| After pulling the motor back out of the car I was extremely anxious to tear it apart to diagnose the problem. So as soon as we got it out of the car we took it over to the local machine shop that builds race motors. I told them what happened and they found the problem right away. The 3 little plugs behind the camshaft were not removed prior to the prep of the block. This forced all of the crud that wasn't cleaned out in the boiling process into the crankshaft and onto the bearings. ALWAYS check your machine shops work! It would have saved me alot of money if I would have! So now I had the block prepped again but correctly this time. The difference in this motor rebuild was probably well worth it. I used the same pistons and bought a new set of Manley aluminum rods. I bought a new 4130 steel crankshaft and a complete bearing kit. Next I had the machine shop deck the block another 0.004 just be sure everything was nice and straight. They also did a line bore to check to be sure the crank was straight. As long as the machine shop had the motor, I figured I might as well have them blueprint and balance it. I purchashed an Edelbrock Torker2 intake next. I also purchased an Edelbrock 750cfm carb. I chucked the old stall converter and put in a Summit Racing Equipment 2800-3200 stall. I also put a crank scraper and a windange tray in it. The other few little things I did was put a cam walk bearing and a lifter valley oil baffle in. We used the same camshaft because it was fine and had just been broke in. The lifters are Crane variable duration. I used Summit chrome molly push rods. The heads were re-magnafluxed and re-surfaced to be positive everything was right. I also installed a Summit SFI approved harmonic balancer. When we fired it up, you could tell by the sound that this motor had some real horsepower. We dropped it back in the car and I took it on a 500 mile journey the next day. No problems with the motor. After the break in trip I put my foot in it and found the redline to be 7,800rpm! WOW! I was impressed. But as it always goes for me, the turbo 400 transmission decided to blow the tailshaft housing. I quickly replaced it with a very solid built turbo 350. Overall I am extremley happy with the motor. I think a 4 speed Muncie is soon to come though! Well until the next update this is where the story ends. Oh yeah, if you are wondering what kind of time it pulls in the quarter, at Topeka's Heartland Park it run a 11.94 @ 137 miles per hour. Not bad for my daily driver! |
