I have the general idea, but what is it exactly? I'm assuming its a way to distinguish your rebuild from Bubba's?

 

It's a general term used when the rotating assy (crank, rods, pistons etc) are all balenced on a special machine. Also refers to the shops ability to machine where needed in somewhat a "clean-room" manner for being extremally precise.

Others should chim in on this one for sure............

:steering:

 

:iagree:

That's a term I haven't heard in a while. But edsalinas is on the money about the "balance" part. "Blueprinted" is basically making sure that all of the "specs" for the piston deck height to the block, the rod and main bearing clearances, the wrist pin clearances, piston fit to the cylinder, piston ring tolerances, valve spring heights, pressures, lap, seating, lift, measuring and obtaining the correct "cc" value for each cylinder, port flow and polishing and about as many others as I have listed. Extremely precise AND extremely **** :yesnod: :yesnod:

Pappy's 95 :cheers:

 

Do a google search on 'engine blueprinting' and you will find more than you ever wanted to know. there are various books about it too. Here is a link to a quick synopsis I found doing the search http://www.hastingsmfg.com/Service%2...ueprinting.htm

Basically extreme blueprinting means taking EVERY dimension on every part on/in the engine and tuning it to its optimal dimensions/volume. There is basic blueprinting like checking piston dimensions in various planes, ring end gaps, or weights of connecting rods, degreeing in a cam, measuring pushrod lengths, etc, etc. Then you can do the extremes like are all the lifter bores (or cylinder bores for that matter) in the exact plane they need to be in and within 'x' thousands of being where they should be. Or another example could be are the crank throws exactly 'x' degrees apart, or are all the main bearing bores in the same exact plane. An easy/common blueprinting example is making all the cylinder head compression chambers the same volume ('cc' ing the heads). Then you can CC the pistons in the bores at TDC (and how do you know what TDC is EXACTLY)There is the $500 blueprinting job and then there are the blueprinting jobs done on $50,000+ race motors. Where you and I might go with the tolerances on bearings from the factory manual the race shop might want all the rod bearing clearances to be exactly the same. It makes interesting reading. I never imagined all the things you could check if time and particularly money was no object. Was reading some Smokey Unick books and one time he was measuring horsepower per cylinder and modifying each cylinders compression ratio to get the HP numbers the same.

 

the 2 acts may be worth a couple of horsepower, but the durability improvements will be priceless.

 

read this list
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/zerothread?id=608598

then get these books, youll do yourself a big favor, buy and read these books carefully first, youll save hundreds of hours and a ton of money just from the MISTAKES you won,t make by following the advise/directions inside versus learning everything the hard way
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...530872-0568664
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

 

In a nutshell and for simplicities sake, balancing is pretty much as described above. It is the process by which the reciprocating assembly is, well, balanced. Here's how we do it (and this reflects internal or external balance for the most part): We begin by weighing all of the components in the reciprocating assembly. We take the lightest piston and ball mill the others to match it. Then we weigh the rods and if necessary match them to the lightest rod. The the ring pack, rod bearings, wrist pin, spiro-locks are weighed. These figures are added together and we add 3 grams for oil weight and you have your "bobweight." We have a special fixture that uses lead shot to replicate the bobweight of this assembly; this is attached to each of the rod journals on the crankshaft. The crank is then placed in a balancing machine (we use a Winona Van Norman) and spun up; a photo-optic cell corresponds with a reflective mark place on the crank at a certain degree and will tell you exactly where weight needs to be removed or added to the counterweights.

Blueprinting is basically a term for the precison assembly of an engine. It primarily involves setting the bearing clearances to the nth degree, checking runout, stretching the rod bolts, setting thrust (both crank and cam), squaring the deck height... Basically checking and rechecking everything in the assembly. A properly "blueprinted" engine is like a swiss watch; everything is dead nuts on and perfect. This goes a long way in helping durability and careful assembly will often net you a pretty sizable gain in power over simply throwing one together.
-Jeb

 

Thanks for the info and references! :cheers: My brother is gonna hate me even more now.

"Duhh... torque down those con rods."

"But aren't you concerned about shifting the crank shaft's third harmonic into your shiftpoint?"

"WTF are you talking about?? ... I hate you engineers!"

:D

 

Wait a fricken minute, you just became one didn't you???????

Welcome to the REAL party pard ............

let the :party: continue..............