Dwayne, I'm going to go ahead and crank the compression ratio up to 13.5 just to duplicate the original Max Wedge a little more. Do you think that 7265/7267 cam will be happy with the extra squeeze?

Now thats the look I love. And I will like it more when it's under the hood of my 63. Ron

Awesome looking combo, Andy. Just a note-if you're going to use a stock-type dist. with those heads, be prepared to carve quite a chunk of metal off that hump on the end of the head. And if you're going to use an MSD in conjunction with those MP valvecovers, be prepared to carve a chunk of metal off the lip of the vc for it to clear. This is my experience; I thought I'd tell you before you get the shortblock all together and discover it like I did. You might get the vc clearance you need with a real thin gasket, however I haven't had much luck with those in conjunction with MP covers.

Andy if you got to 13.5:1 You are going to just love the sound at Idle, and you'll go crazy when you get into it.
OBTW keep in mind 2 more points of compression, and you can use #1 Kerosene for fuel

I found the same as Mark on the distributor clearance. Also, Indy makes spacers to help close up the gap between the block and manifold if you don't want to mess with a valley pan.

The shortblock is together and I'm in the process of bolting the top end back on.

I really like this 4.250 stroke with the Chevy 6.800 long rods. Everything fits with no grinding required on the cylinders. We ground the corner off of the oil pickup boss but that was it.

The 6.800 rods are long enough that the pistons stay up in the cylinders with only a tiny bit of the skirt dropping out of the bores at BDC. These are Diamond pistons with a 1.783 CH. So there is plenty of room to go with a 7.100 long rod and a 1.483 tall piston.

Final bobweight on this was 2330 grams. We had to drill a few holes in the crank to get it to balance.

Here is a shot of the Diamond piston that I'm running. These were custom made with a small dome to push the CR up to 13.5. It is very close to their stocking piston though so there was only a slight charge for the change.

Here is a shot of the rotating assembly parts. Crank is from 440Source, rods are from SCAT, pistons from Diamond and pins from Trend. I believe that Trend is owned by the same person who owns Diamond. (Bob Fox)

how was the crank otb?

ANDY ....what cam are you going to use ?

Crank was acceptable out of the box. 0.0002 taper on the rod journals which is within spec. The rod journals on this crank were at high book so we used 0.001 oversize rod bearings to get some additional clearance. I wish the crank came with a bobweight down around 2400 grams so it didn't require so much lightening during balancing.

The timing gear fit fine with a light tap fight and the damper had a 0.0008 press fit which is just about right. I measured the stroke on each throw. Two of them were 4.249 and the other two were 4.248.

The cam is a 270/275 at 050 solid flat tappet Comp grind. 0.400 lobe lift. SQ series lobe family. A roller cam would be the next logical thing to add to the motor to make some more power. And maybe a good set of rocker arms. Time for me to step up to some T&D or Erson arms.

Here is a shot of the shortblock. The numbers on the pistons is the deck clearance. So there is about 0.003 from shortest to tallest assembly. The crank counts for 0.001 of that. I would assume that the pistons are very accurate so the rods must make up the difference. I didn't try swapping parts around to match the long rods with the short pistons or anything like that.

Here is a shot showing the valve to piston clearance. Looks like I have plenty of room to go with a roller if I choose. With the current cam and 1.60 rocker arms I have more than 0.125 of clearance on both the intake and exhaust.

looks nice

ooo....looks nice. I wish that somebody still made a crossram intake for small blocks.....they just look so cool.

Looking good, Andy.

andy what are you using for assembly lube ? i'm getting ready to screw my 383 together