jt1

Mark, it's good to see you're making progress. Me, on the other hand........ Give the pcar guys a hard time! John

If you're dealing with a bare block, it's probably best to get a machine shop to check it. The tools to check a bare block are pretty expensive, probably 3-400 $. If the motor is assembled, you can use a bridge mic. With heads off and a clean deck, bring piston to TDC with a dial indicator, then check piston depth with the bridge mic. This doesn't really tell the deck height, just the depth of the piston below the deck, which is what you want for compression calculations. You can also use a good quality straight edge and feeler gauges. Clean the deck and piston tops, find TDC with a dial indicator, lay the straight edge across the deck and use the feeler gauges to find the distance between the straight edge and piston. This takes a little practice, so play around to get the "feel" of the feelers sliding under the straight edge. This is not as precise, but is generally within a few thou, which is usable for compression purposes. Always check directly over the wrist pin so piston rock in the bore doesn't affect your measurements, and don't be surprised to see the measurements vary some. A lot of tolerances can come into play and affect the results. John

Cobras are super nice cars, and I have a lot of respect for them, and especially people who build them themselves. On track performance leaves something to be desired; unless they are super radical, a V8 Zcar will wear them out. John

If you stuck to your original goals, 2000 -2500 dollars might be feasible. But, take my case. I bought a nice, complete, running, V8 Z from another board member for $6500. Good motor, 700r4, coilovers, decent paint and interior. All you need, right? But, while I'm at it......Freshen motor. Cam. MSD. Wheels. Tires. Aluminum radiator. Quaife diff. Tremec TKO. Lightweight clutch and aluminum flywheel. Rear discs. More tires. Roll bar. 5 point belts. Pro 5.0 shifter. Air dam. Brake ducts. Freshen motor. New heads. S&S headers. Ceramic coat headers. More tires....... Last time I added it up, it was approaching 20K, and climbing. John

1. The 1.6's make the cam a little "bigger", so you will probably have a little rougher idle, although not much. The motor will also make a little more power if the rest of your combo can support the additional cam. 2. Guideplates are usually installed along with screw in rocker studs. I'm not aware of any that can be added with pressed studs. 3. Maybe. The only way to tell for sure is to mock it up, or find someone who has used 1.6's on your particular head casting. Most stock heads require some clearancing. Be sure to check, the pushrod rubbing the head is sure disaster. 4. Hard to say. They will probably last a while, but all bets are off. Some other important things to consider, any of these will ruin your day: Coil bind, i.e. too much lift for the spring. Retainer to valve guide clearance. Stock length pushrods may not give proper rocker geometry, which will hammer your valve guides quickly. Before adding studs and guideplates, clearancing, etc, are your heads worth it? No point spending money on a set of castings that will never be good performers. Remember you can always get the rockers, and trade them for something else that would fit your needs better. John

Grumpy and Tim are right. Vizard's "How to rebuild your SBC", and the first book in the link, "How to Hotrod your SBC", are excellent. You'll understand a lot more after reading them, and there's a lot of references about torques, torque patterns, etc., that are very useful. John

That flywheel may be intended to be used with a solid hub clutch disc, i.e. one without springs. John

Sitting in the pits at CMP: I'll be glad when I can go take it back there. John

Ozoner, that's a sweet looking car. Based on my experience, getting that kind of paint job with only a year in paint hell is pretty good. Of the few body shops around here that will do project cars, it would have taken 2 or 3 years for them to do that nice of a job. Silver looks different according to the angle of the light. I used to have a silver 76, and it had the same appearance as yours. They are really gorgeous out in the sunlight. Nice. John

I'm using a 3/8-16x1" grade 8 with a lock washer to bolt the JTR setback plate to the side of the block on the drivers side. On the passenger side, a 3/8-16x2 1/4 grade 8 with lock washer to bolt the JTR setback plate and the T spacer to the side of the block. John

Darwin Rules! Now he needs to get to work on Mom. Maybe she'll hit a pole on the way to her ambulance chasing lawyer's office. Let's see, if she clipped a pole and spun into the lawyer's office with a full tank of gas, it'd be a twofer........ John

The track I usually run at, CMP, is known for being a little hard on brakes: The motul is excellent stuff, but I use the Valvoline Synpower synthetic Dot 4. Here in the humidity of NC, brake fluid picks up moisture quickly, and at 4.99 a quart at autozone, I can flush my fluid before every event without breaking the bank. The wet and dry boiling points are only slightly less than the motul. I've never had a problem with the Valvoline, and spend the saved money somewhere else. Right now I'm spending it on some cooling ducts. John

Good advice above, definitely upgrade the pads and fluid. An OT event is much harder on the brakes than an AX event. If you have time put some cooling ducts on it, even if they are ghetto engineered, ie some hvac ducting from HD. They will help the solid rotors live. Be sure and take your brake bleeding equip and extra fluid to the track with you, if you over heat the brakes you'll have to bleed them to get the pedal back. John

Don: Sorry for the bad news. Hopefully the damage isn't too extreme, and it's great you can have a positive attitude about it. I was just plain lucky. The last time I drove my car was at a 2 day track event at CMP. Probably 3 1/2 hrs WOT running, hitting the 6800 chip 4 times a lap. Excellent opportunity for a catastropic failure. I'm really glad I decided to fix the oil leak and found the damage. I usually cut my filter open when I change oil, but not always. There was enough metal in the filter to indicate a problem. This is what the mains looked like: They look a little worse than the pic shows, due to my crappy photo skills. The oil pump and cam bearings were also shot, but the rod bearings still looked great, apparently none of the metal made it that far. Oil was Mobil One 15-50. This is what I went back with: A Milodon 18307. You can see the brace, and it's spot welded to the pump cover, but you can't see the weld in the pic. I'm debating tearing it back down and adding the brace Grumpy suggests. That pickup is a work of art, some beautiful tig work there. John

Mike, it's excellent they think that much of you. What a great opportunity to catch up on house/car projects! Get that Z on the road. Take the wife for a vacation too! John

What the heck's going on? I recently pulled my oil pan to fix a small leak where the oil pan and timing cover seal together, and found this in the pan: The screen had obviously cracked and then vibrated around a good bit, since some of the edges were worn shiny and smooth. I cut open the oil filter and found some metal shavings there. Further disassembly found scarred mains and light scars on the crank. The crank polished out OK and I just finished freshening the short block. I replaced the Melling pickup shown with a Milodon one that looks exactly like dmanzo57's. It bolts to the pump cover and I thought that would solve the problem. Now I'm wondering. dmanzo, even with the screen broken off, the pump should pick up oil fine thru the tube, if it wasn't low on oil. If you lost oil pressure I bet you're motor's hurt. I was extremely lucky to find mine before the shavings did any more damage. Cut your oil filter open and see what's there. But, what's causing this? My motor's balanced and runs smoothly, other than the normal idle roughness associated with a 242/248 @ 50 solid roller. The oil pickup was 3/16 of the bottom of the pan when the motor was freshened last time, about a year ago. There is no evidence of the oil pan hitting anything and damaging the pickup. I though it was the cheap pickup until I saw this, now I'm wondering if there are other problems I need to address. John

The 327 large journal engine was a one year only item, 1968. 67's were small journal, 69's were 350's. So, a pretty scarce item. All the large journal 327's I have seen were steel crank engines, I've never heard of a cast one, but there could have been some. I used to own a 68 vette with a 327/350. Fine engine. John

Cool Deal Ross! I'm in for a set when you get them into production. John

Hmmmm..... Put me in the "I'm gonna have to see it to believe it" group. John

Check this bad boy out: http://www.meditech.ch/exoticthermoengineering/ete10.html John

Sounds to me like you might need some stiffer springs and new struts. Moving to the JTR position would only take 60-70# off the front end, noticable but not huge. Most people with V8 Z's are running a stiffer than stock spring/strut combo. John

3/8 x 16, coarse thread. You've got fine thread. John

T-5, WC T-5, Tremec TKO, or a T-56 are all popular swaps. The T-5's are more economical and good to around 300hp. The T-56 and TKO will handle a lot more power but are more expensive. Try searching using each of those terms; there's a ton of info here about what's necessary. John

Thanks Ryan. I've got a set of the S&S's lying in the shop, but haven't got to test fit them yet cause my motor's scattered around the shop too. It sounds like they might be pretty low at my ride height. I was hoping to upgrade from the block huggers. ..........sigh........... Maybe I need to start thinking about getting back on the track in 05 instead of 04. John

Ryan, what depth oil pan are you using? Could you get a measurement or good guess on how much lower the headers are than the oil pan? Thanks, John