the block was sonic tested good. we looked over the heads and now that they have a bit of carbon on them you can be where the head has been welded and a few of the porosity holes are still visable along with a small crack in the cylinder that was leaky.

 

hope you get it straightened out

 

head shop is going to take all the valve train off the heads and put them on a new set of Kaase Scj's. They will be ready on friday before 5. The bad thing is that the new ones have no port work done.

 

The new heads may not flow aswell, but atleast they will be flowing air and fuel instead of coolant.

 

I think that we will run straight water for a few days to make sure all is straightened out. You coming out to Coys deal on saturday? lots of good ford parts coming from cheyenne.

 

I am not sure if i will be out at the swap meet on sat. I migiht be looking at another future project on saturday... Another oddball car i have never seen out at bandimere and is about 900-1200 pounds lighter than the dodge. Something to work on in the future.


Good luck getting the engine back together!

 

What kind of car?

 

The most oddball car I have ever seen at a drag strip was a Borgword Isabella. It had a BBC with a huge supercharger.

 

If i end up liking how it looks in person ill let everyone know lol. Things can look good on the internet and be a little bit more crappy in person. I did some searching though, and seems like a few people have built them already, but not around here.... so i might still mess around with it.

 

Some years of the borgward's have pretty similar looks to old studebakers from the side, IMO.

 

totally agree. just had never seen one before.

still hoping on a test drive soon. picking up the heads on friday, swap meet saturday and heads and intake on sunday.

 

I got some different heads for the car now and ordering valve springs, retainers, gaskets and fluids soon. I think the heads will help a little and got them in trade so not a ton of money leaving my pockets. They are some closed chamber heads off of a 396 so they should up my compression enough to make the camshaft i have work better.

Did you get new gaskets and fluids out of the company that sold you the heads, or are you having to do that part out of pocket?

 

good luck with the new heads. How much do you think the new heads will help? What kinds of numbers are you hoping for?
gaskets and fluids are coming out of pocket which is about $150. Not the best deal but just happy that they were willing to trade for a set that don't leak.

 

I am thinking that the biggest gains from the heads will be from:

1. Correct valve springs, that will actually work with the cam
2. Smaller combustion chamber size, which will raise CR 1-2 points to between 10.0:1 and 10.5:1
3. Better flow than the stock peaunut port truck heads i have now.
4. Closer matched intake ports to my intake manifold, and closer matched exhaust ports to my headers.

With the correct valve springs, i think i will be getting full potential out of the cam. I bet that the stock springs i have in there right now are binding up the coils pretty fierce. I should also be able to get another 500-750 very powerful RPM out of the engine because i will not be floating valves at 4,800 RPM any longer.

I think the heads will not cause a HUGE drop off in elapsed time, probably 3 to 4 tenths.. But they should help put the engine into better mechanical shape, and should help with consistency more than power.

By the way, i have some weld draglites with some VW sized tires on them. I am planning on swapping out the chevy rally wheels and "muscle car" tires that are on the front of the dodge with the draglites and BS'ing everyone at the track that the tire / rim swap was all that gave me the 3-4 tenths..

Watch them all run out and buy some weld draglites for the next race lol.

When i got my truck from the 16's to the 14's I told everyone that it was because i had 2 spark plug wires in the wrong spots on the distributor cap, and i swapped them to where they belong... After watching people scratch their heads for a race or two i broke the news to them that i did a carb swap and a carb tune and that the spark plug wires had nothing to do with it dropping 2 more seconds off of the 1/4 mile time..

All said and done, after putting the new hardware on these heads and installing them, i will have a solid mid 13 second car (at 5,280 feet) for about $3,250 total build cost.

I will try to post a photo from this last weekend of the dodge racing. I was running 16 PSI in the slicks and wrinkling the sidewall up pretty good... I have never wrinkled a sidewall up like this unless i was running 12 or less PSI in the slicks (with a 4.56 gear also).

Still not too sure about the swap meet tomorrow... PM me a number to call you on, so if i get out there i can meet up with you for a few minutes.

 

Missed you at the swap meet but it was pretty bare. I think the weather scared people off. Sold a few things and ended up ahead for the weekend but still brought alot of older ford race parts home. Picked up the heads on friday and the new unported heads that we traded for turned out to be Kaase p-51's new in the box. not to bad a deal i don't think. I think i am going to come down to bandimere in a week or so to check out the fridays night races.

Sounds like you got a pretty solid race car for less than $3,500. Any luck with the new car project?