This weekend I put a rod, piston and cam in the motor and installed the Jessel belt drive to check Piston to Valve clearance at 108 as well as 2 and 4 degrees advance and 2 and 4 degrees retard in case I ever wanted to adjust it but initially planning to install at 108. With no head gasket, Intake was closest at 10* ATDC with .118 clearance and Exhaust was closest at 12* BTDC with .150.

I’m dropping off the head to have .036 - .040 taken off the deck and then I’m going to use a .027 Cometic head gasket so that will take .013 away from those clearances but that will be plenty of room.

I’ve never used these 3,3,9mm rings before, wow are they thin and delicate… I put the oil rings on just to hold the piston in the hole and I’m going to have to be really careful when installing because it’s going to be very easy to roll one of the oil ring when installed and I’m not sure I would know until after the motor was together…

Here are a few pictures of the T&D 1.7 rockers. I went with the single shaft rather than the paired rockers. Koffel assured me they would hold up and it would save a little $ and enable me to use standard through the block oiling.

As you can see the studs are machined down to allow the oil to travel through the shafts and you can see on the bottom of the hold down block where it’s been machined to accept the oil from the block oil passage and then feed the shaft which will feed the rockers and push rod cups. I will put .060 restrictors in the head to control the oil (I’m also dropping the cam off to the machine shop to have the groove the #4 journal for full time oiling to the heads/rocker)

The lifter bore on the KB block are .905 and the BAM lifters are .904 so they are on the tight side. I test fitted the lifters in each of the bore and you have to be perfectly straight to get them to go in and a couple of them are a little snug. I’m thinking that will be ok as the aluminum will grow with heat but I’m going to discuss it with my machinist to make sure he’s in agreement.

Also dropping off the rotating assembly to be balanced. Once that is done, I should be able to put the motor together, hoping to make some races in July (NHRA SST double divisional at Topeka is my goal)

Ordering MT front runners and slick this week as well as the APD Max Speed carb (ouch $).

The tranny was fine but it had a ton of passes on the 1.80 straight cut gears so I picked up a new set and it's getting put together so the tranny will be fresh and ready to go.

I also put a new set of Richmond 4.56 Pro gears in the Dana 60. Nothing wrong with them but they had 10 years on them so preventative maintenance.