511 on the road!!!
 

Woohoooo!!! I finally did it! Two short trips, no wrecker call. Sorry Greg. :)

Got all the important stuff taken care of, brakes, drivetrain, steering, cutting inner fenders to fit headers, etc... and took her out for a spin.

First thing I wanted to test the brakes. So in my gravel driveway I rolled it up to about 5mph and brought it back to a stop. So far so good. Looked to my left and saw a Yellow Jacket trying to come in the driver's window. Without thinking I mashed the gas to get away from it. Stupid. Tomorrow I'll get my shovel out and put all the rocks back.

Second, nice, easy trip to Grandma's house next door, half a mile, rural road, wife and 2yr old daughter. So far so good. A little different than I remembered from 5 years ago, but I attribute that to a solid motor plate, new 38.5" tires, and detroit locker. I pull into grandmas gravel driveway, apply the brakes to stop and turn around, and the engine dies along with a metallic clanking sound. Panic. I have been around long enough to know that there is NO metallic sound that caused the engine to die that turns out good. I look out the back window and see my battery and its tray laying in the driveway. Whew! What a relief. So I put the bolts in the battery tray, reconnect the battery and home we go.

Third, nice easy trip with my 16 year old Son who has come to visit. Past Grandmas to the next driveway. One mile. Stop, turn around, halfway through second gear I let it have a little air. Picks up RPM well, rear end feels loose. Look back, sure enough, two black tracks. No broken motor plate, no metallic clanking sounds. So far so good. Just short of my driveway I slow it down to second gear, 2000rpm and give it about 3/4 throttle. GRRRRRRR...Whap. RPMs come up fast. I wasn't looking at the tach, so I don't know where it went, but the limiter is set to 6500, and I didn't hit the limiter so it wasn't real high. Felt good and strong, look back, two nice straight 48 foot black tracks. Pull in the driveway, shut it down, let several months of stress melt away.

I was very pleased with the performance considering:

Carb is out of the box with the exception of dropping 7 jet sizes for altitude.
I am positive the power valve is opening too soon.
I have a light silver and a blue spring in the dizzy to slow the advance.

So, that's it. I am beginning to absorb some barley pop, and will be in the hot tub soon.

-Scouder

Congrats Scoot!!! we have to see some tape now....after all this and watching you do all this fabrication and mods..some of us feal we were turning wrench's there with ya... Great... I bet your Boy was tickled S...less...Like Dad when can I drive it ..

Thanks for the update...Russ

I will DEFINATELY post some video for you guys in a few weeks. I am going to work the bugs out of this thing little by little before I let it have all the air it wants, but once I do I'll get some clips posted. In the meantime, I'll try to post some of the new parts in the Gallery. Maybe tomorrow.

-Scouder

PS. My boy was impressed. He was amazed that it turned the tires that easy from a roll. He thought you had to power brake or dump the clutch to get the rear wheels to spin like that.

Sounds good!! LMAO!! about what ya said about your son...I remember when...my son's 32 now..and I let him drive a Brand X that I had...he finally talked me out of it..and in two weeks he called and asked me if I had made roller skates for the roof?? Yep he fliped my 70 SS Nova.. with a injected 454 in it.. AND it was the last!! LOL! Russ

Sometimes we forget how much 400+ HP really is. We get pretty casual about throwing numbers around, 450,500 and even more are not that hard to get these days. Very easy to end up with inversion if you aren't on top of it all the time.

-Scouder

Oh yes I agree....I just like something sneaky?? LOL!! I do have a cat that lives up the road..that has one of the dog Rams 350HP I think? would like to make him eat S..

then he says he'll just go get a SR10...and I said good for you...Ya cant do anything with it? Hell go ahead you didnt build it..I built mine!!

There is just no arguing with some people. I had a Hemi Ram. It was OK, but it would barely beat my wifes 97 V8 Tbird. If your engine makes the power it should then he has no chance. If he spends 50+ thousand dollars on an SRT10 to beat your old Ford then you've made him eat sh**, you've made your point, and he has made your point too. Game, set, and match.

UncleFudd posted a while back that you can't buy respect, and I agree. I have much more respect for a home-built custom, no matter what it is, than a store bought, high dollar mass-marketing-mobile. You can't buy a compliment from this forum, for example, but you can earn one, and that is so much better.

-Scouder

Hey man whats the engine plane on the front of your motor? Is it for motor flex? I assume you fabed it yourself?

Yep. Made it myself. It is the motor mount. The motor mounts on the side of the block are no more. I didn't like where the factory mounts held the engine, too high, too far forward (for me), so I took em off and built the plate to put the engine where I wanted it. I lowered it 2" and moved it back in the frame 1.5".

-Scouder

Now is that a front and rear Plate?

There will be no rear plate. I will fab a mount that ties into the tranny mount bolts and provides support to the frame. I will also be putting in a rod on each side to provide fore and aft support. I don't want the engine flying out through the grille if I slam on the brakes! :)

-Scouder

Well thats now that he has BRAKES!!! LOL!!!

BTW..What if I went to an 850cfm Holley? 545HP huh? Hmmmm...Really?

Now your tellin me the only thing holding that motor in is that plate.....? Cool.....

Whats it made out of 301? how thick? Now that im looking at it it looks aluminum like 6061 .125" . very bold!:-X10

I'll bet that is a pretty good feeling Brian! Congratulations on getting it there. It will be all easy rolling from here now that its actually moving under its own power. Make sure you let her rip to redline on that video! I like to hear them roar! I will take mine to 6,000 next time as I actually have a tach now.

Very good guess. 6061 T6 .250.

-Scouder

Thats very cool stuff Im gonna have to look into that.....It would bend before it would snap. Add some rear sopports and that thing is good and anchored.

Do you have the 6.5 power valve still? That probably is a little high.

Congrats Scouder. Sounds like she's all there. It must be making a lot more power than mine. Mine will not spin them for 48ft! And my tires are smaller.

Of course, I'm sitting 500 lbs of gas just ahead of the axle :-)


Have fun, but watch out or OEI (operator equipment inversion, had to correct a few recent misinterpretations).

It's got the 6.5. Which would probably be OK at sea level, but up here on the hill I'm sure it's opening too soon. I'll have to get a vacuum gauge on this thing so I can tell what valve to get.

Another interesting note. When I first got the cam back in, and fired it up, I was messing with the timing just by ear. I thought I could just advance it until it kicked back against the starter, then back it up a little to get it close. It finally started kicking back with the engine hot, so I backed it up and left it. The problem was that when it got to around 3000rpm it would get real ratty on me, and wouldn't gain rpm anymore. So I put in a blue spring to slow the advance down, and put in the 18 degree bumbpstop. Didn't help so I figured I would just find the problem during my test runs. Yesterday, before I took it for it's maiden voyage I put a timing light on it and found it was set at almost 36 degrees initial! It was starting fine! I pulled it back to 18 degrees and did my runs just fine. Next set of runs I'm putting the light silver springs in, and setting the initial to 24 degrees. This will give me 42 total. We will see soon. Just interesting to have it that far ahead with no starting problems.

-Scouder

That is awesome scoot, cant wait to see it run on the video, and greg hows the 446 runnin now does it feel strong, and I must have missed the 500lbs of gas thing.

I took the ol' girl out for another stretch of the legs tonite. I advanced the timing to 24 degrees initial, put in the lighter springs, and left the 18 degree bumpstop in. After warming her up I did another roll on from 2000 rpm. There was a very slight hesitation since I haven't tuned the carb yet, but she dug hard to about 4000 then broke the tires loose. It went ratty just as I let off the throttle and I was concerned because it should have been smooth. As it turns out it was the rev limiter at 6500. The next run I watched it spike the rpm and sure enough it went from 4000 to 6500 in a blink. I think I'm gonna back the timing to 20-22 degrees and leave it there for now and start working on the carb to clean up my transitions. I'm impressed though how fast it takes those big heavy tires loose, especially when you consider that with my 38.5" tires and a 4.11 my effective gear ratio is the same as someone with a 30" tire and 3.20 gears.

-Scouder

Scouder, refresh my memory, what heads are you running on that?

Scoot...Seems like eveytime you post a run..I seem to see it in my minds eye...awesome!! and Kurt he's running KC Stage III Heads on that beast!

In addition to what I posted on last nights run, I thought I would make and initial assessment of the engine. It is still too early to say for sure how She is going to be, but I am starting to get a feel for it, and I thought it might be useful to some of you guys who are building some pretty hot engines to have a baseline for comparison. I know I love it when somebody posts their build list, then describes the engines behavior so I can form some opinions. I will post the build sheet at the bottom.

The engine idles fast and rough. I would guess I'm gonna end up with an idle in the 900 range, though I have it set at 1100 right now. Off idle it still makes gobs of torque even with the KCIII's, Victor, and big cam. I would say it is more than any FE I have had in the past. It starts to really dig at around 3000-3500. That is the stage that you can tell you are putting some serious power to the ground. At 4000 it hits again with a vengence. I am assuming that this is where everything starts to work together. From 4000-6500 it is spinning to tires for me, so all I can say is it gets there in a hell of a hurry. It is obvious that this engine has big ports and big cam. When it gets up around that 4000 range it is in it's element. My feeling when I hit the rev limiter was that the engine was no where close to done. In fact it was so smooth that I was surprised I was at 6500 already. I am thinking that since I want to keep it limited to 6500 that I may entertain something like the 348801 crane in the future just to compare.

Here's the build list for anybody interested:

Shelby 4.375 block
LAE Kryptonite 4.25 billet crank
Oliver 6.535 BBC Rods
Arias forged 12:1 pistons
KC Stage III heads
Victor
Mighty Demon 850
Cam Research 265/271 @.050 .695 lift 110lsa 105cl
Erson Rockers
Melling M57 HV oil pump
Canton T pan with windage tray
2 1/8 fenderwell exit headers with 4" collector
CSI electric water pump
BG 220gph electric pump to Aeromotive bypass regulator
-10an lines from tank to reg and back, -6an to each floatbowl

-Scouder

Are you running on 93 Octane pump gas?

man you have to be pushing like over 650 hp.....Thats my rough estimate.

My initial test runs were done on 110. I am going to come down to a 50/50 mix of 110 and 91 for the next set of tests, then finally the big test, straight 91. We don't get 93 up on the hill. Apparently the oil companies know we don't need as much octane up here.

-Scouder

My sea level HP should be at least that. Maybe more. That is if I can tune it sufficiently to let the HP out!

-Scouder

do you overheat at stoplights and stuff with that much power?

I haven't seen any tendency to overheat. With the aluminum block, heads and radiator it seems to be just the opposite. It takes the engine quite a while to come up to temp. I'll know more as I get more miles on it and start to make longer trips from the house.

-Scouder

Nice work Scouder :-X22 You know that if you want that motor tested at a "lower" altitude, you can ship East and I'll get it taken care of for you :-X24

Enjoy --Mike

I agree Scouder. I think you should come South, however. That truck should be tested on the beach. It just makes since being a 4x4! We have lots of beach that you can legally drive on here in Texas. We also have lots of incredible scenery (NO, I'm not talking about our ugly beaches).

I think that good slimey Iowa mud would be just the thing to test it out. There's an event called the "Mud Run" in Plainfield Iowa. Looks like just the thing for your truck to dominate Scouder. Basically, they dig a big trench, fill it halfway with water, and let 'em go! Loads of fun and mud flying everywhere.

I'm glad to see you got it on the road good job!

Glad to hear you got it running with no pain...........(sorta).

Nothing to make you smile more than the first time you get to launch it!!

If you get tired of that alum. block...I'm sure my wagon could use the weight break ;)

Congrats

I am glad to hear it is running well. Have you tryed it in the dirt yet? Hope your axles are at least 1-ton. with that much tq you might need Rockwells. with some 48.5 Super Swampers you would be unstoppable.
I am definitly jellous.

Hey larry..dont want to steal Brains post..but what year did you say you bought your bed cover for your truck?? I have a 70 F250?

Thanks guys for the compliments (and the offers). It means alot coming from a forum like this.

Now it's back to finish work. Little stuff that I let slide so I could get it on the road. While I'm on the subject, I don't suppose any of you guys have seen a cool way to mount an alternator on a motorplate?

It's time for me to mount the alternator, vacuum pump, and saginaw steering box on the front of the engine, and anything to simplify will help. I cannot use the stock pieces because I dont have a stock waterpump anymore.

-Scouder

I dont know Brain? thats a tough call... I think anyway you look at it..Unless you mount it high on the motor plate.. your going to weakin it? I'LL have to go back and look at your gallery..

From the drag racers I have seen, some machined alum. blocks used to space items on mount plate works great and looks clean. Sorry no pictures, but with some well thought out placement, it would work great. Hang them low, off bottom of plate.