Another day another motor....
Basic specs:
R3 Siamese 4.185" bore
4.0" K1 4340 crank, 2.10" journal
Arrow I beam rods
Custom Diamonds ~ 10.6:1 compression.
Milodon 7 Qt pan/Fluidampr
Bullet Roller ~272 @ .050, ~.700 lift, 108 LSA
1.6 Harland Sharps,3/8 Manton pushrods
W5 small chamber heads, ported by??? Who knows, these were used previously ported heads, that we did new VJ & blend on. Actually sold these heads on ebay @ one time. 2.08"/1.60" Ferrea's. Port work is ok, ports not "huge" just decent conservative shape etc.
MP M1 LG runner 4150 flange intake
Ran it with 3 different carbs, a 950HP, & pair of 2 circuit Dominators.
Customer Supplied intake, carb, heads, rockers, oil pan/water pump/damper, block, rods etc. I did'nt have alot of input, just pistons & cam & got to machine it all & make it "work" I sold him the heads/rockers on ebay as I mentioned, they came in shop as a trade in type deal @ one point, they had had some damage, we put some new seats in, repaired a chamber etc, basically got them back to useable condition.
Block was a Mancini Chrysler engineering sale special, I think he got it for like $1500 brand new, was already rough bored to 4.16 or something.
Just supposed to be a pump gas street/strip deal, I think with more emphasis on street.
Anyhow... I got it finished Monday & primed it, noticed it was'nt getting ton of oil to rocker gear, had 25/50 oil in it, figured we'd fire it, & would monitor rockers. Often times with this thick oil you don't get a tremendous flow to top, until it gets some heat in it & things start moving.
Fired it up yesterday on dyno, ran for 1 minute 15 seconds... Pulled covers, had oil to top but not getting enough, not good volume out the adjuster squirter hole in the HS rockers... It had adequate oil to roller wheel, & the bearings etc. 88 PSI oil pressure on the bypass cold...
Had Joe Gibbs assembly grease all over adjusters & cups etc & that stuff just does not go away, IMO it's even better than the CMD # 3 lube Jesel etc supplies for the adjusters, & so I just spritz oiled the adjusters some & ran it another 3 minutes.... Still not good oil to adjusters... Oil temp was stone cold still, so I dumped the 25/50 Pennzoil & put in 10/30 VR1 oil, knowing it was'nt going to do much, but was worth a shot before we tore into motor. Knocked about 10 PSI of pressure out of it, but that's about it.... ran it for 3 more minutes & checked rockers... not good enough to make a pull or put significant load on it.
Started working my way backwards to see where the issue may lie in lack of volume/pressure to rockers... start with hold down & bolt, not there, pulled head stud out, still not getting great oil to the stud? @ that point, thinking maybe Cometic has oil hole in wrong spot or something, so head needs to come off... fun fun. Pulled intake & head...gasket lines up fine with block oil passage & the passage in head. No restrictors hidden in head... I had undercut the ARP head stud that feeds the rocker stand W/ oil, so it was not a restriction in getting oil past it to the rocker stands....
Well... gotta be Cam or cam bearings.....
So off came the front of motor...
I knew I had checked bearing hole alignment, so was about 99.9% sure that was'nt issue unless for some unGodly reason a cam bearing had spun or slightly rotated. But when we checked housing bore size on this particular R3 block before we put cam bearings in, it was shown to actually be right on tight side of Durabond housing bore spec, so it had plenty of crush, so I was'nt really worried about cam bearings...
Slid cam out front & bingo... no oil feed holes or slotting of any kind on the 2/4 journals. Wonderful... I'm thinking the oil feed holes actually get machined in when the core is made although I don't know that for sure, perhaps the final grinder does the oil holes... But it's a Crane core, ground by Bullet, first non roller cam bearing camshaft I've seen with no oil feed holes or slot. Alot of the Bullet stuff is not slotted for full time oiling, it just has a pair of oil feed holes that intersect @ a 90 degree angle. So if you look @ a cam that just has feed holes, if you look @ certain sides/angles of the journal you'd not notice the feed holes. Normally a motor that does not have restrictors in heads, does not need full time slotted oiling, so I usually just run them with the 90 degree holes, especially if it has roller bearing rockers, if it is a bored rocker with ton of spring pressure, then bit more important to have full time oiling to me.
So anyhow, I have to admit I never noticed it was lacking oil feed holes when I pulled it out of box & slid it in motor, have never seen one without them... so one of those things you get complacent & ASSume things are machined correctly.
So, back to the shop I went & threw cam in lathe & added a .200" wide oiling groove ~.180" deep in the 2/4 journal. That was fun, anyone who has ever tried to machine on a camshaft in any way knows how hard a billet roller core is.
So, hit dyno this AM, slid cam in, re-degreed it, heads back on, & all back together, primed good, & fired it before lunch.
Got oil to 150, pulled VC's, checked lash & ready to rock...
Broke it in with a known good 950 Carb. Made quick check out pull, was hair lean, was only @ 28 timing though... Decided to throw some jet in it to be safe & as I'm changing Jets, we hear this noise out in shop that sounded like something exploded & building was on fire or something. Holy crap was it loud & continuous.... We all go running through building to figure out what was going on & make sure everyone was alright & turns out one of the main air lines running across building decided to give up @ a connector & blew apart spewing 175+ PSI Air/water out a 1" PVC pipe all over the walls... that was enough excitement for 1 day.
Ran it with the 950, seated rings, & messed with timing, these small chamber W5's did'nt want much spark lead. 32 was best anything over that was down on power by good bit. I'm not really sold on these small chamber W5's, I'm fairly convinced they do not make as good power/have as good chamber burn (not nearly as good) as a traditional W5 heart shaped single quench pad chamber. This is second set of Small chamber W5's I've dynoed, so have some data to go off of. I don't like looks/shape of chamber & dyno results seem to back that up.
Anyhow... so after the 950 I went to a known good 1050 2 circuit off a Customers low 8 sec W9 motor. It picked up about 10 over the 950... did'nt tune on it, just wanted to see what a known good 4500 would do before I put customers 1050 on, which I had some question marks about. I had tried this carb on another motor a while back & it did'nt work that great, so I went all through it couple days ago in hopes it was something simple. It's just been sitting around for too long... not a good thing on carbs. But anyhow, other than the idle air bleeds being too big, it worked good this time @ WOT & actually picked up about 10+ over the other 1050.. TQ was also up a bit everywhere. Was lean, ended up putting I think 6 jets in it on both sides, air bleeds a little outside stock window. I know who previous owner of this carb was & recall him telling me years ago that he had screwed with air bleeds in it, & the Widebands were showing me he definitely had... Idle bleeds just need knocked down a good bit & high speeds need just couple sizes pulled out to get jetting back down a little.
Anyhow.... @ beginning of day I guessed it would make 660-670 HP, 570 TQ.... Based on previous motors on this dyno, & my knowledge of what the heads were like, intake was like, cam was like & compression was like. I knew compression was little low for the cam (rockers were supposed to be 1.5 & actually were 1.6, Harland Sharp how hard would it be to actually stamp a ratio on your rockers?) I knew I did'nt like the small chamber in the heads, knew intake was way too big in every aspect & would knock bunch of TQ out of it...
Ended up with 658 HP/ 571 TQ.
The funny thing was, I was sitting in console room @ end of day going over #'s & got to thinking, I've only had one other W5 motor on this dyno so far... & it happened to have a LG runner M1 (same intake)... It was 2nd motor we dynoed on this new dyno, Jimi Vignogna built it for guy in NY & he brought it down & had me dyno it for him.... Anyhow, I started thinking... what HP did that thing make? Hmm 658... 2 Drastically different W5 motors, made exact same HP #.
Todays Motor:
440"
10.6:1 pump gas
272 @ .050 cam
Mechanical water pump
No Vacuum pump
Small chamber W5s
MP LG Runner M1 W5 intake
Other Motor:
416"
13:1 race gas
280 @ .050 cam
Electric water pump
Vacuum pump
Std Chamber W5's
MP LG runner M1 W5 intake
I'll post dyno sheets off both motors in a sec, because neat to compare the 2...
Interesting thing is motor today even with alot less compression etc, it actually made little better TQ/ inch than the 416, 1.29 VS 1.27
Thee motors would really wake up with an INDY intake... these LG runner M1 intake motors are both near bottom of barrell of TQ/INCH of motors I've dynoed... Even flat tappet stuff is putting up better TQ/Inch #'s, & it's all laying in that manifold.
Anyhow... I was just glad to get rocker arm oiling sorted out & have a productive day finally & gathered some more data for my mental dyno database of SB combinations...
Next Guinea pig on the pump, maybe end of next week is a 418 with set of RHS LA-X heads on pump gas with mild roller & an INDY 360-3 intake.
I enjoy dabbling in the unusual... there would be nothing exciting about my job to me if I built 440-500" Edelbrock/440-1 head Big Blocks all day... these wacky SB Combo's really keep you guessing, there are just so many different ways to build these things, it really keeps things interesting, even though I'm working on same basic engine platform all the time.
