear on. Live and Learn. Jorge also made me a groovy install tool. Here is the tool, the gear, and the damper. And some additional water pump and pulley spacers were made. Studs. Some early test fitting. Spacers keep the pump off the gear. Bottom view..tighter access than I would like.

The best way to install rod bolts is with a stretch gauge. I did not want to buy one and so I used the secondary solution. In retrospect, I wish I had measured pre and post length. I did do a test of one bolt. ARP says that you should stretch this bolt .0052 - .0056. If you can't do that, loosen and tighten it 3 times to 59. I did some tests and I think 63ft lbs seemed better on my TQ wrench to make this range. It is wild see a bolt stretch like that.

There must be 68 ways to degree a camshaft. Here are 4 tutorials and they are all a little different.

Crane
Lunati
Isky
Comp1 2

Personally I like the Crane and Lunati methods. Why degree a cam? You degree a cam since it might be out of phase. Crane gives these reasons

1. Cam or crank gears are incorrectly marked.
2. Keyways are out of position on gears.
3. Keyway in the crankshaft is misindexed.
4. Cam dowel pin or keyway is misindexed.

What this basically means is that you might think your cam is at 12 o'clock and straight, but it might be at 1 o'clock or 11 and advanced or retarded without you knowing. Why are there so many ways to degree a cam? There are so many ways since there are 2-3 ways to do each step and about 4 steps. Here is an example

1. Heads on the Engine or Heads off to start. Some will argue that with them off, you could be 1-2 degrees retarded at the end

2. Next find TDC
Finger feeling air in spark plug hole method
Rod down spark hoe method
Piston stop in spark plug hole method
Positive stop on piston heads off method
Dial gauge to highest point method
Dial gauge to two point method

Some would argue that the finger feeling air method might be least accurate where positive piston stop is more accurate.

3. Intake Centerline method or .050 method
Some argue the intake centerline method is old and does not work well with modern asymmetrical cams.

4. Dial gauge on lifter or on push rod?

right there you have something like 2 x 6 x 2 x 2 = 48 methods! It is not as hard as I am making it sounds. If you want a simple a good tutorial, check out the Lunati one. If you want one with a little more meat, try the Crane one. I am doing my own Butcher variation. Now this story will not finish since I am just getting into the timing, but I will give my first two steps. I am going to cam degree once with the heads off, and once with them on...only because I want to compare and I personally feel the numbers will be no more than 1 degree different with valve train load. Time will tell. So here is a heads off start.

First Find Top Dead Center. You bolt you monster wheel onto the crank and you add some sort of marker wire as I have hear. I then took the dial gauge and put it on piston #1 and I rotated the crank until the gauge stopped moving. Now this is not perfectly accurate, but I knew it would be within a degree. The needle does not move for a degree or two so you want it in the middle of the lull. Getting close. You then move the wheel and lock this down as 0 degrees.

Now I wanted to check this two ways. I then picked an arbitrary number. This time I cranked the wheel maybe 45 degrees clockwise and watched the gauge again. I forget exactly, but you want to hit say 50 on the gauge, on both the clockwise and counterclockwise side of the wheel. On one side I hit here at 55 and made a mark, and on the other I hit.here at 54.5 The difference of those two would be TDC...this shows my earlier method was only out by 0.25 ...woo hooo!

Now I wanted to do the test again. I had no piston stop which in books is usually a thing you bolt over the piston. The piston comes up and hits this stop. You can see how the stop is very similar to the gauge method tend to think the gauge is more accurate than the stop. I invented a stop of a magnetic base and ratchet. The piston hit that clockwise and stopped and I put a mark on the wheel...back the other way...whack...mark the wheel, split the difference...guess what....my damn first method again, very similar...all three were within 0.25 degrees. Now if the heads were on the engine, you can stop a piston through the spark hole, with a part you can get at Jegs, or you could make one out of an old spark plug and bolt.

So now your wheel is adjusted really accurately to TDC. Here is where we stop for today. If I was using the simple Lunati method, I would then place the dial gauge on the intake lifter of #1. This is simple to do with a flat tappet, yet impossible with a roller. Instead, I rigged the pushrod to the gauge. You would do the same thing with the heads on. The key is having everything very straight or in alignment Now here is where things are confusing in the Lunati. They say to rotate the engine clockwise until .050 is seen on the gauge, but in their tutorial, the pic is of a wheel that has gone counter clockwise? What's up with that. I think you would rotate almost 30 degrees. You know take a reading and this number is your BTDC or before top dead center and the Lunati cam card, which is really nice, shows that this is when the intake valve opens. If, for example, your card says 8, and this number on your Moroso Pro Wheel says 10, you my friend have a 2 degree advance, and can now adjust your cam back 2 degrees to get it to spec.

Now I did try this once and I was way off. I started with my initial timing gears setups dots off, for no good reason. I wish I had a better picture. On any cam gear set, there are two dots. Normally you line the bottom dot to 12 and the top gear dot to 6 o'clock. That is the most common way to set cam timing without doing any of this song and dance, but you can see how you could be out 2-6 degrees trusting that method.

A Tight Spot When Rotating Crank

The Butcher was always known as a few bolts shy of a short block.

It was an exciting week as I got to finally torque on some bolts. I am minutes away from "shortblock". Here are the week's stories on micrometers, plastigauge, and more.

A mysterious 'tight' spot had we worried. When rotating the crank by hand, everything was silky smooth until the dreaded bind. I decided to call in the experts. Young Samurai dropped by in his ultra cool Robnell. We talked cobra's until our lips fell off. I gave Samurai the ratchet and he slowly began to turn "there it is!" he said. I tried to convince him we were both imagining it "ah, its nothing, maybe some belly button lint in the bearing". Ryo continued to spin "there it is again!". We could definitely feel something. Was it enough to delay the build? I wasn't sure. I decided to sleep on it and then re-crank all the main caps in the morning. I figured I could try a different cranking order. Corvette Ansel showed up over breakfast. I gave him the ratchet and he began to turn "yep, there it is...it is like 2-3 catch points" said Ansel. The Butcher replied "are you sure, I think it is nothing, just some extra lube slowing things down."

Later that day, I tried the re-torquing of the main caps in every pattern known to man. I ever removed the crank, degreased the bearings, made sure they were installed correctly, re-greased with a different grease and re-torqued. This time the bind was way worse. I could now hear it and feel it with more authority. I had re-torqued everything 4 times and was tired of degreasing. Things were looking bleak. Ford Short track power stated "there should be no tight spots when rotating the crank by hand....if there is, it means you have a bent crank or a warped block". Aye Carrumba! It was time again to take some time and think. I was just mad in the garage, and I would soon reach the point where that overdose of gamma radiator turns calm and mild mannered andy, into the tool destroying 'Butcher'!

I decided to reread the 331 build up on the FordMuscle site. The answer jumped out of the page at me. Check the crankshaft end play. It should be 0.004 - 0.008. If it is too tight, sand the thrust bearing a little.

Ah ha! I had checked crank endplay early on, but not with everything tight. I ran to the garage and got out the tool. I began to check endplay. 0.001 Eeek! The next day I decided to unbolt the maincaps yet again and take some measurements. I checked the crank journal #3 and it was 1.1350" and I checked bolt sides of the main bearing, the thrust bearing #3 and that rascal was 1.1331". That ain't bigger than a spec of fly shit. No wonder the darn crank is binding! That was my hope at this point. That certainly would explain things.

Do not try this at home. These are butcher techniques and have not been approved by the association of high horsepower, small block, engine builders. I make this stuff up. I have used a little wetdry paper, three times in the build. Each time I had at least one expert tell me it was ok (but could not find reference in books).

Crankshaft Scratched From Micrometer - a little 1500
Remember I was turning way hard on the mike, and scratched the crank. Well I was able to use some wet dry 1500, and remove all surface scratches with a gentle shoe polishing technique. I first experimented on old wrecked camshafts to determine the severity of the grit. The 1500 is almost like baby butt fur. It worked well.

New Rod Was Extra Beefy - a little 220 and 400 cleaned up with 600 and 1500
When the engine spun bearing #5 on the big rod end, this over heated the rod and stretched it beyond repair. I ordered a new rod. This rod was a touch wider than all the rest and sunk my rod to rod clearance on pair 1-5 to close to 0.001 when all the others were .002. I decided I wanted to remove 4 thousandth from rod 5. I could of ran down to the machine shop, but instead opted to try at home since it was a very small amount. Remember rods are not symmetrical, and so you can only remove material from the side that touched the other rod. A nascar engine builder friend of a friend ok'd this technique. I had a flat surface (the piece of plexi I used from the head chamber measuring). I placed 1500 wet on this and began to move the rod in a circular manner. 3 hours later I had removed 0.00000001 from the surface and decided to step it up. I ended up using 600 and 400 the most and finishing up with higher grits for smoothness. You want to rub the rod on the paper to try and get as flat a removal as possible. After about an hour, I had removed the 3 to 4 thousandths that I wanted to and the rod was removal pattern was even since I continued to check it with a mic.

Thrust Bearing Was Fat - a touch of 600 and 400
Once again I turned to the fine high grit wet paper. I again rubbed the bearing on the flat paper, rather than the opposite, to get the flattest possible wear. Bearings are soft so I could see material being removed. I had the bearing installed on the main cap metal for stability. Lots of circles and measuring. I did both sides the same way. The edges were coming off faster than the middle so I did use a small flat board to get a little more off the mid sections. I went until I felt I measured what would equate to .004 -.005 crank end play. I cleaned everything off one more time. Re greased everything one more time. Re installed and torqued. I am happy to announce that the technique worked like a charm and the crank how spins easily, with no high or bind points. Wooo Hooo! =)

I finished gapping the new rings. It was kind of odd since this time Jegs sent a very old box of speed pro rings. Old enough that the instructions were completely different. Old school gapping I believe was like a 0.018 top and a 0.016 middle. New wave gapping as recommended by SpeedPro has the second ring with a larger gap that the top ring. 0.018 and a 0.022. I played with the ring installer tool but found that I quickly developed a hand method that was faster and also stretched the rings a lot less.

I had the ARP ring cylinder tool which worked very well. I would start the piston in the air, getting all the rings in the chamber. I would lube everything with a good squirting of oil. Once in the ARP chamber, the bottom of the piston sits out enough that you can line it up perfectly over the bore. Then tap tap tap with a wooden handle while reaching under the block to safely guide the rod onto the crank journal with no scratches. Then bolt it up. There are the pistons in their good old homes.

I needed my pistons installed to get their depth in the bore, which is used to calculate compression, which can be altered a little with head gasket choices. A lot of stock or crate engines have the piston slightly down the bore. Mine were 0.02 down the bore at top dead center. You can measure this with a simple dial gauge on a U shaped stand which is available at Jegs or Summit. You can also measure with the crafty bore depth gauge. I miscalculated when I bought this and got a 4" model. Well that was dumb since it is too small and so I cannot measure in the center and have to cheat off to the side a bit since at 4.04, it falls in.

With this measurement, I was able to use online compression calculator and the dyno2000 calculator to get some compression choices. Let me warn everyone, if you use 5 java compression calculators online, you will get 5 different compression ratios. Most of them are too simplistic and do not ask for gasket bore and gasket thickness, instead they just assume stock gaskets. Using the KB calc...

cylinder head volume 65.5
piston head volume 4
gasket thickness .040
gasket bore 4.10
cylinder bore 4.04
deck clearance .020
stroke 3.75

10.568:1 and my head volume is probably closer to 66 and so that is very close to 10.5. Gasket range from 030 to 050 in thickness AND then can have bore diameters from 4.06 to 4.12.

From McMaster, I ordered the one of he largest sockets in my collection and also one of the smallest. I needed a 1/4" base 1/4" 12 star and a 3/8" base 1.5". What for you might be asking? I needed the tiny one for ARP head screws for the cam bearing, and I needed the big honking one for the Canton sandwich plate. Here is the picture which shows what they will be used on.

Studs are going in every nook and cranny I can think of. This is the on deck box of ARP studs. Remember last week I joked about using Gapoxi? Well guess what? I open the new Edelbrock catalog, and there is a 2 part plasterciene epoxy! I bet it is the exact same material, just marketed under the Edelbrock name. Check at the bottom of this page....there it is! A/B Epoxy Putty.

I got the new Harbor Freight catalog and saw a deal I could not pass up. HLVP guns for $49. On the web they are $69. My old Devilbiss Finishline had seen better days. It had painted 2.5 cars and was coated in paint and the critical plastic nose threads had cracked. Into the trash. At the time the gun was a low - mid range gun for $150. Well these damn $49 guns don't look half bad. I figure if I get one good job out of them, they paid for themselves. They are heavier than the FinishLine, but they are all very solid aluminum AND the pressure gauge came with them. If they work half as good as they feel, then they were a good buy for the occasional garage painting man.

I test mounted the oil pump and was surprised at just how little clearance these things have. I checked with a feeler gauge and there was .001. I decided to dremel a little material off and get that to .002. The stud girdle one nut also was causing interference. This is really a lot of engine building...checking for interference and problems...like above...a tight thrust bearing, and here, an oil pump that was hitting the #1 maincap stud bolt. A little dremelling and it was good to go. I also had concerns that the oil pickup was touching the stud girdle. Once I tightened it all up, I found out it was free and clear and there was no interference. One thing I forgot to do was install the driveshaft. I had the whole unit gasketed and bolted up when I found out that the oil pump shaft had to go in first. When I removed the pump, I could see by the impression in the block gasket goop that the holes did not exactly line up. It was time for a touch more dremelling. This actually turned into a nightmare since the metal filings went into the pump and made a grinding sound. I took the whole unit apart afterwards and washed it in soap and water and regreased and it was back to new. If you dremel it at all, I say to take it apart and wash and then regrease and put it back together when you are done to avoid the nasty grit game.

Speaking of stud girdles once again, here are some thoughts. Many stroker companies sell stud girdle kits like mine and they are not too bad. Two of the trickest girdles I've found are the ones by FordRacing and Canton. If I was to do it again, I would be looking at those two products. The canton model is new for the 351w and is part number 21-062 and is machined so there is no need for bushing or spacer washers. Sweet.

The timing belt has been a bit of a challenge since they are made for racers who must own their own personal machine shops =) First, they make them for electric water pumps which have small legs and will clear the pulley. A regular water pump has no clearance. Next they sell a spacer it for the regular pumps. I tried it but it was for the older shaped pumps and did not fit my pump bolt pattern. Off to Jorge I went and he is machining various spacers. This too adds some challenge since now all your pulleys go out of alignment...move the waterpump outward and you have to move the crank pulley out too. AND I forgot I have to move the alternator out as well. Aye Carrumba. That will require a new spacer tube that I might already have from the first round of spacer tubes. It is the pulley alignment game. Other than that, the pulleys and backing plate are all fitting up very well. I had to do one cam bearing alteration and in this picture it looks massive! Eeek! In real life, I had to file a small .015 - .020 groove in the front half of cam bearing 1 which supplies oil to the back of the danny stuff. Check out this new Winston Cup Ford SB prototype at Jesel...way too cool and the spacing looks great for water.

s all downhill from here. Once gaskets arrive, on go the heads. Then I will delve into the black art of "timing wheels". The Butcher is not one to use a sissy boy 9" timing wheel. Even the larger 11" comp wheel is not too his liking. Instead, he purchased the MEGA 18" Moroso, which can be viewed 38 miles away. I will reveal the Moroso when next we chat.

Plastigauge To The Test

The Butcher puts micrometers and Plastigauge to the test. On a side note, the young lad found that plastigauge makes for a good piece of chewing gum in a pinch.

It was an exciting week as I got to finally torque on some bolts. I am minutes away from "shortblock". Here are the week's stories on micrometers, plastigauge, and more. Last week I started to modify my block for an oil restrictor kit. I was a little nervous about the kit and actually ordered two of them from different suppliers in order get a better idea when the kits should or should not be used. The Ford Racing kit arrived on Monday and at the very top of the instructions in BIG letters it stated "This kit is to be used only with flat tappet camshafts". I have a roller camshaft, and you will be glad to know I have now abandoned this idea. =)

I wheeled the block outside and decided it was time to give it a coat of high heat Krylon engine paint. I gave the engine a good soapy scrub followed by paper towels and air blasting dry. This engine cleaning, painting and avoiding rust, is almost a catch22. You want to plaint your block, but this requires cleaning all the oil off it. Engines rust instantly. I was almost watching rust form before my eyes! It was really amazing. I taped up the block as fast as I could and began to spray. The paint went on smooth and dried fast. I even had a little left over and decided to touch up the crusty old Black and Decker workmate. An hour later I got the engine inside and hosed it down with WD40 (see the rousing wd40 debate on cobraforum).

The oil restrictor kit was out, but I decided to use the oil drain screens as suggested in my Ford Racing engine book. I'll admit that the screens and goop are not that pretty, but they serve a purpose. =) Their job is to catch anything that falls off the top of the engine and snag it before it drops into the crank and cam area. Here are my 7 screen circles to cover the drain areas. Most engine screen kits come with an epoxy pack. My pack was dried up and useless. Here is a pic from the short track engine book where they use JB weld. I picked up a red and black tube of JB weld at PepBoys and mixed it up. I decided that the JB was too soupy to stick to the 3 side screens. With the temperature of the day, the watery mixture would never hold the slope. I couldn't think of a good solution to hold things temporarily in place. I decided to search the Butcher's big box of adhesives and gasketing goop. Deep hidden in the back, I located a product I once used to repair a manifold on my Troy Built chipper shredder (who incidentally went under last year). This epoxy product held for some time, but then did eventually succumb to the vibration and split after a year. This unusual goop was known to a few as GAPOXI. The Butcher gives epoxy his highest rating when the substance is known by the state of california to cause cancer in the lab. Can it be used on engine stuff? Let's read further. Widely used to modify race engines. Hee hee hee, I bet Jeff Gordon and the boys use this every day! OK, well I am not so sure how widely used it is, but I think the Butcher has found a new sponsor. This crud comes as too bricks of plasterscene You cut a chunk of each, and kneed them together into a snake, This was perfect since it was solid and easy to place. Not pretty, but efficient. The next day, Corvette-Ansel and I tried to pick it off to test the strength. It was stuck good. I could bounce a 3/8 bolt on the screen and it acted like a trampoline. It feels nicely adhered.

When you buy that set of AFR 185s, they tell you right on the box, combustion chamber available in 58cc or 61cc size. This number is important since you will use it to get your compression ratio. Now if you have your heads ported, altered, or valve size changed, this changes your chamber size. The chamber usually gets a little bigger with porting. I decided I wanted to find out both my combustion chamber size, and how it varied cylinder to cylinder. I went over to mcmaster and ordered up a circular piece of plexi, a thick square piece, and a plastic lad graduated cylinder. They have just about everything at that darn store. I had a couple 3cc syringes that also came into play. The first night I tried the round thin plexi. First I drizzled thick oil around the outside of the pocket to get like an airtight bond. I then filled the beaker to 60ml. I found on the web that ml = cc. I then filled the plexiglass through a hole I drilled in the center. I then used the syringes and squirted in the remaining amount needed to fill the pocket to the glass. I started with 61cc chambers and my first test was a 68.5! I had a fit. This was way more than I expected. It was off to the sauna to sit, drink an ale, and blow the stink off me. I needed to reflect. The next day I took a new approach. I swapped out the round thin glass and used the 1/2" thick square plexi. I drilled extra holes to allow air out more easily. I started with the beaker at 65cc so there was less syringe filling. Same test. This time the results were 65.5cc. Whew! This was what I was hoping for and what I expected. I did all 8 chambers and hear are my results.

chamber cc 1 65.5
chamber cc 2 66.0
chamber cc 3 65.5
chamber cc 4 66.5
chamber cc 5 66.0
chamber cc 6 65.5
chamber cc 7 67.0
chamber cc 8 66.0

If you ever want to try this at home, here are some tips that can make the experience simpler.

1. Use thick plexiglass. Thin bends.
2. You can use water like I did. Some people suggest alcohol or kerosene. I tried alcohol and it is so thin that it creeps everywhere and I find you get a higher number do to the weeping under the sides of the glass.
3. Use a drizzle of oil or something around the edge of the chamber to help seal things before you begin.
4. Start with as much liquid as possible in the graduated cylinder since I find it more accurate. Then fill 1-3ccs with syringes.
5. It helps to use a big syringe to remove and recycle the water back into the cylinder. Otherwise you lift the plexi and make a great big mess each time. It is better to suck all the water back out the same way it went in.
6. Drill extra holes in the plexi to allow air out or else it becomes a song and dance of wiggling the head around in a feeble attempt to move the air.
7. Rather then have the head perfectly flat...you might have it tilted a little to force the air into a known area.
8. I believe the measurements are probably 0.25 - 0.50 cc on the high side , do to weeping.

I finally figured out how to read these damn things. The one bad habit I picked up right off the bat was spinning the adjuster knob far too firmly. I did it so firm that I made some scratches in my crank! Jody the machinist luckily showed me how to fix these light scratches. Here I am with the micrometer in the vise. The unit needs to be checked before you use it against a known size. This insures accuracy. I have the known 4" thing-a-majig, and I move the 0 line so it is dead on. It took me a week to finally feel confident using this tool. My first measurements were way wrong. There was a learning curve and a touch and feel that comes with using them. You can use a micrometer to measure you piston diameter, your crankshaft diameter, or the width or your piston rod at the big end.

Now the dial bore gauge gave me a conniption fit. These tools arrive and they have no instructions. They assume you just know what the heck is going on. The dial bore really doesn't measure an absolute value like a mike. Instead, it measures the difference or relative size. Say for a moment you have an engine block and it is 030 over or has a 4.03" bore. You zero out the bore gauge to this number. How do you zero it out? The way I did it was to lock a micrometer in the vise, and set it to 4.03. You then put the dial bore into the mic, and set it to to read 0. It is a weird tool because it works by moving it around. You work it back and forth and watch he needle. You are trying to find the low spot that the needle travels to. You now take you zero'd dial bore, over to your block, and start working it back and forth. The needle will read 0 through 5 + or -. So let's say your cylinder is a +1. This means that it is a 4.031. You can use this tool to check your cylinder bores and rod ends for size and shape.

One last measuring tool I played with this week was the magnetic base dial indicator. This is a dial indicator on a magnet =) You can use it to check things like crank end play....how much the crank wiggles forward and back in the block. Camshaft endplay, and crank straightness.

There is a magical tool, loved by some, and hated by others. This tool is known as "plastgauge". Plastgauge comes in three colors and is thinner than spaghetti, but thicker than hair. I'd say it might be like 20lb fishing line. This is an inexpensive device that takes the place of the micrometer and dial bore gauge, and can be used to check bearing clearances when building an engine. I was very curious to the accuracy of this substance, and put it to the butcher test.

If you have not yet attempted to build an engine, there exist a few critical measurement checks that should be done. The big check is the crankshaft to main bearings. In an engine, stuff spins, and these parts ride on thin layer of oil. If this layer of oil is too thin, friction grows and grows, until the point that the spinning part grabs the helpless little bearing, and spins it, mashing it into a molten pile of lava. The engine is toast. The peculiar thing is that the exact same thing can occur, for different reasons, if that layer of oil gets too thick. Oil pressure drops, or the crush layer is too weak, and then, thermonuclear meltdown. That engine is toast. As you build an engine, it is a good idea to check these bearing clearances with measuring tools or plastigauge.

OK, here is where the crankshaft lives. This is an engine flipped upside down. Now that black thing on top is an option called a stud girdle. This helps stabilize all those bolts when you want to rev the snot out of an engine, or just beef it up. More on this later. Now do you see those 5 silver things. Those are called Main Caps and they get bearings. These caps hold in your crankshaft. We want to bolt the engine together without the crank, take some readings, and then measure the crank, and determine the air space or clearance. That air space will be filled with oil. Just for fun, the same procedure is repeated with the spaghetti known as plastgauge Here you can see the bearings now in place and I have torqued things down with my favorite hella nuts, "the flange nut". I do love locknuts, but they are horrible to use with studs since they yanks studs out. Yes you can red or blue loctite studs, but you are supposed to torque before they setup and since I am doing the procedure 53 times, that would not work. Studs, ARP lube, and a good torquing. Here is the crank sitting in the block with the main caps removed. You can then run over with your micrometer, and gently take measurements. Don't scratch that crank like the Butcher did...go softly. Light with the finger tips. =) Back to main caps for a minute. See how these caps have 2 bolts. I am not exactly sure, but many racing blocks, some Boss or HiPo, and some mexican blocks I believe have 4 bolt mains. 4 bolts are considered superior and stronger. They are also more rare and more pricey. With 4 bolt mains, there is less of a need for a stud girdle. Here is a buick with 4 bolt mains. One new Ford block that really looks outstanding is the new Dart. It is well thought out and has all the cool features, but you pay for them at $1995.

Where were we? Oh ya, here is the green stuff, ready for test number two. You squish plastigauge, and then hold the wrapping paper up to the squished piece, after you unbolt everything. It looks squished! My O My. And here is where the trouble begins. I call it .002. This gets me in a panic since I wanted closer to 30 thousandths on my mains. My first attempt with green plasti has me seeing a lot of 020.

Here is an example of the same measurement with the micrometer and dial bore. On main cap #1, the diameter with bearing was 2.9817. The crank measured 2.9790. The difference was 0.0027 (this was also when I was squeezing too hard so it is probably higher). 27 is very close to 30 but the green string says 20.

I decided to repeat the test with one model up, the red gauge. Each color is for a different thickness range. Red is 002 - 006 I believe. Goodness sakes alive. This time, 4 of the mains came in at .003 and one at .004. The red was much closer. That 004 had would of had me spooked if I had not measured as well.

To sum it up, I give Plastigauge a 6 out of 10. I would use it in a pinch. To be extra safe with it, I would most likely repeat the test 2-3 times and maybe with 2 colors. I trust the red more than the green at this point. I did try the test on my rod bearings as well, but it made a complete mess and the stuff disintegrated. I think it is best used for the the check on main bearings.

Warning: do not try this at home...danger. Now here is one little known use for plastigauge Don't blame me if you die of some rare poisoning. I decide to taste PG. It tasted like a candle. I decided to chomp on a string. Made for a great piece of wax gum.

Have you ever seen that post on the chat boards and wondered? Well here is that little orange devil known as the 2 piece rear main seal. This is a rubber with metal core sort of gasket. Some blocks have a one piece unit which is the full circle. This sits in main cap #5 and stops oil from coming out the back of the block and into the flywheel area. Notice how it sticks out of the block a bit. You offset it so the break point is not where the cap meets the block. This helps prevent leaks. You can also add a little dap of silicone, not on this pic, under the cap edge which also prevents leaks. To remove this, you would have to remove your transmission to get your flywheel off. You would then also need to remove your oil pan, stud girdle and cap 5. What a pain in the butt.

Rods are not symmetrical. One side of the rod big ends has a very gentle and long slope. This is the side that will go toward the crankshaft. The other side has a sharper edge and this goes up against the other rod.

The old retaining ring pliers with removable tip, was crud. The new pliers worked great. I am installing the C clips and thinking to myself "I will have to write about this, but I will tell people to wear goggles....I do not need goggles, I am the butcher with superior technique and skills....sproinnnngggg! Did you ever see that movie "A Christmas Story", when he almost shoots his eye out with the BB gun? That C clips was headed directly for my eye and luckily I caught it on the tip of my big nose and it stung =) I ran for the goggles. C clips are not symmetrical. I think I said once previously, Smokey likes the flat sides out and the rounded sides touching as they are doubled up in the piston.

Here is an example. I had the feeler gauges out and I was measuring the distance between rods. Its a good idea to always add and remove rods in pairs. I believe I read that it is good to tighten them with feeler gauges inserted to keep them square. You can barely see the gap in this picture. On a stock engine you might want .010. On a performance engine you might want 15-20 thousandth. Smokey will tell you that over 25 and too much oil gets slung around.

I have been in a battle with pistons rings and they are winning. I had been in the garage too long one day, perhaps high on Gapoxi and chewin plastgauge, and I decided to file a bunch of top ring with clearances for second rings, thereby rendering them useless. Here is a box of rings. The top ring in my set is shiny. The only other way I could tell them apart was that the top ring had bevel on the inside and the bottom had the bevel on the bottom side. Only the top and middle rings get gapped. The lower ring oil sandwich just goes in. For the speedpro rings that I'm using, I am attempting for a top gap of .018 - .020, and a middle gap of .022 - .024. Speedpro explains that it may sound odd for the second ring to have a large gap, but in recent testing, it has proven beneficial. You can read about it on their page about 3/4 down. It takes like 40-60 cranks to get to the range. I start with 30 cranks, then insert the ring into the bore, pressing it down evenly with an old piston. Its then checked with the feeler gauge. I then go 5-10 cranks at a time, depending how far out it is.

In the Ford Short Track Power book, they give their secret tips on ring alignment. I don't like their choice of numbers so here is my version of their story. I call the top ring 1, second ring 2, oil ring 3 and the skinny rings that sandwich the oil ring 4. On pistons 1 thru 4, here is the pattern you want. On 5 thru 8, you want the same pattern, facing forward. I took a pic, but my numbers are wrong here. This is 5 thru 8 if you flip the 2s and 4s. =) And here we have one completed piston.

A couple months ago I sent John Brooks my engine "to do" list. He got a good kick out of it and suggested I put a link to it. Here are the Butcher's old 100 steps to building an engine. Some of the list has been altered or changed at this point. Now I worry that such a list might scare a would-be first time engine builder. There are many ways to build an engine. I like to take the long road since I have a fun time learning the aspects of how things go together. This might make engine building seem more complex than it has to be. Let me give you an example of a simpler engine build. Let's say you decide to buy a Scat 408 stroker kit. Scat has a great reputation and their parts are well regarded. You have your block, and you found the machinist. You know old "Cooter" from Hazard County, best engine man for miles around. Cooter has a very good reputation and has been building engines for your friends and family for years. All you really have to do is go over to Cooter's shop and say "Here is my block, crank, rods, and pistons. Please work your magic on my block and clearance all the bearings correctly to factory spec". If you've read a few books, you might ask Cooter for a deviation or two from spec. In a few weeks Cooter will have your parts ready. You can take things home and start bolting them together. No measuring. No gauges. No micrometers. I am not advocating this method, but many an engine has been built that way. If you choose this short route, please note that everything rides on the skill and workmanship of Cooter. You will sleep better at night, and perhaps prevent a blown engine, if you take a few clearance checks. The more checks you do, the better. Plastigauge is a good start and thousands of engines have been successfully completed with it. If you are going to try for big HP or big revs, then you should probably invest in some good measuring tools and make additional clearance checks. In the back of Building Ford Short Track Power, they have 6 pages of professional engine build sheets. I found these to be very helpful and I wanted to follow them. I made spreadsheet versions of those pages. Here is page one of two for the Butcher's Build =) That page holds the meat of the measurements. Engines are all about checking clearances and measurements.Here is the page two of my build sheet. There is less critical data on this page. It makes a good reference for future repairs and replacements.

Here are the excel docs (sheet 1 and 2) if you ever want to build an engine using these charts. Here is a cool CarCraft A-Z tutorial on how to build your first engine. Letters O and P are at the heart of engine building. These are the engine clearance checks. Q thru S are some secondary checks that I also feel are key, especially when going for big HP or high revs. It costs $16 a year, but I feel its worth the price. Here is the Ford Muscle 331 stroker detailed engine build with tons of good pics and tips.

Valve Spring Shimming

The Butcher always enjoyed a good tool. The Butcher always hated a bad tool. The worst rating a tool could receive was that of the "turd sucker".

I'm half way through the engine build, crossed the mountain peak, and now gaining speed. I have been savoring the fun. I consider engine building to be highly enjoyable. It's like building a computer with clearances. Here are some updates on where I have been, where I am, and where I am headed with the pile of metal parts. Please remember that I am not a mechanic, nor do I play one on TV. Please take everything I say with a bag of salt. Some of it is good advice, and some of it is Butcher style voodoo. I will try to highlight which is which.

I got my block back from the machine shop. Jody the machinist did a super job and what was extra nice is that he constantly let me grill him with endless noob questions regarding all facets of engine construction. I even had him giving tutorials on the proper use of micrometers, calipers, and dial bore gauges. I noticed several members of his shop would sneak over and listen as he taught the Butcher some basic shop fundamentals.

Here are a few pics I have probably shown before. One interesting thing on stoker blocks is that there usually is a chunk the shape of a quarter removed on each cylinder and even on the area where the oil pan installs. This is because the longer stroke would cause the rod to whack this area if it was not relieved. Here is my engine number. Someone once kindly decoded it and I believe it is a 1974, probably from a Ford Granada. The block was ready to go...clean and full of freeze plugs even. It looks like new.

Everything was fine except there were two set screws and I did not know what they lead to. Each day I would see them and think "where on earth do those lead to?". There might be secret treasure behind them. I have to remove them and see. I was hoping they lead to oil because a few people told me to pull oil pressure from the back of the block or something, and I thought this might be what they were talking about. The first day, I had those screws stripped in less than 28 seconds. Now a normal builder might of said "what the heck, let's move on". Not the Butcher. I was going to beat those screws if it meant using TNT in the block. I called Jody and got some advice. Drill out, head up, let sit, then use a bolt puller thing-a-ma-job. I forget the official name, but I have a cheap set of them, ready to go. I figured if everything failed, I could drag the block down to Jody or Jorge and admit defeat. Well it took three days.

A young Butcher would of had the four letter words a flying. This is the older, slower Butcher. I would not be rattled by frozen set screws. I was bringing out the heavy artillery. I first tried the low chance of success "vice grips". This was a long shot and this did nothing but make the set screws do a big belly laugh and the threads crumpled instantly. I then brought out some thread breaker sauce and the stripped bolt removal tool. Soon I had my 4 foot jack handle on one arm and the wooden broom pool tied to the other. My friend physics was hard at work.

The do not call him the Butcher for nothing. This tap wrench was quickly toast. I think I broke 2-3 tools on this little sideline challenge. You will be happy to know that my tap wrench will never brake again. I quickly order king pin style replacements from Enco that were built Butcher tough. I will have to admit that I like Enco now, almost as much as Mcmaster. Enco is nothing but tools and I like that they have a wide range from el cheapo, to full moxi.

I decided to have a sauna, drink an ale, and reflect. Jody had given me the answer. The next day would be the big push. Out came the serious stuff. I doused those screws in mouse's milk, then I set the damn block on fire with the propane torch. Then I waited as I confidently chewed a frosted cherry pop tart. With the new tap wrench and a good bit of belly busting, out came the set screws. I am the king. In the holes was nothing but rust. This leads to the cooling system. Interesting =)

You may recall that I mentioned in the engine building book by Don Terrill, Terrill talks about something he likes to call riblets. He states that in minutes he can make a manifold or head flow better with this simple technique. He used 50 grit sandpaper and sands in the direction of the air flow. Hold on one second

<Voodoo Alert>
Please note that we are entering the land of engine builder voodoo. These ideas may or may not hold water. They are interesting, yet I have no concrete proof of their effective use on a performance engine.
</Voodoo Alert>

I thought about Terrill's riblets for a while, and to me, this sounded an awful lot like Extrude Hone, which is proven to be very effective even at the highest levels of racing. The only trouble with extrude hone is "cash". Heads and manifold are over $1000 easy. A bunch of sandpaper and some ale is less than $50. I decided to give the Terrill riblet technique a try. I first used my Vic Jr manifold as a guinea pig to make sure I was not going to damage anything beyond repair. It felt great. "This is really working" I thought. I got really excited when I thought I had found the cat's pajamas. I thought that a 40 grit mcmaster sanding foam brick would work magic. It just did not fit. Cutting it into smaller pieces did not help. I tried regular sandpaper and it was hard slogging. I even tried a cut apart belt sander belt and this made for uneven file marks. In the end, the best system I found was 3M sticky sandpaper. The type you use for body work on a cobra. The drawbacks to this paper are that it is $40 a roll, and the strongest grit I could find was 80. I developed many "wrap around the finger" techniques. The glue on the back is key because you get coated in aluminum dust and regular paper would be impossible to grip. This is a semi exaggeration, but you want to go from a roughness like on the right to a smoothness like on the left port in this pic. There were still some rough corners that I could not get totally smooth, but they were better than when I started. The lads were over last night and I made them put and scrape their fingers in the old rough vic jr, and then in the new "ribletted" Super Vic, and there were Oooo's and Ahhhs all around. One test I did was to take a sharp object and drag it across the port and listen. Then repeat the port in the direction of low...the noise was noticeably quieter. As Richard has said to me on many occasions, it is all about Laminar flow, and I believe this simple technique may allow for a lower bounding layer, and therefore airflow will increase. Extrude hone claims a 15%-20% over already ported heads. My guess is that the sandpaper will be worth 5%-7%.

Once I had done the manifold, I could not resist doing the heads. CNC work always has tradeoffs. You can mill a chunk of aluminum as smooth as a babies butt, but it will be in the machine 17 years, and so most milling leaves small lines in terms of time savings and efficiency on round shapes. Here is a great picture of my ported heads intake port, upside down. Those are tiny lines probably can be improved upon to reduce the bounding layer. For four hours, two days straight, I sanded. My fingers hurt. I wish I had 50 grit. I think things turned out well. Not perfect, but a lot better. Almost baby butt fur. The goal is not a mirror finish. The goal is millions of little lines, helping the air travel the proper direction on its journey. I think Westech has a flow bench. I am very interested to see if this has helped. I am going to give them a ring Monday and get prices. I have my flow data prior to this. I don't have stock super vic data, but I imagine they have it on file. If I find out more, I will pass it along.

<Science Alert>
Please note that we are entering the land of science. Old school hot-rodder beware. The truth is out there.
</Science Alert>

If I had a dollar for every distributor gear post from the last 3 years. Engineer Niles aka 'Grover', set the law straight a few months back. I wanted to echo his comments and add to them. If clearances are correct, any gear will work with any cam. Really it comes down to a question of wear rates and cash. It is $15 - $45 for a distributor gear, and it is $200 - $300 (plus labor) to swap out a cam. Grover writes "The selection of gear material from an engineering viewpoint is driven by what do you want to wear".

Its that simple. It just makes more sense to have the distributor gear equal or softer to the cam gear. I believe most factory engines have iron cams and this is why MSD ships iron gears. Brass gears are becoming popular since they are sure to wear before the cam shaft. To sum it all up...because of wear rates and the cost of a cam replacement vs a distributor gear replacement

Steel Cam......use steel, iron, or bronze distributor gear
Iron Cam.........use iron, or bronze distributor gear
Bronze Cam...where on earth did you get that cam

I ordered some fun Canton parts. These are going to be standard in future JBLs I believe. Some of you already use the excellent Canton oil sandwich plate that screws onto the block. I am not going to also run the Canton racing inline oil filters. I believe this will help me from reversing the lines =) and the filter is easily accessible. The top was really snug. I did not have the exact correct socket but this 36mm did the trick. I bought Canton adapters since I run 10AN lines. A nice benefit of this setup is that the canister can be mounted in many places, freeing up space in the engine bay. I'm also going to go with an Canton inline gas filter.

I think I am up to 3 valve spring removal tools. I decided to leave the cave last week and go to NAPA for a good spring tool. All they had was this. This could not compress the spring in my ball-point pen. This is a turd sucker. I also have one of the ones you screw onto the stud and pry down. Its not to bad, but it side loads the valve, forcing it down. This means that the heads have to be on the car, and the cylinder has to be air pressurized, for the tool to work. Finally I found the pro-level tool I had been seeking. This bad boy made quick work out of the springs, once I got the hang of it and dialed the spacing in.

As owner of a 351w sb ford, you might go hunting for a FelPro intake gasket and select the ever popular 1250 with ports of 1.20'' x 2.00''. Over time, your wrenching gets a little more sophisticated and you up the anti, going with the 1262 with ports 1.28 x 2.10''. Finally you are seen making guttural he man noises since you know you have reached the pinnacle of FelPro. Yes, I am talking about the rare and little known, 1262R with super size it 1.40"x2.25" ports! AR AR AR AR!!!! I am a little skinny on the width but will be glad not to be trimming every hole in the gasket.

Nothing to do with cobras except, I figured "if the butcher can blow up a car, he can damn well blow up an air conditioner". 3 port switch, flux capacitor (don't stick your tongue on this), motor (pricey), fan blades, that were fine until you took the gear puller to them and mangled them beyond repair, Pow R Pak (sort of like a capacitors capacitor). Went to the net, had everything ordered in an hour. Should have that souped up air conditioner back on track in a day or two.

I think I am going to go old school on you. Rods and pistons ready to go. Smokey, Jody the engine machinist, and the Butcher, all feel the same way about spirolox....they are a pain in the ass to install, and they are a pain in the ass to remove. I will have to admit that I have gotten pretty fast with them, but I kept thinking "there must be another way." I picked up my worn out "POWER SECRETS" and found the section on piston pins and retaining clips. Smokey said that Spirolox work fine, they just hack the crap out of the piston on removal and install. Instead, he preferred a DUAL Tru Arc setup. I checked online and found Tru Arc and spirolox at Flatlander and they were both 42/1000ths. I ordered up a set. Here is the common spirolox retaining ring to hold in a floating pin. And here is the old school Smokey dual Tru Arc. Right now I am leaning on the dual. Smokey never had a problem with them and ran some heavy HP.

I decided to have my engine balanced. Richard Hudgins tells me it is more a function of RPM rather than HP. As RPM rises, there is a much greater need to have things in balance. I was surprised to find that the most expensive part of my block work, was the balancing. I think it was a little over $200. Here is what the balancing shop gave me

Engine Type...external balance sb ford
Pistons.......472 grams
Pins..........120 grams
Locks.........4 grams
Rings.........56 grams
Total Rod.....478 grams
Rotary........508 grams
Reciprocating.200 grams
Total.........1868 grams

What I thought was neat is how and where they removed material. Here is a regular rod, and here is a rod with a little weight taken off...notice it is round. And a tiny bit of material was removed from the base. A regular piston, and one with some material removed.

After ribletting the heads, I had to wash them and put them back together. I had my cam spec card, a spring gauge, a caliper, and shims. Comp and Crane and other cam makers all sell shim packs. I bought a set of each size 15, 30 and 60 thousandths. Now I am not sure of the exact procedure, so check with a pro mechanic before following the Butcher's lead. Here is how I set my news springs on the heads.

1. Install valve and keeper and measure
The first this I did is get the distance with the valves closed. In this example it would be 1.920". I know from my cam spec card, that my springs are to be set to 1.812" and have 145lbs of pressure.

2. do a little subtraction
If you trust your spring supplier and don't have a spring gauge, you would just do some subtraction and get 1.920 - 1.812 = .108 ...in that case you could then use three shims, a 60, 30 and a 15 for a total of 105 and you would be damn close. I did not use this exact method. In retrospect, I think it would of worked fine since I feel my springs were pretty accurately made. I decided to go one step further and do it the proper way. The trouble as I found out was that it is very difficult with cheap tools, to get accurate measurements. I measured some springs 3 times and each time the numbers were slightly different.

With the 1.920 from above, you now grab one spring and one retainer. You take these and install them into your spring gauge and compress until you reach the magic 145lbs (for my case) and then measure. It should be around 1.812 and it was. Let's say the measurement was 1.790. You do the same math and this time get 1.920 - 1.790 = 130/thousandth. In this case I would probably take a 60 60 and a 15 shim for a total of 135. I tried to error on the conservative side, so I might be 10 - 15 tight on some of my shims which is probably 5-7 lbs and that is within 5% of the 145lb target.

Once everything was shimmed, I added back on the studs and the guide plates. I did a little thread chasing as well. More on this in a moment. Two small annoyances of trickflow heads are that the valves are offset. This makes standard guide plates not function, and you cannot add aftermarket shaft mounted rocker arms, and secondly, pistons require a non standard flycut I believe.

I decided to go the whole nine yards and install new valve stem seals. These are plastic or rubber caps that seal the valve. I am not clear on their purpose...spacing, air control, or oil control? I can say that they are devilishly hard to remove and just as hard to install. First I had some trouble trying to decide whether or not to lube the valves and then what to lube them with. In most books, this is rarely talked about. When I took my heads apart, the valves looked like they had white lith on them. I tried one test valve with ARP assembly lube....yikes. It was like glue. Way to thick. Here is a fun test you might try in your garage, just for fun. Find two flat scrap pieces of metal, maybe 4"x4". I had two giant washers that worked well. Then find 4-5 lubrication products in the corners of your garage. I grabbed assembly lube, 10w30, redline CV joint red paste, and crane can super lube cam oil break-in additive. I then coated the washer and rubbed it in a circle. You get a feel for how each lube works and sort of what it would be good for. You also get to make a good mess, but it is an educational mess. I decided the Crane superlube was like a nice thick oil and decided to lube up with it. The surgeon pre coated the valve guides. This white thing is a stem seal, but you can't just shove them on. The plastic socks are install tubes to help the seal pass over the valve ridges. A socket is going to act as my stem install tool. My first successful install...don't spare the lube. On #2, I damaged one of the socks. I decided that I had to first push the valve on withmy thumbs and then use the socket. This would hopefully stop the socket from hurting the plastic guide. It worked! Springs were places in the ready position AND these are the exact springs and retainers that were measured with the pressure gauge and calipers the day before. I used the spring tool once again. My first attempt at the retainer clips almost cost me an eye. That clip shot and hit the roof of the garage. On went the goggles. In one of the engine books, they suggested a little assembly lube on the clips to hold them in place. This was just enough surface tension to hold them still and the tip paid off great.

<Semi Voodoo Alert>
Please note that what I am about to show you may disturb and offend some people. These are block modifications. Why? Because I am Building Ford Short Track Power! =) If I was reading Obtaining A Mirror Like Finish On My Aluminum Manifold, then I would not be partaking in these dark arts. Most race engine books agree on restrictors. There are experts that say it is wrong. I just know that when I starved my engines for oil, the bearings went, and the top of the engine was not hurt. This was an almost zero oil condition.

Should I use “Oil Restrictors” in my engine?
No, Crane Cams does not recommend the use of oil restrictors. The oil is the life blood of the engine, not only lubricating but cooling the engine components as well. For example, a valve spring builds in temperature as it compresses and relaxes. This increase of temperature affects the characteristics of the spring’s material, and if excessive, will shorten the life of the spring. Oil is the only means the spring has for cooling.
</Semi Voodoo Alert>

Now it gets scary young Johnny. The word "oil restrictor" strikes fear into the hearts of men. I'm am referring to Ford Racing part numbers
M-9448-A302 (old blocks and 302)
M-6799-R351 (sportsman new blocks)

What is the goal of a restrictor kit? The goal is to give the main and rod bearings more oil by taking some from the cam and top of the engine. It requires the installation of 4 set screws with small holes in the center in main bearings 2-5, and then installing a tricky one, followed by a tricky installation of one in a major artery. I can hear the fingernail biting. Here is an Edelbrock351c making 500HP on the dyno with an explanation of such a kit. Oh the horror. Ack! Make him stop. Hee hee haaaa. I think it all started when I got hit in the head from a mysterious rubber mallet. Oh ya! I forget to say you get to tap the valves with the mallet to make sure they are set. They make a neat popping sound. OK, enough scary oil stories for today. I can hear the "don't do it" emails already =)

Next comes block full cleaning and washing to get all the metal particles out that I made. One thing that is always good to have around the block is the industrial sized WD40 since rust wants to attack fast. Next some exterior block painting. Then some oil screen lifter area kits. Here is the big block chevy kit which will work just fine. Then we will cc the head chambers to get an accurate reflection of what compression ratio I'll have by choosing the correct gasket. I forgot to say that there was a little thread chasing action. The threads are good to go.

<Voodoo Alert>
Ceramic coating on engine parts has been shown to be effective. There are dangers. Coatings can flake off and pistons can cause rings to melt. Smokey says no young engine builder should fool with this stuff. Dyno run example.
</Voodoo Alert>

That's the goal. A pump gas, 600, the hard way. No turbo, no NOS, no blower. I can here a few nei sayers now "no way Jose Butcher". To that I say, pick up your September Car Craft and turn to page 61. That is a ford sb 408, 10.5:1, doing a 626HP @ 6900....and they didn't have the secrets of the riblet :) hee hee haa.

Fiddle Frigging, Spirolox and Danny Bee

The Butcher was a man that practiced the art of garage fiddle-frigging. His first engine build was coming along nicely. Slowly the shopping list of parts and tools began to arrive. As with all things metal, there were a few curves in the road. I have a ton of little stories for you on the engine rebuild and hardware updates.

Last time I spoke to Jody the machinist, the block was basically done and being sent out for balancing. I expect to hear back from Graves late this week or early next week. One small snag that caught me off guard, was a piston. Jody called and said that I had one bad rod and one piston with a deformed skirt. The rod would have to be cut to the point that it would shrink the length, so it was better to grab a new one. The piston needed replacing. I called Tim at Coast and ordered the parts. CHP UPS'd the parts overnight. I went running down to Grave's Automotive and proudly handed Jody the piston. Jody spoke wisely "that's not the right piston".
"Yes it is!" said the Butcher.
Jody produced a micrometer to prove that his eagle like eyes has spotted that this piston did not match the diameter of the others. "You see this is 4.030 and your engine is 4.040." Said Jody.
"Huh?" said the Butcher.

It turns out that I do not even have a 383. I have