That's the bad part.. without a tune there no fun

 

i agree...Hands Down its Slant 6 all the way.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlCv...eature=related .. if i were to build anything it would be slant 6... still trying to figure the best 5 or 6speed gear box to make it all happen ...

 

lol i have 2 300's laying around and a 223 in my f100.. i wanna get an intake, carb, and nice exhaust header for it..
polish the cyl head..
i couldnt believe my eyes when i saw the gaskets and cylinder walls..
clean!!!

 

i would like to point this out too..
my uncle has a 93 f150 with a 302.. he didnt change the oil for 25k+ miles.. he kept adding a quart of oil every 4k miles..
i had the mechanic change the oil.. not a drop came out.. lol idk how you call it and oil change but he put fresh oil and it still runs after 2 oil changes after the 25k miles

 

On the slant 6, a boy that worked for me had one in the old mid-engined Dodge van. He threw a rod on the way back from Tennessee and drove it home on 5 cyls.

Corvair engines, now that we have better high temperature sealing are pretty oil tight. We had a 1965 Corsa with a 140HP engine that had an Otto OT20 cam in it and was .030 over. It was somewhere between a stage 2 and stage 3 Yenko engine. Didn't leak or blow oil at all. Only problem we ever had was a broken valve spring.

 

Off the top of my head,

Ford 300 I6, Ford 302, Ford Vulcan V6, SHO V6, AMC 232/258/4.0L, Cummins 6BT, MB OM617 are good solid engines.

Ford 4.0 SOHC (death rattle), Toyota 3.slow V6, GM 5.7/6.2/6.5 diesels, Audi/AMC 2.0L are some bad designs.

 

Calling an engine worst just because it leaks oil was a little unfair. A bumper sticker on an old VW bus in the neighborhood reads "...its just marking its territory".

Many who have only worked on inline and V engines cant picture how a Corvair, VW, Porsche, Lycoming, Continental or Franklin horizontally opposed engine looks as a bare assembly. They most resemble a Harley Davidson motorcycle engine. Opportunities for oil leaks are everywhere. Newer Viton rubber seals make recent rebuilds better than the originals in the leakage department.

My current project is a Corvair experimental aircraft engine conversion. The goal is to produce 90hp@3000rpm due to the propeller, on 100 octane leaded avgas. 140hp or turbo heads are no good for that. Ive got a 1967 95hp core as the starting point, OT-10 cam, forged pistons with chrome rings, ARP bolts, radius ground and nitrided crank, folded-fin oil cooler.

Specific to the aircraft installation, there is no cooling fan, open individual exhaust stacks, a large single updraft aircraft carb mounted underneath, with tubular intake and fed by redundant electric pumps and a heavily modified distributor with points and electronic feeding two ignition coils on separate circuits. The flywheel end of the crank is slightly modified to mount the propeller. A fifth main bearing, fed by an external oil line, helps carry the propeller bending loads.

 

Sounds real intriguing. Have you considered mounting the engine inverted so the intake will be on the bottom? I know that would cause some problems with oil pump and ignition. BTW, I had a friend take an early 2.8L chevy distributor and modify it to a 140hp style but using the HEI non-computer module. You could probably do something similar but use remote modules and coils like NASCAR.

 

Since it is wet sump with cam under the crank and the pushrod tubes drain oil from the heads to the sump, inverting the oil system would be difficult. Also, I prefer the exhaust stacks pointing down. One reason for putting the carb near the exhaust is to provide preheated intake air. Carb ice is a real problem on aircraft.

The distributor mod is rather interesting. The points are left in place and a Crane Cams electronic unit is placed at 180 degrees after the vacuum advance is removed and mechanical advance re-curved. The electronic unit will work down to eight volts, important when your alternator quits and you are running down the battery while looking for a place to land.

 

FWIW, the point ignition will work, depending on the coil, down to about 4-5 volts. I push started my 58 F-100 or "roll started" it more times than I care to count when the generator hadn't kept the battery up. If you are running a ballast resistor, the coil runs on 6 volts normally. For that case you could add an emergency bypass that would keep you running a little further, The fuel pumps would be your big drain under those circumstances.

 

Exactly why the points are left in there for the secondary ignition system. Im using Bosch coils with built in ballasts for simplicity and fire safety. You are right, the fuel pumps most likely will quit first.

The thing here is that a traditional Continental or Lycoming engine uses magnetos and mechanical primary fuel pumps. While these components can have failures themselves, normally the engine will continue to run as long as there is fuel in the tank, without external electrical power. Only the very newest Continentals use electronics and I think have a backup alternator. I have no room for two alternators, and too much wiring and switching complexity leads to other possible failure points, plus possible confusion during an emergency.

 

I understand that. My best friend is an IA (Aircraft Inspector) and he has a Cozy and is quite familiar with double redundancy (he retired from NASA Langley). Could you keep the Corvair mechanical fuel pump and run the line from one of the electric ones through it?

 

I wanted to go with the stock mechanical pump, but others with experience have told me that its failure mode leaks fuel all over the place.

 

I dont know if its been mentioned but the vw 1.6 diesel motors is one of the longest lasting ones ive seen. My family has owned 5 cars with it and all had 350,000 before we sold and ive seen more with 450,000+ that still run than any other this is purely my experiences though

 

Had a 1950-somethinggood Ford F1000 Super Duty, had a V8 535..damn that thing was a monster of a truck!