jt1

How much do those things flow? Enough to feed the 383 without restriction? John

Got the stud girdle covered: Herbert makes a big beefy one for the Canfield rocker stud spacing. It's a nice piece that makes adjusting the valves easy. It seems to be very stable, in about a year I've only had to make very minor adjustments when checking the valves. I also run a MSD 6AL, generally with a 7k chip. I hit it a lot though, and I've heard drag racers talk about hitting the limiter causing bad harmonics. Been thinking about the valve float. These are the springs Comp reccomends for this cam, and they were new last year. I'm gonna have them all checked. When I discoverd this, the lash was excessive, probably around 0.100". I'm trying to imagine how all this stuff bouncing around could have affected the outcome. Probably didn't help the cam and lifters any, I've got to check them carefully too. I keep coming back to the two rockers that wore being the one's that had the most pushrod/guideplate clearance. All the others look fine, like new in fact. Edit: Don, I've heard about the self-aligning rockers, but have zero experience with them. I seem to recall that retrofitting them to a first gen wasn't feasible. Is this commonly done and I'm ignorant about it? John

Looking good, Mike. Those S&S's don't appear to hang as low as mine. Have you been able to massage them for better clearance? And what's the vacumn cannister for? John

After further review, I'm 99% the problem is the guideplates. Larry's right that block prep is important, but this one's been sonic checked, line honed, bored & honed w/torque plates, and decked and squared on a Rottler. Deck height checked out within a thou, which is pretty good IMO. On these heads, Canfields, the valves and rocker studs are both moved from stock location. This introduces some angularity to the pushrods, since the lifters haven't been moved. This also means the roller tips have some lateral sweep as well as the normal vertical sweep. The guideplates have some clearance on the rocker studs, and I centered the rollers on the valve tips at zero lift. BUT- some of the intake slots had more clearance than others, and these two rockers are on the valves with the most clearance. I think the extra clearance and the pushrod angle caused all the clearance to go to one side. This is pretty evident because the guideplates are showing dimples worn by the pushrods. But here's the kicker- even at max lift with the rocker pushed to the side as far as it will go, the side of the rocker nest to the roller still doesn't contact the valve tip! Even though it's obvious it has been touching, because it's worn badly. So this tells me something dynamic is going on. I'm theorizing once the roller started getting a flat worn on it, the lateral forces caused by the roller tip scrubbing the valve pushed the pushrod against the guide plate hard enough to cause the pushrods to flex and let the side of the rocker contact the valve tip. The wear on the roller has a pronounced taper along the axis of the roller. My solution is new guideplates with tighter pushrod clearance, and set them up playing close attention to the lateral sweep to equalize it between zero and max lift. Lash caps may be a possibility also. Mike's right about this motor getting hammered. Since it was freshened a year ago with new rings and bearings, it's got close to 4K miles on it, 95% of them on track turning 3 - 7K. Cranking psi was an even 200 when fresh, now it's 115-125. I don't know how much of this is due to the extra metal in the system and how much is normal wear. Anybody got any more thoughts? I'd like to hear them. John

The first thing to do is define the intended usage of your motor. Grocery getter, weekend driver w/ a few trips to the strip, occasional driver w/strip or open track use, or serious race engine. The KB's and cast crank will be OK for the first two, but not the second two categories. If you're in the second two groups, you want to go forged with both crank and pistons. In order to determine your compression ratio, you need to know your head cc's and deck height, both of which can vary from the factories published figures, plus bore, stroke, gasket cc, piston height and cc. Once you get all this info there's a good CR calculator on KB's site. General rule of thumb for 93 pump premium is 9.5:1 for iron heads, 10.5:1 for aluminum heads. BUT when you start pushing the limit, dynamic CR becomes important along with static CR. Your cam has a big effect on DCR. Lots of good reading on DCR at http://cochise.uia.net/pkelley2/DynamicCR.html. Do a lot of searching and reading here in the chevy V8 forum. There's tons of good info here and you will learn a lot about what you need to do, without making bad decisions based on what some internet genius or street racer rocket scientist tells you. I highly reccomend David Vizard's books "How to rebuild your SBC" and "How to hot rod your SBC", available thru B&N or Amazon. LOTS of good info there. John

I thought it was a little soft at CMP. I found the rockers and had already signed up for VIR-S, so I threw two new rockers on it, changed the oil and went on, go or blow. By the end of the day Sunday it was noticably weaker and lost a little oil pressure. I was lucky. I haven't got it tore down yet, maybe tonight. I'm curious to see how much damage the metal has done. Are you talking about the flats on the rocker shafts for the nuts to seat against being up? I'm 99% sure that wasn't the problem, the way the comp's are machined the nut sets a lot higher if the shaft's reversed and it's real easy to see. John

Ahhhhh.....comedians. Just be sure to put a shift lever on it. With just the shifter I couldn't over come the detents, ASSumed it was OK. Be glad for you to come to CMP. PCA boys are there 21-22, they put on a good show but I think it's full. Let me get the motor back in mine and we'll give it a try. John

Motor was running soft, decided to check the valves, and found these: Comp solid roller, Comp ProMag rockers, Comp 977 springs 425# over the nose. Valves are Ferrera 6000 series and are perfectly tight in the guides. I spent a lot of time on the valvetrain geometry and it's as good as I can get it. I suspect guideplate alignment problems, but would like to hear anybody else's thoughts as to the cause. Oil pressure is a little down, compression is down, and the oil filter looks like you're looking at the milky way on a clear night, lots of metal. Motor is already out of the car for complete cleaning and freshening. At least I caught it before it scattered all over the track, but what's the cause? John

Excessive reluctor/pickup clearance?

Is the engine itself grounded back to the chassis and battery?

A word of advice- Before you put it in the car, put a shift lever on it and make certain it goes fully into all gears. If it got dropped on it's end during shipment, they are very susceptible to the forks in the trans moving and getting in two gears. If this happens, you must remove the shifter and line up the rod ends under the shifter. This is impossible thru the shifter opening with the trans in the car, you must pull the trans. Apparently it's pretty common, when I called the people I bought mine from, they told me what to do and said it happens frequently. We won't discuss how I know this. John

Have you checked to see if the distributor is in phase? IE, when the pickup triggers the spark, the rotor button is close to the terminal in the cap? John

Mike, FWIW- I've run my TKO for two years now and have been very satisfied with it. I've never really understood why they get the critiscism they do. I put synchromesh and a Pro 5.0 shifter on it from the beginning, so maybe I skipped some of the problems. I'd buy another. The gates are pretty tight, but after breakin it has always shifted very smoothly. John

Unfortunately, once you start a major phase, like paint, cage, or backhalving, you're almost always better to finish with the person you started with. If you take it somewhere else it's gonna be worse than starting over. I fully understand your frustration......I had a car stay at a paint shop over three years once. It pissed me so I bought another car to drive in the meantime. Having to pay up front is NEVER a good sign IMO. It means you're completely at their mercy, and lots of times you see your car sit while other projects pass on thru the shop. I hope it works out. John

I'm thinking about you both, David. I hope everything works out for the best. John

I got a C note on Icard. John

WHOA!!!!!! John

The toe being off that much is what was wearing your tire so badly. Lay the PB Blaster to the tie rod for a couple of days to loosen it up, then take it back and let him finish, it's still got too much negative toe. The 0.8 camber is a little much for a street alignment, IIRC 0.5 is optimum, but it's not outrageous and the car will handle a little better with some more camber. The only way to easily adjust it is to slot the holes in the strut towers a little, and it's hit and miss and time consuming to do it on the alignment rack, not many shops will tie up their rack long enough to do it right. Get the toe right and overall you'll be in good shape. John

In my two trips to VIR, I've been pretty surprised by how much stuff there is to hit there if you go off. It's a nice facility and a lot of fun to drive, but the penalty for screwing up can be pretty high. CMP and Roebling both have a lot more runoff room. Regarding the Carrera GT, there was a fellow with one at a CMP track event who hit a cat while out cruising one day. The cat did $22,000 damage to the grill. John

What's a break kit? Is that like "Bembo, don't drop that bottle of Mad Dog, it will break kit, and i will rotra your head"? John

Snopes says that pic, and the bear, are real....but not the same bear that ate the hikers. Warning! Link has graphic pics not safe for work! http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/bearhunt.asp John

Has anybody got to actually talk to the guy? I've only gotten his voice mail...but I've left several interesting messages. I bet he wonders what the heck's going on? John

According to a self proclaimed Idaho Zcar expert, 55/45 IS the ideal weight distribution!! John

The Gearwrench brand has either the flex heads or a straight head; the sears brand has an offset head, maybe 10 or 15 deg, which I prefer to either of the Gearwrench types. Sears sells them all. I know what you mean. When I'm laying under my car looking at it, sometimes I have to jack it up higher so I can see it clearly. .........sigh........ john

I think it's just tolerance stackup. My setup is a 1st gen 350, GM bellhousing, tremec TKO, cola crank, Ram flywheel, 6 puck disc, and lightweight pressure plate, and the mcLeod slip on bearing. Bolting all that crap together resulted in negative clearance! Fully compressed, the tob was depressing the clutch fingers. I had some machined off the front bearing retainer, and a 0.125 spacer made for between the bellhousing and trans. Even so I only got 0.050 clearance. It's been in there over three years now, and I've had the trans or motor out once a year. Each time I've checked to see if the clearance had got less as the disc wears, but strangely enough there has been no change. I was leery of using more than 0.125 spacer because of losing the index between the trans and bellhousing, and how much could be safely machined off the retainer was anybody's guess. Your results may vary!!!!!! John