Tis the busy season... lot's of engines going out the door. Had 4 on the pump this week..... Some interesting results...

I'll just do a post in Chronological order...

Monday, ran this one.....

408, .030" over 1996 360 Magnum
9.5:1 Ross dish piston
SCAT 6.123 I beams
4" K1 crank
Racer Brown 230 @ .050" .510" Hyd roller 112 LSA.
Engine Quest Magnum heads, 1.92"/1.625" valves
MP Dual plane
650 Demon Vac Sec carb
Mechanical water pump

This one was built by another shop in another state, had severe oil consumption issues & owner shipped in to determine issues & just fix/freshen. Oil issues just turned out to be improper hone job/cyl wall finish.

We just honed it, put new set of rings/bearings in, did a valve job on heads, hand bended VJ in, back cut the intake valves.... Motor had stock rods in it & I talked customer into a set of SCAT's in case he wanted to upgrade intake manifold etc. in future & make little more power.

Motor made 423HP on another dyno when it was built previously by the other shop & really was not power tuned, just was installed & ran with carb out of box. We did'nt do too much, just played with timing, did have to jet the carb down a bit, & tried a 1" HVH spacer on it & was able to coax 442 out of it.... The MP intake is just a bad bad piece, not only from power standpoint, but the EGT spread was ridiculous. It does make low end TQ down in the 3000 RPM's & is a good piece for hood clearance I guess... but I would be replacing it if it was mine, just due to how uneven the fuel distribution is.

Anyhow... here's a link to vid of it & copy of the dyno sheet...

Nothing too special, would make good motor for a truck, or real heavy vehicle. Is going in a real high geared (2.94:1) Dodge Diplomat cruiser so... should work good for that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uwpbLZOs30

Next victim was a W5...

400 Cubic inch
X block @ 4.10" bore
3.79" Forged 1053 MP 8 bolt crank
Eagle H beams
JE Dish piston, 1/16" 3/16" ring pack std tension oil
11.0:1 compression, 92 octane pump gas
Moroso 8 QT pan
CSR electric water pump
Bullet Roller, 272/276 @ .050" .661" lift, 109 LSA
CV products 3/8 pushrods
SDSS hand ported Stage 3 W5's, 2.08"/1.60"
1.6 Harland Sharps
INDY 360-3O manifold

This is a motor I actually took in on partial trade for a new W9 piece. Just went through it, new bearings, rings hone job, I reground cam (had an N20 piece in it in previous life) heads had very mild port work, so I just did them up quick to nice stage 3 type basic job. Motor had a LG runner M1 on it so I replaced that with an INDY 360-3 & that was about it. Alot of the parts were what came with the motor, lifters, pushrods, valve springs, retainers etc. Just kind of made what was there, work. @ 11:1 it was pretty much set as a pump gas type street/strip deal & I found a buyer for it in Oklahoma. Going in a '71 Cuda Shaker hood car.

Customer wants to run it with 950 carb... So we spent majority of time messing with that.... made 610 HP/530 TQ with ProForm 950 & 1" HVH.

Then decided to see what dominator would do on it, put box stock 1050 Quickfuel & a 2" adapter on it & 650 HP... The AF on the widebands & EGT's all looked good with both carbs, but this thing really liked the 4150-4500 adapter & the big carb on it.

Anyhow, here's a vid & pic of motor & dyno sheet....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_WtPKQE1Z4

400 W5 Dyno Sheet

Next motor was the most interesting & also the most challenging....

440 inches
4.185 bore Siamese 48* R3
4" SCAT crank
H beams
Custom Ross Dish pistons, no gas port, 1/16" 3/16" rings
11.8:1 compression
Mancini oil pan/Moroso electric water pump
Bullet roller I believe it's 272/276 108 & .728" with 1.65 T&D's
Chapman CNC W7's 270 CC runner, 2.15"/1.60" Stainless valves
MP "772" Tall deck manifold converted to 4500 flange
3/8 Manton pushrods

This is a pretty basic piece for an "exotic" motor. Very basic oil pan, bland CNC W7, mild compression, no vacuum pump, very basic cheap custom piston with no tricks of any kind.

This motor was built by board member in Michigan, he put it in his car & it underperformed... if I recall correctly it ran 10.20's @ 129? in a 3300 LB A body. I had designed the cam, setup the heads as far as valves/springs etc & did the intake work on it, so customer inquired @ end of season if I had any idea why it was off a bit... I obviously could'nt diagnose it from 600+ miles away, so he shipped it in to have me take a look @ it & dyno it.

So I tore it down & found few small assembly errors with it, but nothing that would show drastic power problems, the machine work was done @ Muscle Motors & all looked good there. I did not hone or Re-ring it as it did'nt need it. Only thing I really saw power wise in it was a tremendous amount of reversion in intake runners... The cam was installed a bit too far advanced... So I just freshened it, new bearings, reground the valves, set CL on cam to 106, did little more plenum work on intake manifold, re-adjusted manifold fitment a little... nothing major. Valvetrain all looked good, no signs of valvetrain instability etc. I have ran this particular cam grind with 1.65's on similar motors in past with good results, with same spring pack. I felt this thing should make somewhere between 710-730. I knew some power had been left on table in the piston/ring department, & that it had no vacuum pump. So I was thinking 710ish & TQ should be in the 610-620 range. Once you do enough of this stuff, you know what should make what... & when they are way off, you know something is wrong.

I've never dynoed a W7 before, so I asked customer to send in his headers to dyno with. I did'nt have adapter flanges to go from W7 to my dyno headers..

So we ran the motor Tuesday night... wow, 650 HP, 580's TQ. I was able to get 667/603 out of it with spacer, jetting timing etc. But something was way off.... it would not make power above 6100 RPM, the power dropped bad...

The TQ was not too far off peak wise, but I felt it was little off, & was way off up high, so whatever was happening was happening in the higher RPM's. Natural feeling is valvetrain... but I had already had pretty good look @ the reatiners/locks/valve stems etc during tear down & all looked perfect. We put mass air sensor on it & made pull, & airflow readings were not doing anything unusual... it was just like the motor was being choked up top. The reversion in intake runners kept running through my mind, & decided I had to know if there was some way the custom headers were causing some type of pressure wave reversion. I've read about similar issues on speedtalk etc, Larry Meaux has written extensively on it, but Ive never really ran into it myself. But I had to know, so yesterday Morning I took my W5 header adapters & modified them on the bridgeport to also accept a W7 pattern. I've got a W7 Dirt Late Model motor going together here next Month that will be dynoed as well, so I needed to do something anyhow.

Installed my Schoenfeld dyno headers (1 7/8" to 2" step, 3.5 collector) & made a pull to 6800.... knew we had found the problem instantly... power was over 700 & TQ was in the 6 Teens on 1st pull. Power was still climbing @ 6800 rather than dying @ 6000-6100. Made couple other small changes & 714HP. I overlaid the best pull with the Customers custom headers against the Schoenfelds on the 2 dyno graphs for easy viewing. Absolutely amazing what a poorly designed/built set of headers can do to an engine. & I'm sure lots will have questions about the headers, so I will post pics of both sides & you can formulate your own opinions.

The custom headers are 1 7/8 straight tubes with 3.5 collector... I hesitate to call them straight 1 7/8's due to the way they were made with slip fit joints where they were not needed & welded together....kind of a mess.

But anyhow, glad we found the issue... should have no problem running 9's now once gets a good header on it.

Sorry I forgot to take pics of it with either set of headers on it... this is only pic I got of it. (was a little busy thinking about other things)

Here is a video f it making a 714 7200 RPM pull...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0knpZnHefg

Graph of the 2 headers....

Raw #'s on the 2 sets of headers...

Custom W7 Header 1

Pass side Custom header #2

Driver Side Custom header

Drivers Customer Header #2

& last but not least....

This motor came back in to get "enlarged"

364" W5... this was a motor bought out of Chrysler Engineering sale from Mancini 2 years ago. I made few changes & we dynoed it @ Rider Racing in Mechanicsburg PA where I used to dyno & it made 590 HP/455TQ

Owner wants to go big inch now that funds permit... So we decided to throw it on dyno before I tore it down & it gets a 4.125" rotating assembly & an INDY intake & dynoed in it's new configuration. It has about 1000 miles on it...

Basic specs:

4.02" bore R block
3.58" Billet Crank
Childs & Albert Billet I beams
Wiseco Flat tops 1/16" 3/16" rings
11:1 compression
cam is somewhere in the 274/276 @ .050" range, around .690" lift from what I recall.
1.6 Harland Sharps
Has a MP small Runner M1
Moroso 8 Qt pan & mechanical water pump.

So we put it on dyno in same state of tune it was before, 39 degrees timing, 1" HVH spacer, & exact same 950 HP carb, same jetting, same dyno headers etc.

1st pull was a checkout pull to 6500 RPM. Was 457 TQ & I forget the HP @ 6500.

Then pulled it to 8000, 465 TQ & 570 HP... It was showing rich @ 12.3 @ beginning of pull & going 12.1's @ top of pull. So I decided for something to do I'd pull little jet out, pulled 1 primary, 2 Secondary & went to 576/469 TQ. It was still rich & particularly rich above 6800 RPM, it really probably needed an air bleed change, but @ that point I knew what I had, so decided rather than waste our time tuning the thing for no reason, we'd pull it off & get it apart. I think we easily could have jetted it into the 580's looking @ the 12.1 AFR above 6800, but did'nt really matter. Just wanted to get a baseline for before/after test. We got it down to a bare block this afternoon & will get it in the CNC here @ beginning of week to get it bored out to a more useable bore size than 4.02". I will probably regrind the cam slightly, putting little more ramp speed in it, will stay around 11:1 pump gas deal, will be 436 inches & will scrap the M1 for an ICH manifold, heads will stay basically the same. & we should be re-dynoing it here sometime in future.

Here's a vid of it on 8000 RPM pull, if look closely watch the EGT's, (8 green lines on bottom of computer screen, the lines go #1-8 left to right) #7/8 really are much hotter than the rest, don't dyno much with a M1 intake, was just interesting distribution wise. I think the shape of the plenum roof with the spreadbore intake has alot to do with what seeing there. The INDY's are so damn consistent EGT wise... it's no wonder they pick up power on virtually everything they go on. The EGT's on the 400 W5 were very consistent.... 20-30 degrees other than pair of slightly higher ones @ 60-70 spread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWhHw_Booe4

Makes one apprehensive about getting headers made. How much is the Indy worth over the M1's?

Interesting stuff!! Thanks for the post. You could eyeball those headers and know there was going to be a problem there, especially in the upper rpm range. Never seen slip-fit pipes used to build headers before - at least not the entire headers. Just too many unsmooth ( is that a word )sections.

Reading about specific motor combos and what certain things do or don't do for hp and the power they make never gets old to me. Thanks

dying to see the big dog in a few weeks

Man...those headers don't look "that" bad...

RYAN whatta u think if u had to guess joe's w5 would have made before the freshen up and head work?

Did the freshened engine show reversion, and did it disappear with the replacement headers?

Thanks for posting up write ups and video. Very interesting stuff to see.