lbhsbZ

Just remember to lube your tube (that sounded bad) and the dies before you bend it, makes bending it a little easier and a much nicer finish on the tube when you pull it out of the die.

Great information. Thanks. JMort..I read through most of your thread, and I really like your design. I might make some changes. I'll try to work on it this week and get some pictures up. Thanks for the replies. BJ, great work. I was kicking around that design for the fronts, but then I saw the other member (can't remember his name) who made the on-car adjustable ones painted red. I have to figure out what to do with the camber plates before I determine which front LCA design to use. I should be getting the block back from the machine shop this week....I hope. I'd like to build the engine and stick that in with the trans to get the proper weight on both axles before I start doing anything with the suspension, and then do the suspension all at once. I'll post an update in the CV8 forum when I've got something.

I've been looking and looking and can't find any threads on them. I'd like to simply modify my existing LCAs to be adjustable. I imagine someone has done it. I'd like to run poly for the inner bushing and heims on the outside. If someone could post some links or something....that would be great.

Tools to do the job properly cost money. If you don't spend the money on the proper tools to do the job right, you will end up spending almost as much money doing the job wrong, then more time and money redoing it right. There are some spots where you can get creative and acheive similar results with less monetary expense, but experience has taught me that the 49 hours I spent figuring out a different way to skin the cat does not make up for the $$$ that I would have spent on the tools to do the job in 5 hours. Good luck finding a decent bender with Dies for $300. I spent $700 on my pro-tools 105, and if I want it to bend anything other than 1.5" OD tubing, additional dies are $200 each. I'll probably only use it once or twice, but I bought it anyway...becuase in my eyes, spending $700 is better than dealing with a poorly fiting cage for as long as I own this car, and possibly the next one. The best idea would be to find a club or start one of people in your area that like to play with cars and are amature fabricators. As a club, get everyone to pool some money and buy the expensive tools that will see limited use. It makes much more sense to have 10 people paying $70 each for a bender, that they can all use when they need it, than it does for one individual to buy a $700 bender, use it once, and stick in the garage for the 20 years.

Its not rusty, its "seasoned" It'll make a good core, you'll have to have the machine work done on it, but everything should clean up nice.

I sent one from a '73

I guess I'm mistaken then about the heads and the hyper pistons. I'd be curious to see some REAL dyno charts on the engine.

Get a manual

I'm always scared $hitless whenever I'm the passenger in my own race cars. I did it once, then said screw it....I'll stay on the porch, and send the guest driver out on his own.

If you are intent on running Nitrous, I would get some flat top forged pistons...about 10:1 compression. If the block was honed for cast (or hyper) pistons, you'll need to open the bores up a little more for forged pistons. Make sure the rods and crank are up to snuff, and do your homework before buying/building anything. Read some books on performance engine building, talk to the guys at ZEX, and talk to the fast guys at the track to get the names of good machine shops and talk to them. Making 600hp is easy....making it more than once can be difficult if the right combination of parts is not used.

Without seeing cam specs, and knowing valve sizes/valve springs rates, etc....it looks like the engine is put together with a bunch of mismatched parts. Before I go anywhere near that C/R, I would have a good set of Brodix or AFR heads on it with 10:1 compression. And unless this motor has a blower on top of it, I don't see how it would push a 3200 lb car much past the 13s, let alone 10s. Vortec heads are good for about 350 HP (on a good day) out of the box. You really need to tear it all down and see exactly what is inside...CC the chambers and ports on the heads, measure the cam (or try to figure out what it is based on the any numbers that might be on it), you need to see what you're dealing with. With 13:1 C/R and cast pistons, I wouldn't use nitrous at all.

With stock vortech heads, I think 550hp is out of the question....and without forged pistons, I would shy away from nitrous. 13:1 will not run on pump gas....start shopping around for some 110 or 113 octane fuel. Not sure what a high idle cam is...try to get some specs.

As for the oil leak problem, here's a couple of things to check. Check the breather grommets to make sure that they actually had holes in them. There are 2 styled that I've seen...some are just a simple grommet with a big hole all the way through, and some have a closed end so you can cut your own hole. I usually use these and cut 3 or 4 slits through it so it acts as a baffle, but will let any positive pressure out. I've also had a set of MR-Gasket style breathers that didn't have the bottom punched out like they were supposed to. Clean the breathers off and try to blow through them. There should be no restriction. There should be no oil pressure against any seal....just against the bearings. Your timing cover and seal are fine, so long as they fit together and are in decent shape. PCV valves are not necessary if the breathers are functioning correctly. I've found that I usually need to make some type of baffle so the breathers allow oil to come out of the engine....there is a lot of oil slingin' around under the valve covers. PCV valves will just suck the oil into the motor, a properly baffled breather will allow the pressure to come out, but keep the oil in.....that is the goal. As for the cam issue. The rule that I've always followed with Hydraulic lifters is this: Upon engine assembly, spin the pushrod between your fingers, wiggling it up and down a bit as you tighten the rocker nut. you wiggle it to make sure it is still centered in the rocker and lifter. When you run out of play, tighten the nut slowly until the pushrod stops spinning freely. This is Zero Lash. The cam manufacturer will generally require somewhere between 1/4 - 1 full turn past Zero Lash. After it is set, it should require absolutely no adjustment for life of the cam. Put the valve covers on. Before starting the engine, fill the carb with fuel, crank on the idle screw so it will idle around 2K, prime the oil pump, double check the timing, and fire it up. Let it run for 15 minutes or so at 2000RPM. Either it was adjusted incorrectly in the first place, or incorrectly the second time, which led to the failure of the #8 lifter and cam lobe.

Welcome to HybridZ. There is TONS of information here, and a Search button at the top of the page. For the Suspension, there are a lot of options...see the Suspension FAQ For the Brakes, see the brake FAQ For the rear diff, see the diff FAQ The first thing you should do is read through all of the FAQs, because every question that you've asked is answered there. If you can't find the answer in the FAQ, then try the search....almost every question about our cars has been answered, and the information is out there. Congrats on your new project.

The trans you are looking at is only rated for abotu 160lb/ft of torque, and had a different input shaft than the V8 models. You'd have to either run the smaller V6 clutch or change the input shaft. I've got a WC-T5 out of a camaro V8 for sale if anyone is interested...shoot me a PM.

Don't know if this applies, but I'll throw it out there anyway. I put one of those fancy chrome pans on a TH350 I had in a hot rod a while back, and all of a sudden a bunch of shifting problems came up. The TV lever in the trans was hitting part of the pan and was only getting about 1/2 of its movement.

Yeah, but then you still have to find someone to finish it who won't screw it up

Go to home depot and pick up the Lincoln Weld Pak 3200HD for $459+tax. Thats probably the best deal you'll find on a 110V unit. Its the same as the SP135T, just with different grafix for Home Depot. If you want a 220V unit, get the WeldPak 175, I paid $650 out the door for mine. Check on craigslist too...there are deals on welders there all the time, of course not when I needed one, but the day before and the day after, there were plenty of them.

I agree with some of what you said, but not all of it. If ask a machinist to use a torque plate and torque the mains for his boring/honing procedure, thats the way it should be done. I'm the customer and thats what I'm paying him for...to do what I want done but don't have to the tooling for. When I asked him about it, and recieved the response: "You don't need to do that...I don't even have a torque plate" that made me suspicious, but I figured he knows more than me about it, so I'll let it go. The first block was bored .006" to large, and the second block was bored correctly, but the crank wouldn't turn when the rear maincap was torqued down. I pulled the crank and the bearings, torqued the caps back down and there was a step between the bearing surfaces on the cap and the block on the rear main. A straight edge and feeler guage told me that the thrust surface on the cap was .008" off of the thrust surface on the block. The bearing surface was off too, but I didn't bother measuring that. The block had already been machined to 0 deck clearance (supposedly) and bored. The shop owner ended up sending the block out for align boring, without consulting me first. Seeing as how the boring and decking procedures both reference off of the main bores, I feel that the block is now trash, unless it is rebored and decked after the align honing procedure, becuase if the crank doesn't turn, the other two machining processes were referenced off of a dimension that was not correct. I am not going to built a $10,000 engine with that block. I understand that you cannot judge a shop by its cleanliness or the newness (?) of its machines. What you CAN judge a shop on is the atitudes of its employees and the attention to detail that they display in areas where others wouldn't even think about it. The fact that they show off there work and have a block up on a machine similar to a CMM confirming that they hit the mark with all their procedures. Thats going above and beyond to confirm that the job was done right...with no guessing or speculation. As far as torque plate honing goes, after working for GM, I beleive that it is absolutely necessary to do this in a race engine, maybe not a street engine, but it can't hurt. GM issued a bulletin regarding the intake manifold bolts on their 3.8L V6 engines, stating that the intake bolt torque specs were very important, becuase overtorque could distort the main journals leading to bearing failure. I've seen more than a few bottom end failures on these engines shortly after intake gasket replacement. This illustrates the fact blocks are not as structurally sound as they seem, and anything to preload them and bring them as close to operating conditions as possible during machining is a good idea in my book. For a machinist to dismiss these ideas without a second thought, or without doing the research to discount them and prove that to me, makes for a lacking machinst (this is not pointed at Defrag, or any other machinists that have posted here, but the ones that I have had personal experience with only). I gave the reasons why I thought it was necessary, but my ex-machinst hasn't yet given one reason as to why its better not to do the job my way....he just says, "don't worry about it, it'll be fine" I didn't start this thread to discuss machining practices though, I started this thread to recommend shops in different regions who are well known for quality work and service. I spent a couple hours doing research before I found these guys, and I talked to numerous friends and contacts to arrive at this shop. Until then, I was limited to the local guys. I started this thread to save some people the legwork. And SilentNight, I may have used the term blueprinted in the wrong context. I wanted to make sure that the block was perfectly square. Boring and decking procedures are referenced off of the main journals. It only makes sence to reference off the cam journals to line hone the mains, and then reference of the mains (which are now known true) to do the boring and decking procedures. I usually don't spend this much money building engines, this one I'm willing to spend the money on, and I want it perfect. I see no point in installing a $800 crank, $800 pistons, and $2500 + heads on a questionable block.

Find a new machinist. He should be answering questions like that, not asking them.

Thats the same manifold I just bought. I'm assuming that there is no way in hell the hood will shut, especially not with an air cleaner on it. I imagine you're using some kind of a scoop....do you have any pics of your hood?

I don't think 202 heads came stock on anything but the old fuelie corvettes. Even most of the camelhumps came with 194 valves. If you'd like, I've got a relatively fresh set of 194 heads from a mid 70s 350. They have less than 20K on them since the valve job. I could give them to you for $50. I have a buddy coming up from San Diego this week, and I could send them back down with him if you'd like.

A torque arm would simply be a different way to skin the cat. If you use a more solid (AKA Ron Tyler Mount) diff mount setup, you'd be accomplishing the same thing as using a stock diff mount setup and torque arm. I don't think there is a whole lot of extra room under there, especially with dual exhaust to run a torque arm large enough to be effective.

I'd rather hang on to it to run fluxcore and take to the track with me because it will run off my generator, but the offer still stands, I won't be using it for the next few months, so if you'd like to use it, lemme know. On second though, I bet fluxcore would do a damn good job at welding dirty seams, not the prettiest, but easier than burning rods (and holes)with a stick welder.

Icesky, I'm in LA. depending on where you are, and how far you'd like to drive, I've got a Lincoln 110 mig laying around (just upgraded to a 220 mig) that I'd let you borrow to do the job. It'll cost you a deposit and some beer though. Give me a call. 310-947-7014 -Pat