Well THe CFO gave the green light to let the car live up to its name. Here is the first of the parts to make it into the tinkering room.

They are absolutely amazing in my opinion. I can lift them with one hand. Bill Mitchell had an overstock and I got a steel of a deal. They only come bare but that works out for me cause I am going to do a mean spring package to hold boost.









Pretty much the biggest Vortec Fastburn design out there. Theses are 215cc. They make a 235 but it requires shaft rockers, did not think it was necessary to go that far.

 

Well Happy Holloween to me! The first tricker treater stopped by in a brown truck and left these custom little pieces :-)







The size and spec are lazer engraved on the part above the lock surface, just plain awsome.

 

So I cleaned up the heads today to get them ready for assembly. They were not bad, but there were just some little things that bugged me, for all out heads. There was some minor casting flash and the bosses for the valve guides were way over sized and not centered well on every chamber. Been a while but I got back into the swing of things after a bit. Not really a port job just a clean up. They did the pocket porting at Bill Mitchells.

THe starting point


The bosses shaved and smoothed


I know it does not do much but I decided to gasket match the intake ports.


I wonder if they do this to the ones they flow test cause some of this stuff looks like it could cause a little bit of an issue. Big bosses would defeat the purpose of undercut valves I would think

 

Looking good

 

Man I had a fun but busy weekend in the garage with friends and all. Friday night we did the tear down of the old engine to get all the useable parts. Taking it apart made me want to cry. It brought back all the memories and time I put into that engine, and the bottom end still looks absolutely gorgeous. Bearings looked awsome so I caught it before anything else got damaged. The cam looks like it may be able to be reground.



My buddy Portholio came over and decided to work some magic on my heads. He really is an artist. I had cleaned them up, but now they look like a slip and slide for air and fuel. Text book ports. Here is our ode to the magazine shots.








After a couple hours cleaning, I set up the lab and started measuring out spring pressures, I had some custom shims made at .30 and .60 the fit so snug in the spring base it is almost a challenge to seat them.




I managed to get about 4 valves done. The guy machining the seats must of had a couple to drink that day. Doing my best to get about 120lb seat pressure, without going much over 350 lbs on the fully open. THis should keep the LS7 lifters in good shape at 6500 RPM while adequately keeping the valves under control under boost.

 

very nice project you have going on there! let's see the bird it'll be going into

 

Got some catch up tp do on this thread :-)

I did a great deal of searching on the net and did not find much on the subject of doing a high lift cam and using OEM roller lifters. I did find many wives tales of not using a reduced base circle cam of cam with over .535 lift, unless you go with Crane's 600 dollar lifters or the aftermarket link bar type lifters that broke and destructed my last engine.

I purchased a Dart SHP block (I am not sure how different it is from a stock roller block), Comp Cams Big nitrous, roller cam on reduced base circle, and LS7 lifters. I am happy to report, it all mocked up excellent with no problems of losing the oil groove out the bottom or falling below the dog bone. I am extremely happy as I am going to have the performance I want with the proven reliabilty of the OEM setup and I do not have to fear link bars coming apart.

Here is the Comp base part number I started with.


Here is cam on the base circle and the dog bones.


Here is a picture of the bottom of the lifters.


You can't see it well but there is almost exactly .25 inches above the lifter bore, when the lifter is on base circle of the cam.


The bore is about 1.7" long as shown here.


So if you add 1.7 to .25 you get 1.95 and that will give you the liength down the lifter that is in the bore, to make sure the oil groove is not falling out, which I am glad to report there is quite a safety margin as shown here.


So it is not a .6 inch lift cam but decent size, but after looking at these pics and measuring I don't think I would be scared to go considerably larger, and if using Ls7 lifters supposedly these if setup right can rev to at least 7000 RPM. Sounds like a win win to me.

 

Well I since I am waiting on the correct cam retainer to arrive, I had to do something in the garage, my wife would tell ya there are plenty of things that need done, but I think this was a good use of my time.

I got a good deal on a timing cover,$35 for a Cloyes. Decided to see just how shiney I could make it :-)




Not bad for an old used cover!

 

Well timing a cam has never been so eventfull. I made my customary couple of revolutions to check everything turned ok AND IT DIDN'T! First time I have ever run into it, but it is also the first time I have built a 406. I have Ohio Crankshaft 4340 rods, very similar to SCAT rods. I am using the Wave-loc bolts. I had Ohio clearance the rods when they put together the short block, but unfortunately I still had really tight clearance on the #2 and #6 rods. I am running Comps NX288HR cam, not too crazy, but decent size. It is a hydraulic roller. When I was getting ready to degree the cam, I always run the motor through 2 complete rotations and check everything. Thats when I found it, not sure why it was only on those two cylinder? It did not take much at all to make about .40 of clearance. I took the rods out and just touched them with a course 3M scotch pad on a little drum sander. After that everything looked great. If the timing chain ever goes this motor is going to be all over the road though!!!!!



Yes I thought about balance and all, but I really don't believe I took more than a gram or so.

 

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tech...-question.html

 

It will be replacing the long block on this.



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And here is the car

 

Beautiful car! Any updates?

 

Well not as many updates as I would like, but a couple. Got the long block together, it is waiting on a set of custom T&D shaft rockers as the head ports get in the way of the pushrods. Good problem to have. I had all the brackets and SC piping powder coated. Currently the engine bay is stripped and getting ready for a repaint.

I went rogue on a basement and motorcycle project this year, and unfortunately Firechicken progress has been slow. It will live up to its emblem though:-)