Da Nailhead adventures by whatever

12 minute(s) of a 113 minute read

It's been quite a while, but I have a some progress since!

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So I ended up buying a lot of parts from Russ Martin. It was hard, his service is somewhat slow, but reliable. We had some issues, but solved them and finally I brought the parts here, by the end of August.

(too many parts for a table! but the hood of my '68 Z turned out to be very nice to sort them out!)

The complete list of parts, if any one is interested:

- pistons 401 .030 over - Kanter Auto

- piston rings - Grant (sad, but true)

- main bearings .010 - Federal Mogul

- rod bearings .010 - Rebuilder's Choice / Kanter

- cam bearings - Clevite-77

- camshaft (performance 218/228) - TA Performance

- oil pump rebuild kit

- valve guides - cast iron

- proper lifters

- roller chain - Russ Martin

- valve springs for performance cam - TA Perf

- valve locks - Russ Martin (they are crap, don't get them)

- temp sensor

- oil pressure sensor

- brass freeze plugs

- complete 401 gasket set - Russ Martin

- intake valve seals

- ARP head studs

- rebuilt rocker arms with shafts, no stands

- 65 401 PCV kit

- cast aluminum thermostat outlet housing

- thermostat

- Carter AFB heat sheild, gaskets

- adjustable pushrods (didn't want because of the price, but he charged me those. Good stuff!)

- oil galley plugs - Russ Martin, made by Carmen Faso

- ARP main stud kit - TA Perf

- oversize valves - TA Perf

- ARP timing cover bolts (some were broken)

- spark plug wires - Accel Super Stock 4000 black

- oil filter x2 - AC Delco

- ARP connecting rod bolt kit

- rod bearings x8 - Clevite 3 layer

- intake manifold gasket 401 - steel

- valve cover gasket - Fel-Pro

- spark plug x 8 - NGK Iridium

- distributor breakerless ignition system - Pertronix Ignitor I

- 40 000V ignition coil - Pertronix

(actually, forgot about cap and rotor,

the water pump is still great, so no water pump)

Some parts were duplicated as a backup.

Also I got the a reprint of the factory service manual from CARS Inc. in NJ.

Here are the slight oversize valves from TA Performance.

I didn't like the piston top finish, actually. It's an ideal surface for clogging and etc.

The piston is made by Kanter, the quality is pretty damn good!

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Too aid disassembly, I have machined these simple tools.

Went like a charm! This thing may also aid during assembly!

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Meanwhile, there was a delay with valve guides, so I've tried machining new valve guides from graphite-iron-copper powder composite.

But it was kinda too easy to chip, so I was in doubt that it could hold the pressures (side loads) that you have with short rocker arms. So I got the common cast iron ones.

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The crank was measured with some good tools. Turned out that it had a spun bearing, but they didn't regrind it, so the new bearings slightly polished the journal. Anyway, it did hold up the punishment pretty good!

Torqued and measured the mains for proper clearance. It did jump around! So I got journal specific sizes for the crank grinder.

I was trying to get the correct measurement for the rod bearings, but the measurements were very very uncertain from rod to rod, and imperial tool too metric conversions made everything worse. I had those re-measured several times...

Anyway, I decided to mock-up a stock piston and rod back, to see the deck height and piston protrusion, before getting the block decked. (sorry for quality)

It was waaay down lower the deck. That's probably where the compression ratio gets lost.

The piston top were down the deck for 1.5 mm on one side and 1.2 mm for the other. I measured the piston top height for the stock piston that I used (measured inner dia of the piston pin and length from inner pin point to the top) and compared that with new pistons - new pistons were going to be 0.2 mm lower. 

So I got it decked for radical 1.5 mm, which did cost me a lot! But since I have the adjustable pushrods and a clear understanding of the benefits, I tried to do my best. The tighter we push the flat parts of the piston to the flat parts of the head, the more squish action would be produced. Squish produces mixture swirl, avoids detonation and etc.

I asked for the finest possible finish. It was done like it should have been done!

But you still need to chamfer the thread edges! I took a 17 mm (that's like 0.67 in) drill bit and spun it backwards - the result was very good. 

Meanwhile I got some parts glass beaded and then powdercoated.

The aluminum timing cover, lifter valley and water pump would be painted later with the engine block.

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Back to the rods.

Got them measured few times, but the measurements were still screwed!

Two rods had major damage.

So I can say that Rebuilders Choice bearings are not that bad as I expected. They are coated and look pretty nice, but I bet they are 2-layer ones, so since I aim at higher compression and higher horsepower, I wanted to stay with 3-layer bearings.

What I didn't expect was that Clevite rod bearings might turn out bad. But they did! The final inner was not round! The rods were not 100% ideal, but their out-of-roundness was withing specs. And all Clevite bearings did "shift" toward some expectable 45 degree place on the rod bearing shell. The shift was like 0.0007-0.0009 in on one side (!), which resulted in a diagonal size of 2 x 0.0007-0.0009 in, which is too damn much. Only one set from 8 was totally round.

Finally, I ended up with wrong specs that I gave to my grinder the day before, cause of the conversion to of dial indicator specs to metric system forth and back. So I recalculated everything and got the idea that I wasn't going to have a correct clearance with 1st undersize bearings after regringing.. :P Too bad I bought another 10 Clevite .010 sets the same day. Well, my bad.

Since we had 2 bad rods, I decided to go for reconditioned ones and got few sets of 2nd undersize...

---------- Post added at 06:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:45 AM ----------

Time for the heads and porting tips! (actually, combustion chamber mods for now) 

Basically, you start with that

and end up with that 

as the first stage of your combustion chamber work - the rough stage with burrs.

Please, check out the video, this should explain more about these cylinder head mods.