Yep, he's done. Shame though. I respected him till this. He builds some of the quickest, and reliable stuff in the area. A local hero and sponsor of 2 local dragstrips. You would not know it if you looked at my stuff.

 

Well, finished checking out the block. Decks are actually flat and square. The bores are out a bit. My .030 overbore was .031 and oval. Took another .003 to clean up. That puts my piston to wall clearance at approx .005 on a cast piston. F' it! I am gonna run it until the race season ends and punch it to .040. Should be a noisy sob. Again, trust no one! My other friend who is fixing the block says he runs tons of clearance on some ford race motors. They live but make noise. I am gonna spray the snot out of this one.

 

I think its good that the block is still usable, I dont understand how the machinist got it ovaled, just used hone plates? Sorry to hear about both motors as well, but I think its better to know now before it can become worse. It sounds like aside from alignment/bal. set-up (which I feel I need to buy also because of poor work) is a Sunnen machine that chucks up the block and cuts 4 at a time in your immediate future?

Man when it gets to that point, I can only say that I respect your patience and attitude, no/bashing, no/postal. Perhaps there is reason (higher plan) that we cant see, at least I try to believe this when all becomes a bit grey, dwelling on the neg. has never helped for me either.

 

This is an excellent point. Pete, I believe you found the tell-tale indication at the tops of the cyl. walls that points to a torque plate NOT being used in the hone job?

Any machine shop worth a milligram of salt should always bolt on a torque plate to simulate the effect of heads being bolted on. After all, the time involved to do this might cost what - an additional $40 or $50 tops? If I was the machinist and an uninformed customer asked me not to, I would ignore them and be obligated to do it anyway

 

$250.00 to bore and hone with plates on my end... Not enough additional setup time NOT to do it IMO... Fixturing the block takes more time than anything; bolting on the torque plate takes 10 minutes, tops...
-Jeb

 

Jeb, on my end it was $210.80 for .030 overbore & hone with torque plate....close to the same.....in talking with the builder its adds a little additional time, not much - as you mentioned.

 

Brad you guys seem to have a lot in common. It's nice when a so called "respectable" person gets their ego so big that they refuse to believe they can make mistakes. That is when it gets expensive.

A friend of mine had an interesting experience with the machine shop once. He had a 350 LT1 that he spun the bearings in. He was told that the block could be salvaged but the main caps were shot. He bought 4 bolt splayed caps and a completely forged 396 assembly. He took it to the local machine shop to have it all clearanced. They did so and returned all the pieces. We went about putting the pieces of the engine together when we made a critical mistake. The rods had a chamfered side and a flat side where they ran on the crank. Chamfered side goes towards the weights while the flat side goes to the other rod. Stock rods were not like that and we didn't notice. I know I didn't notice because it was the first time I had ever seen a motor go together. My friend had actually built a few. Well as it turns out if you put the rods in backwards this creates enough friction that when you get all 8 of them in there, you can't turn the rotating assembly any more. Obviously that's not gonna work. When we found the error we were annoyed at ourselves for being so stupid, but relieved at the same time. At this point there was no harm, we could just take it apart and put the rods together correctly and it would work.

Well, taking the rod caps off, one of them somehow stripped in the rod. I don't know if it was cross threaded or what, but it wasn't a good day, that ended our engine building for that night. My friend was able to talk with the vendor and they actually sent him one connecting rod. He took it all back to the machine shop to have them press the wrist pins, double check the clearance on the rod, etc. When he picked up the engine the second time they told him, "we went ahead and assembled it for ya." My friend took it on faith that everything was alright, BIG MISTAKE. We put the engine all back together and after getting a lot of other things sorted out finally got the engine to run. It lasted approximately 300 miles before it spun every main bearing in it. When we took the engine back apart we found the problem.

The block had been line bored for the crankshaft, because of this it requied an oversized bearing. When we originally put the engine together incorrectly we used the right size bearing. When the machine shop put it together the second time they used standard sized bearings!

The shop refused to take any responsibility, etc. I can't place a lot of blame. Both sides made mistakes that totaled up to the cluster that it turned into. It was a huge learning experience for myself. Should I ever build a big stroker motor I am going to do a lot of things differently.

 

I was charged for torque plates. The bores were "rather" uniform until we "kissed" the bores with the sunnen. All kinds of waves and shadows were seen. My buddy that is fixing the mess said he has never seen such an unusual situation and could not imagine how it occured .He saidit is the worst hone job he as ever seen including some do it yourself, backyard stuff. A bad thing has turned good though. I cashed in a favor today. I have a set of .040 pistons and plasma moly rings on the way. No charge, FREE. I have a great bunch of friends. Free pistons, free machine work, cost on other parts and a free dyno session at the end of the build. Today is a great day!

 

It's good to hear that something is finally going your way! If I was a litlle closer, I'd offer to come out and give you a hand, or at least be comic relief! Best of luck!

 

Hey Pete, thats great news indeed

Nathan's right, we both have dealt with jerks with egos 100 miles high but no sense of responsibility and respectability to see it all through

 

Thanks for the kind words guys. I just received more decent news. The 8 rods were pressed off of the pistons and carefully checked. No cracks or bends. 2 were not round and are slightly tight. A quick hone will fix them right up. I expected 8 rods to = 8 problems. I believe all of the suprises are over at this point. Crank came back yesreday as well. Factory nodular 400 crank was checked for cracks and straightness. Mains and rod journals were reground and perfectly polished. Rear thrust surface was welded up and reground. All this for the buddy price of $130. The crank grinder assures me that a repaired (welded) thrust is actually better than new. Weld is harder than origional metal. I hope this is true. I offered to buy a new crank and he said no. Repair it. Custom cam will be ordered tuesday and bearings will arrive monday. It is Miller time!

 

Pete, as a matter of fact I'm drinking a Miller Lite right now as I type. Our phone conversation set me back a few, so I'm making up for it
All this is amazing news indeed. You know what, as they say what comes around goes around. You've got alot of credit to cash in on with folks. I was worried just 2 weeks ago, really worried. Things are brighter and its all gonna get even better

 

Like I said earlier, progress is good. It sure is nice to see light at the end of the tunnel. I am very happy to have found all the problems. Now we can cross the t's and dot the i's. Like RichS said: 3rd time is a charm.