440 6-Pack Stroker - Build Underway

[Musicman]

Sorry... been a little busy around here lately so I haven't had time to update...

I received the new rocker set from Huges Engines on Monday... Real nice stuff, super strong 
Against my better judgement, I decided to stick with the 1.6 ratio even though I knew it would likely require that some clearance work be done in the push rod passages of the Stealth heads (their not very big to start with).    But... I already had the build modeled around the 1.6, so I said screw it... there's no point in changes horses now.

I have been to busy to stop in at Larry's this week to see what's what, but I assume that they have matters well in hand. I'm going to try and stop by latter today on my way to work, or maybe tomorrow if I have the chance. Either way... I'm certain that by the time I get back from my sabbatical in the White Mountains of NH next week (4th - 8th), the engine will be ready to run

[firefighter3931]

Mike, sorry to hear about the rocker arm screwup....time to toss them back on e-bay 

It's getting close ! 



Ron

[Purple440]

Nice looking build!

[Musicman]

Well, I was really hoping to have the engine running before I left for Virginia, but it just ain't gonna happen. The engine won't be ready to run until sometime next week, and I have to leave here tomorrow morning at 0-dark:30... With any luck, I'll be able to take a day off and fly myself back here in a couple of weeks to get it done.

[oldschool]

musicman,are you a pilot with your own plane? where ya going in va? i live in va.beach.btw,motor looks really nice....

[Musicman]

musicman,are you a pilot with your own plane? where ya going in va? i live in va.beach.btw,motor looks really nice....

I'm going to be staying in your area for the next 6 months or so, working out of the Naval Shipyard... I'll probably end up finding a place in the Chesapeake area... of course, the bottom line is I'll be staying where ever the price is right.... Best Bang for the Buck. I just got here a few hours ago, so the search starts tomorrow.

[oldschool]

musicman,are you a pilot with your own plane? where ya going in va? i live in va.beach.btw,motor looks really nice....

I'm going to be staying in your area for the next 6 months or so, working out of the Naval Shipyard... I'll probably end up finding a place in the Chesapeake area... of course, the bottom line is I'll be staying where ever the price is right.... Best Bang for the Buck. I just got here a few hours ago, so the search starts tomorrow.

welcome to va. chesapeake would be the least expensive place to stay,and still be nice.give me a shout sometime.you could check out the cars,i could take you flying.the outer banks are awesome this time of year.or maybe just have lunch... i dont live to far from the shipyard.

[Musicman]

Sounds like a good plan!      I get in touch once I get settled in someplace here.

Mike

[oldschool]

Sounds like a good plan!     I get in touch once I get settled in someplace here.

Mike

mike just pm me when you are ready,and i'll give you my cell #

brian

[Musicman]

Roger that... will do Brian

[Musicman]

Someone find Murphy for me, and shoot that S.O.B.   

It all started yesterday morning in Virginia, but I'll skip all that and move right into today's news.... I'm came back home to CT last evening so I could run my new engine today.
I went to the shop this morning to admired the iron beast mounted on the DTS Dyno  ... It sure did look good sitting there all bolted up and ready to go ... I still had a few things to do before starting it up however, so I got right to it. The Six Shooter carbs probably run pretty good on a stock 340 or a 360 right out of the box, but my 505 will require a little more fuel to get that air/fuel ratio dialed in, so I rejetted the front and rear carbs (best guess), and changed the power valve in the center carburetor. Next I set up the linkage so the Dyno wouldn't have any trouble opening all 3 carburetors at once. In the end, I'll be using a Lokar cable system, but for the Dyno, I set it up using a bracket from Bouchillon Performance. I modified the BG linkage a while back to accept just about anything and everything, so this was a piece of cake.

OK, ready to start... almost...
We started the electric fuel pump and primed the carburetors. Then we went around and fixed all the fuel leaks that popped up  ... After fixing the leaks, we primed them again... The float bowls were all out of spec, but those are super easy to adjust on the BG's once the engine is running... sight glasses make it a simple task. We checked the ignition for spark, and double checked the timing once more, just to get us in the ball park before starting the beast... after that we planned to use the timing light to bring it in closer.... good plan but one small problem... The wires that I bought for the build are TAYLOR -10.4 -Thundervolt 50's... good wires, so good in fact that the timing light was not reliable using a clamp on one of them. We had to swap out one of the 10.4mm Thundervolt's for an 8mm wire.
OK, we rolled it over a few times to check it, and said lets go... We fired it up and it ran for about a tenth of a second... It sounded great there for a second though 
Anyway... a quick look at the carb's revieled that the center carburetor had run dry because the floats are out of adjustment. No problem... we primed them again and adjusted the center carb to "close enough"...
OK, here we go again...
Now for those of you who don't know this... there are some things that must be done each and every time before starting the dyno and running an engine... one of these things is starting the water pump which delivers water to the dyno itself. In this case we are talking about a centrifugal pump driven by a 10HP electric motor. Well, when we started the pump this time, there was a very loud detonation type sound that came from the overhead... followed by a torrent of water which came flowing down out of the overhead 
The water supply to the dyno had ruptured... We scrambled to shut everything down, and get the engine covered up before the carburetors filled the block with water but... some water did get in there obviously... Either way, the day was over... we have to make certain that the block is ready to go before moving forward now, and the building has some major renovation work that has to be done now as well. Three rooms at the shop were effectively damaged by the leak, so it will be a few weeks anyway...

I checked out the plumbing system to the dyno and discovered the cause of the failure. The contractor who did the work was not at fault, he simply followed the instructions given by the Dyno manufacture. These folks may know a lot about dyno's and engine dynamics, but they obviously don't know much about fluid dynamics. Plumbing the unit per their instruction created a water hammer at the machine. The resulting shock wave traveled back up the pipe into the ceiling and literally shattered a 45 degree fitting in the overhead. I told the shop what the problem was and how to fix it, so we will be working together to get that situation corrected.

Oh well... I'm heading back to Virginia on Sunday, so I will be leaving the engine in their capable hands until my return. Once they get the shop repaired, they are going to break in the engine, and get it tune up and ready for my return. In the mean time, here are a few pic's from this morning... before the flood.

[Musicman]

I heard from the shop today.... They inspected the engine a couple of weeks ago after the flood and found that the water had not gotten beyond the belly of the intake so that was good news.
They have made all of the necessary repairs to the shop after the unfortunate flooding incident, and correctly re-plumbed the water supply to the Dyno. They have been testing stuff all week just to make sure that all of the shop equipment is running correctly and ready to resume operation. Confident that everything was good to go now, they went back to my build and fired it up.
They ran the engine for 45 minutes, breaking in the cam, adjusting the float levels on the 3 carburetors, adjusting linkages, checking the timing etc... They say it purrs like a kitten... 
After the break-in they drained the oil of course (clean as a whistle), dismantled the rocker assembly and put the inner valves springs back in, readjusted the geometry etc... all the usual stuff.
Anyway... They really, really, really wanted to fire it back up and put a load on it, but they also knew that I really wanted to be there so... It waits for my return... which will be very soon. I am expecting to fly back home to CT on Monday the 23rd and be there until the 30th... so somewhere... sometime during that week I will be heading to the shop to complete the testing, and hopefully be taking some video footage as well.

[Purple440]

Can't wait for the vids Musicman!!   

[firefighter3931]

They say it purrs like a kitten... 

And so it should with that mild VooDoo stick in there. I bet the manifold vacuum is through the roof as well ! 

Should make a boatload of torque and be a blast to drive on the street. 




Ron

[SG1022]

Great thread, full of info.

What are you doing with the Crane cam? I wonder if I would go well with a 360

[Musicman]

When all is said & done, I will be selling any new parts that I didn't use, and don't wish to keep for use on my next project (383)... with the exception of the 440source water pump and housing that I didn't use... those will not be sold to anyone.   
I just don't have time to gather everything together right now. 

[SG1022]

I wouldn't be taking time to resell parts if I had that much momentum going on a project like that either. 

Can't wait to see that thing run

[Jesco]

Looking awesome! When I dynoed my engine it wasen't so perdy... But it give nice numbers!
583 hp and 654 lbs/ft on the dyno.

[Musicman]

Very Nicely Done
Do we have yours listed in the Proven Engine Combo section?

[Jesco]

No but I had the 440 source 528 kit and a hydralic comp camp stick XE275HL and Indy SR-heads right out of the box. MSD ignition then stock holley six pack with edelbrock intake. Do remember that we dyno it with 70 jets then on the streets I switch to 66 and also the hardest secondary springs. Did 11.50 on the 1/4 with my charger 69 R/T. QA1 shocks, pinion snubber and ET streets on 8" steel wheels.

Now the short block will be runned with a roller mechanical camshaft, the heads is ported and I will use a crossram and dual edelbrocks 800 AVS in my -64 dodge 330.

[Musicman]

Called the shop today and made a date with the dyno... We will be firing it up right after the holiday.
Those who have been following this thread know that I have made a number of changes to the original plan and design since the first post, particularly where the heads are concerned. I had originally posted predictions for HP numbers in the mid to upper mid 500's, with torque numbers in the mid to upper mid 600's, based on the fact that I was going to do a little basic port work on the Stealth heads and get them flowing in at about 280 CFM.
As you all know however, in the end I decided not to port the heads at all, and just cleaned up the runners a bit. I came to this decision for two reasons..
No. 1 - I didn't want the final numbers getting out of hand, forcing me to upgrade the rest of my drive-train components.
No. 2 - I have been working away from home for over a year now with no end in sight, so I did not have the time to do the port work myself, which meant paying someone else to do it... and that kinda defeats the purpose of buying budget heads in the first place, right?
So I said screw it, I'll just run the heads stock... if I'm not happy, I can always pull them back off at a later date and do the work. Anyway, with that in mind, I ran the build through my PC program with everything as it is right now and came up with the following. The cleanup work on the runners may add another 5 or 10 HP, but this is about what I am expecting to see... Is my program correct?... we'll find out in a couple of days.

In the mean time... I hope everyone has a great Turkey Day!!! Enjoy yourselves 

[dstryr]

Is it next week yet???    Looking forward to seeing your numbers!

[Musicman]

Tomorrow

[firefighter3931]

Mike, i'm gonna say 460hp @ 560tq....the curves on your graph look about right but the numbers are slightly high. That's what i'd expect to see on the dyno that i'm most familiar with. 

Looking forward to the results 



Ron

[Musicman]

OK… like, were all done eh?

I got good news and I got good news… The good news is Nothing Broke This Time!!! The big news is everything turned out as expected, a little better than expected actually!

We started off by just getting a feel for it, before letting it go… gradually easing on the throttle to see how the secondary carburetors were going to react etc, and to make sure everything was up to snuff. Those secondary carburetors jump right in by the way… zero hesitation!
The results of the first test pull were already better than I expected, coming in at 489 HP & 605 TQ. Each consecutive pull after that resulted in stronger and stronger numbers as things heated up and seals were broken in. We pulled it 6 or 7 times hoping it would flat line, but the numbers were still rising with each pull. It was easy to see that with a little tuning we could get the HP numbers up from 500 to the low 500’s with very little effort, but the engine was running so well already, it just didn’t seem worth it.
The engine was purring like a kitten right down to 800 RPM and still pulling over 18” of vacuum at that low rpm. The timing was flawless, steady and constant under all conditions, even quick drop offs… Hat’s off to Don Gould over at FBO systems for that one, he was right on the money. After talking with Don on the phone and seeing his work first hand, the boys over there at Larry’s Auto Machine are duly impressed with Don’s knowledge and his methods. They have his number in their Rolodex now for future reference.
The E3 spark plugs turned out to be a perfect match for the build. Examining the plugs, the heat range indicators were spot on. I wanted to compare them to a good set of NKG plugs, but without a flat line base to start from the numbers would be worthless. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) the numbers were still climbing with each consecutive pull, so it never happened.
Fuel delivery was great… the transition from the center carburetor to the other two was perfect. No hesitation, no change in air fuel ratio, just a smooth seamless transition, invisible to the monitors. The only thing that changed was the tone of the engine. The carburetors were flowing as expected. I had actually under rated them when I input them into my PC build just to be safe, but the numbers here proved to me that they do in fact flow as well as I had originally suspected. They also show that the runner cleanup work on the heads helped out as well.
Anyway… long story short… the engine was already running as well as anyone could expect, so we decided to just leave it the way it was… anything more would have been a needless waste of time & money.

Bottom Line…
When we shut it down, it was putting out just about 500 HP, and the Torque was at 608 or 610, I can’t remember which… Unfortunately, the printer for the Dyno took a bath in the flood and hasn’t been replaced yet, so I don’t have a paper print out.
I did get a screen shot of the very 1st pull however, just before mounting the camera onto the tripod for the video, so I’ll post that here anyway. I cut out the extra crap on the screen and just left the Important Stuff so folks here could read it better. The final screen only outputs so much in terms of RPM range of course, but when we were actually running it you could see that the torque curve is just a big flat table from start to peak. Tons of low rpm torque to get things rolling in a hurry. Extra tires are recommended…
I’m also posting a link to the video I shot. It was like the 2nd or 3rd pull… we were still playing around a bit at the beginning, but it works.

I also re-input the info into my PC using the correct carburetor flow numbers and the slightly improved head flow numbers to produce the graph below. It’s still not perfect, but it’s a little closer to reality anyway. Maybe the heads are still flowing better than I think they are.

I’ll also be putting up a separate post in the Proven Build section without all the extra clutter & chatter, just the details of the build etc, with a link back to this post for a complete history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qETZA3qx2HA