Over the winter I took my brother's 440 from a stock bottom end 440 that had stock Edelbrock heads and a custom solid flat tappet cam, and went through it for some major upgrades.
I'm going to post up some before and after results here to highlight some of what we did.
Keith

The original combination included a Holley Street Dominator intake, and a Proform 950 carburetor that we had gone through. A Firecore distributor was added to provide spark from the Accel Digital ignition.
Running through a 727 with a Turbo Action10" convertor, 4.10 gears and Coltrane, the 3800 pound Satellite ran a best of 12.11 @ Norwalk last fall.

Hmmmm, cant get any pictures to load right now. Guess I'll come back to this later,......
Keith

SOunds like fun...

Before tearing the old engine down, we made a few pulls on the Superflow to get a baseline for the upgrades.

Was the bottom end of this motor tired or just have real low compression pistons? Seems like it should have run better than a 12.11.

When the Edelbrock heads went on, the decision was made to put too big of a header on. Scott bought 2" Super Comps planning for the future. We knew they would hurt the torque curve.
The convertor stalled to 3800 in his car.

I felt the 3800 lb. car should have run 11.80's if the hole in the torque curve wasn't there.
Actually the car was pretty low compression but it impressed a lot of people for a completely stock bottom end.
Keith

The engine made a tick over 500 horsepower and 540 lbs-ft torque on the as raced tune.
After tearing into it, I found a couple of scored cylinders, and a couple of rod bearings on their way south.

The new build was planned , parts ordered, etc. Scott asked me if I could get 650 horsepower on pump gas for him. I probably laughed at that . I told him I could port his heads and build a nice short block, New cam to go with it, better intake, etc. And get a little over 600 on pump gas.

I have been using Race Tec pistons and ordered a set with a small dome. I didn't want to cut the heads a ton to get decent compression.

The block was decked square, bored and diamond honed .020, New cam bearings, etc.
A fresh factory forged crankshaft was scrounged up due to the old one being a welded on remanufactured piece of questionable quality.
I assembled the shortblock with fairly tight bearing clearances, wanting to use a modern thinner oil .
Rings were file fit , 1/16, 1/16, 3/16 with moly tops and a Napier cut scraper second and installed on Eagle H beam rods

get on with the story already

I ported his Edelbrock RPM heads and worked on getting them to flow well without having a large csa.

Before and after , best port on my bench,....

I also ported a new Victor intake to go with the heads,....

Victor plenum work

The final assembly,
I picked an old Ultradyne NF69 grind for it along with Crane gold 1.6 rockers. Final compression after minor chamber clean up to the heads is 11.2 to one. With the large cam and aluminum heads it will run on e10 93 octane easily.

I'll try to finish posting later tonight. Just had a customer call and have to go make a housecall and help him out,...

New combination compared to his old one,....