FE Power Forums
FE Power Forums => Member Projects => Topic started by: jayb on March 19, 2012, 12:09:42 AM
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This week I got started on my new 519" SOHC engine. I last ran this engine in 2009, after rebuilding it after the rocker arm fiasco of Drag Week 2008. In the summer of 2009, with about 700 miles on the engine with the new T&D rocker arms, I broke the long timing chain in the motor. I'm still not sure why that happened, but I suspect a combination of excessive valve spring pressure and a factory style chain led to this failure. Fortunately, I was also putting my 585" SOHC together at the same time, and since it was ready before DW'09 I decided to pull this motor and put in the bigger engine.
I was preparing to put this motor back together as a 500" engine with the 4.375" stroke crank that it had originally come with, when I decided to make the changes to my high riser engine to reduce the stroke, in order to fit a bigger cam in the engine. That left the 4.500" stroke crank from the high riser available for this motor. Since there are no rod to cam clearance issues with a cammer, the big stroke was no problem.
Along with the 4.500" stroke I wanted to make a few other changes to this engine. I had acquired the parts necessary to upgrade the cam drive to one of Paul Munro's setups. Paul's drives use a .250" pin roller chain for the secondary chain, as compared to the .222" pins used on the original style chains. Paul's chains are also true roller chains, whereas the .222" chains are not. Paul's gears are also nitrided like the original Ford gears, rather than flame hardened like some of the cheaper versions are. Having broken one SOHC chain, I had absolutely no desire to repeat that experience, so despite the cost of Paul's setup (around $1000) I decided it was worth the cost.
I also needed to switch to different connecting rods (6.625" center to center rather than 6.700") and thinner head gaskets (0.275" Cometics, rather than the standard .040"), in order to be able to use my new pistons with the bigger stroke of the new crank. The T&D rockers I had were the aluminum versions, and several had been damaged when the chain broke, so I have replaced them with a set of the steel T&D rockers. Finally, I decided to upgrade the cams on this engine to Comp's most recent lobe profiles, rather than the older style cams I'd previously been running. I will fit this engine in the end with the same Hilborn EFI system I've used previously on both SOHCs, but a local friend of mine happens to have a sheet metal intake with two Dominator carbs for an SOHC, so I will start with that intake on the engine for some dyno tests.
The first thing I decided to do on this build was to put together the stub cam assembly. This would be pretty simple if I was content to leave everything assembled like stock, but previous experience with shearing a stub cam key and the resulting engine damage on my first cammer back in 2006 has taught me that the primary and secondary gears on the stub cam should be pinned together to prevent this kind of failure. I have developed a technique for doing this that gives me a lot of confidence, but it requires some substantial modifications to the parts. I got going on the modifications this week. The first thing that has to be done is some half moon shaped cutouts have to be made in the secondary drive gear. I did this on my CNC machine with a carbide end mill, going very slowly. Just like the Ford gears, Munro's gears are very, very hard, and cutting them is very difficult. However, going very slowly and enduring a lot of noise from the machine, I was able to make the modification; see the photo below:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/mod2nddrive.jpg)
The half moon cutouts are for a 5/8" diameter steel bar that needs to be welded in place in each cutout. I cut two 1/2" long sections of the 5/8" bar and Tig welded them to the stub cam gear. Then it was back in the CNC machine where holes were machined flush with the back of the gear and drilled for bolts that would screw into the primary (larger) timing chain gear. Again it was very slow going. Here's a photo of the gear at this point:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/mod2nddrive2.jpg)
Finally I had to flip the gear over and counterbore some holes on the other side, so that the boltheads that went in through this gear would be flush with the top of it; if you don't do that, the bolt heads will hit the front cover when you try to install it.
Next I pressed both gears onto the stub cam, and got set up in the Bridgeport to drill and tap some 5/16-18 holes in the larger gear. Here's a photo of the stub cam assembly at this point:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/stubcamassy.jpg)
I have some special bolts I bought a while back that have a 3/8" solid shank, and a 5/16" thread at the bottom, and the plan was to drill and tap the larger gear and install these bolts to pin the two gears together, so that one couldn't move with respect to the other and upset the cam timing. Unfortunately, drilling the large gear turned out to be impossible with the drill bits I had on hand; the gear was really, really hard, and in the Bridgeport I just couldn't apply the required pressure to get the bits to start cutting. As a result I left this task for later in the week, when the carbide drill bits I ordered today will arrive. Of course, even after I drill the gear it may prove to be impossible to tap it. In that case I will have to drill the hole in the big gear to the same size as the one in the small gear, and press in a pin to lock the gears together.
Next I turned my attention to the short block. This engine uses an aluminum Pond block, which is specially built for use with a cammer. There are a lot of oil passages that are not drilled because the cammer doesn't need them, and other machining operations are left out too. For example, there are no lifter bores in this block, and so the oil galleries running down the lifter bank on each side don't go anywhere. The top oil gallery in the middle of the block is also non-functional, because the oil hole to the number five cam bearing isn't drilled. Also the oil hole to the number three cam bearing isn't drilled, but the number 2 and 4 holes are, because the stock SOHC uses these like a normal sideoiler block to route oil to the heads. Oil to the left head goes through the groove in the second journal of the stub cam, just like it would with a normal FE cam sideoiler cam journal. But of course there is no cam journal in the SOHC at number four. Ford solved this problem by grooving the back side of a normal cam bearing to transfer oil between the two holes in the cam bearing journal, and direct it to the right head. I've put a few SOHCs together like this, but eventually I started checking the oil pressure at the heads while the engine was running, and the right head was always down on pressure compared to the left one with that grooved cam bearing installed. As a result, now I make a custom plug for the number 4 cam bearing bore, that doesn't restrict the oil that goes to the head. Here's a photo of the two piece plug, and another showing the plug installed in the block:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/no4plugs.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/no4plug.jpg)
After getting the plug installed, I started assembly of the short block. This always seems tedious to me, and this engine was no exception. First I did a thorough job of cleaning and blowing out the block, then I set the crank up on the bench and measured all the main bearing journals. Next I assembled the main bearings into the block, torqued all the caps, and used a dial bore gauge (set up off the micrometer I used to measure the mains) to measure the ID of each bearing set. Calculating the bearing clearance it looked a little high, around .0032 to .0036, but still OK, especially given the oil I plan to run in the engine (Valvoline 20W-50 racing oil). Here's a photo of the block with the bearings installed and the main caps torqued in place:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/blockwbearings.jpg)
The Pond and Shelby aluminum blocks have an interference fit between the steel caps and the aluminum block casting. As a result, you have to use a slide hammer to remove the caps. Each cap has a 5/16-18 thread in the top of it to screw the slide hammer into. Here's a photo of my slide hammer installed, getting ready to remove the caps after checking the main bearing inside diameters:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/slidehammer.jpg)
Next I did the same thing with the rods, measuring the rod journals on the crank, and then assembling each rod with its rod bearings and measuring the ID to determine the clearance. Here's a photo of one of the rods; these are supposed to be good for 1000 horsepower:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/1000hprod.jpg)
With my newly calibration-checked torque wrench I torqued the bolts and then checked the stretch to make sure it was within specifications. Crower says the rod bolt should stretch .005" to .007", and mine were all in the .005" to .006" range. Here's a shot of the rod bolt stretch gauge on one of the rods:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/rodboltstretch.jpg)
After the calculations the rod bearing clearance came in right on the money, running from .0022" to .0026".
With all this checking of course I expected no problems with the short block going together. I took everything back apart, then lubed the main bearings, set the crank in the block, installed the caps and torqued the main bolts and cross bolts to spec. Then I tried to spin the crank. It was dead stuck; would not budge! I was pretty confused for about 30 seconds, and then the problem dawned on me. Thinking back to my first assembly of this block in 2006, I had installed the Scat 4.375" stroke crank and had the same problem. It had taken me all day back then to figure out that the oil slinger on the back of the crank was too big in diameter, and was bottoming out in the groove in the block. So, when the caps were torqued, the crank froze in the block. I'd had to take the crank out and cut .020" off the diameter of the oil slinger to eliminate the interference.
I figured I had the same problem all over again. I tore the crank back out of the block, and sure enough I could see witness marks on the outside edge of the oil slinger. Back when this had happened before, I figured it was the Scat crank. But having the same problem with two of them, maybe its the Pond block instead; maybe the groove in the block and cap for the oil slinger just isn't deep enough.
In any case, the solution was fairly simple. Situations like this are the reason I've put some machine tools in my shop over the last ten years or so; rather than being stuck for a week, taking the crank somewhere and waiting for some place to do this work, I can just stick it in my lathe and take care of the problem. Here's a shot of the crank in the lathe, and another with it spinning while I'm cutting the outside diameter of the oil slinger:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/crankonlathe.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/crankonlathespin.jpg)
After recleaning the crank and re-lubing the bearings, it installed in the block and this time spun over beautifully. On to the pistons. Here's a photo of some of the reciprocating components on the bench prior to installation:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/assemblyparts.jpg)
The pistons are 12.5:1 Diamond slugs, coated on the top and sides, and fitted with a low tension ring package including .043" steel top rings, .043" Napier second rings, and a 3mm low tension oil ring combination. The rings are file fit, so I set the top ring up for a .020" end gap and the second for .024". One nice thing about a low tension ring package is that it is easy to install; I used a tapered ring compressor from Summit and the first piston and rod assembly slide right into the bore:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/piston1installed.jpg)
I got one more piston installed before I called it a day today. I should be able to get the rest of the pistons installed this week, and hopefully finish up the stub cam work, so that next weekend I can assemble the heads, install them, and start working on getting the timing gears and chain installed. I'll post another update on this engine next weekend.
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What kind of damage did it do when the camshaft chain broke? I would imagine valves and pistons?
Also you mentioned newly recalibrated torque wrench, did you recalibrate or just verify that it was in calibration specs?
I am kind of wondering how a torque wrench is calibrated if it was found to be off.
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I see that you saw my other post on the torque wrench calibration. To change the calibration I believe the plastic handle has to be taken off the wrench, and there is a nut that tightens or loosens a torsion bar to adjust the calibration.
When the chain broke the pistons hit the valves, and several of the valves bent just a hair, plus five of the rocker arms broke. Also, the broken chain balled up inside the front cover and got wedged between the stub cam gear and the cover itself, cracking the cover and knocking two teeth off the stub cam gear. The pistons were marked up, but were still usable. However, since then I've gotten new pistons for the engine anyway.
I got the engine back together rather quickly, by replacing the chain and the rockers. I was able to reuse the front cover despite the crack in it, and surprising the engine ran pretty well despite having a few bent valves. But I only put another couple hundred miles on it like that, before I pulled it in favor of the bigger SOHC.
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Looking good Jay!
Have you used those napier rings before? That's what I had in my Hemi when we dynoed it and remember, it smoked like a chimney.
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Amazing the work to fix the gear issue. Your cam bore hole plug also really shows just well you know these engines.
Back to the gear issue. A great fix but a.) hate to see welding on a finished gear, knowing how a well-run gear manufacturing plant operates to very close tolerances (they'd crap their pants if they saw this fix btw) and b.) gotta be a better and easier fix that all SOHC owners could benefit by, like maybe a new gear design that incorporates what you did.
That said, hey, necessity is the mother of invention :)
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I woudn't be too concerned about messing up the precision. Just because it's only a sprocket, not really a gear. (http://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/Twocents.gif)
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Maybe that's right as it does run against a chain, not another gear, and then only a certain number of clock positions (like 10 to 2 or 9-4) as opposed to two gears running in mesh all 360 degrees of rotation. Thanks for pointing that out as it does make a difference!
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Hopefully the welding didn't mess up the heat treatment on that sprocket.
I imagine you'll be OK. After all, the failure mode would just be wear. (You'd notice the need to constantly tighten up your chain.)
Better than a balled-up chain!
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I've been doing that treatment on the stub cam gear for the last few motors, and have not had a wear issue, so hopefully there will be no problem. Done it on two factory Ford gears, and also one gear from Jim Barillaro. For what it's worth, after the welding that gear was still really tough to machine...
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Looking good Jay!
Have you used those napier rings before? That's what I had in my Hemi when we dynoed it and remember, it smoked like a chimney.
I have indeed used Napier rings before, in the 585" SOHC that pulled you and I through Drag Week 2009. Also the last iteration of this particular engine used them. I think that with those second rings and the 3mm oil rings the engine is going to use some oil no matter what when driving around on the street, but with the vacuum pump it seals up nicely at the track.
Do you think the Napier rings contributed to your engine smoking, or do you think it was some other issue?
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The rings were probably not the reason. If you do not have enough tension or a proper finish on the cylinders it will smoke like a train. We run napier rings in our stock eliminator engines with very good results. In looking for horse power we back off the ring tension until we make smoke so to speak. It takes about 15 foot pounds to rotate a fresh 390 short block.
Kirk
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That is an interesting data point, Kirk. I will have to check my short block when it is together and see how much torque it takes to turn the crank. Is your 15 foot pounds the amount required to keep the crank spinning, or the amount required to move it initially? I'm putting piston #5 in my engine tonight, and up until I got to #4 I could rotate the crank by hand...
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I had to turn down the oil slinger of my Scat crank for my Pond block as well.
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I wish I could find a spec for the outside diameter of that oil slinger, so I would know whether the problem lies with Scat or Pond. FWIW though, my crank turned just fine in my Shelby block, so I'm leaning towards the Pond block as the culprit.
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Duh!
I'm changing this post Jay only after re-reading today some of the February 12-14, 2012 year of the scammer details.
While it is still true that Dave Shoe likely has the OEM Ford blueprint on the crank, it's doubtful he'd now cooperate. Still, as much as I don't 'get' how Shoe could have gotten sucked into the Coon mess, it's even more amazing (and sad) how strangely he replied to numerous FE Forum members. Very odd for him IMHO and it makes me wonder about his motivations.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/74182/message/1330990131/Attention+Eddie+%26amp%3B+John-
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Jay....just for future reference...Anytime you weld on a hardened pc,4140 or any kind of wear plate you should pre-heat it and slow cool it if possible...
I wont get into all the procedures and details but around 250 deg is better than ambient temp...Cory
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Thanks for that info; I didn't pre-heat, but next time I will. I did let it slow cool though.
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That 15 lbs is after the crank starts to rotate. We use a pull type scale to help figure out how much tension is in the ring package. We pull the piston thru the cylinder to get this measurement. Take lots of notes and go from there.
Kirk
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Got the rest of the pistons installed tonight:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/shortblock1.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/shortblock2.jpg)
After torquing the rod bolts I tried Kirk's test for drag of the reciprocating assembly. Allowing for about 2 lb-ft of torque that my wrench is reading low, it took 22 lb-ft of torque to rotate the reciprocating assembly. Not as good as a stock eliminator engine, but not bad for a 519" motor with a 4.285" bore.
Next up is getting the heads assembled...
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Looking good Jay!
Have you used those napier rings before? That's what I had in my Hemi when we dynoed it and remember, it smoked like a chimney.
I have indeed used Napier rings before, in the 585" SOHC that pulled you and I through Drag Week 2009. Also the last iteration of this particular engine used them. I think that with those second rings and the 3mm oil rings the engine is going to use some oil no matter what when driving around on the street, but with the vacuum pump it seals up nicely at the track.
Do you think the Napier rings contributed to your engine smoking, or do you think it was some other issue?
Initially, when it was new, it didn't smoke too much, but it did a little. At the time I wasn't running a vacuum pump. 8 months later it was smoking pretty bad and consuming oil. I cant' remember if it was Lofgren or Knowlton, but who ever bored on honed it went to great lengths to get the proper cylinder finish using a profilometer. Anyway, later they said that in our damp climate, if the car sits and you get any flash rust on the cylinder bores, it will wipe out the sharp edge on the napier ring and they become oil pumpers. He has seen it happen and speculated that that was what happened to my engine. I had it re-honed and re-rung it with some standard rings and that cured it.
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My carbide drill and heavy duty tap came yesterday, and together made short work of the holes in the big timing gear. Here are some photos showing the tools and the special bolts I use to pin the gears together, the stub cam assembly with the bolts installed, and the primary timing chain and stub cam installed in the engine:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/stubcam1.JPG)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/stubcam2.JPG)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/stubcam3.JPG)
I developed another twist on the plan this week. I have the normal SOHC heads for this engine, and also a pair of the high port SOHC heads for the big engine. I also have a second pair of the high port heads for my turbocharged SOHC, which is kind of on the back burner at the moment. I decided that rather than use the normal heads for this engine, I'd swap on one pair of the high port heads, and use the other pair on my larger engine. We'll save the standard heads for the turbo engine, for now anyway. This sets me back just a little, because I want to put my new Ferrea hollow stem valves in the high port heads, and so they need to have the valve job done on them before I can assemble them. That should only take a few days, so I should be able to get the heads on the engine next weekend, and then finish it off in a couple of evenings after that. Then its dyno time! I'm looking forward to that...
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Having zero experience with a cammer I have hat may be a silly question. What retains the stub cam in the block?
Thanks for sharing your builds. I follow each and every one along with your drag week adventures.
Mike
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The stub cam is retained from the front cover. There is a bearing in the front cover that the nose of the stub cam feeds into. It pokes all the way through the bearing, and then a snap ring is put into the groove of the nose of the stub cam from outside the front cover. That keeps the stub cam from sliding back into the block, and it can't go forward because the step on the nose of the stub cam hits the bearings if it tries to slide forward.
I'll have some pics of this arrangement as this engine goes together in the next week or two.
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On the left side of the block on the forward part of the blukhead "china wall" just by the intake flat there is a bit of a goober.
What's that about?
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That's a depression in the casting, Howie. It's a little discolored which is why it looks the way it does in the photo.
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jay have you seen the one piece gears somebody is doing in canada i saw a set on ebay looks like a good idea
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Wow, a turbo SOHC in the future. Man, you are full of surprises! Maybe a 6 or 8-71 blower equipped SOHC someday too? Now that would look way cool!
Seriously, are you collaborating with some groups/shops already on this project?
Ohio George's son Gregg Montgomery (and his dad) at times have contributed to our Net' 54 SBF Forum from time-to-time and of course, you need no introduction to Ohio George's blown, then turbo'ed SOHC Ford background. Come to think of it, you have probably met them already. Talk about writing the book on turbo Cammer's in the 70's!
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jay have you seen the one piece gears somebody is doing in canada i saw a set on ebay looks like a good idea
I have not seen those, Adam. Next time you see them on ebay, would you put a link here? That does sound like a really good idea...
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jay its on now under 427 sohc
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just checked it still has 4 days pretty good pictures of them
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Thanks Adam, that's pretty cool. Here's a link if anyone else wants to look at them:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/427-SOHC-Stub-Cam-Sprocket-/280850666200?hash=item41640112d8&item=280850666200&vxp=mtr
I wish they had the .250" tooth on the secondary sprocket so that I could use Munro's chain with them; it would save me a lot of work pinning the two gears together. But for anyone who is running the original .222" chain, that is a great solution to the problem.
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More progress today on getting my 519" SOHC together. This morning I got the heads cleaned up and then spent the afternoon checking the valvesprings, setting the spring height, and then installing the valves, springs, locks, and valve seals. Here's a photo of one of the bare heads, and then a couple of photos of it after it has been completely assembled:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/barehead.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/valveinstall.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/valveinstall2.jpg)
Once both the heads were finished up, I installed the studs in the block and then installed the heads temporarily. I want to check piston to valve clearance in each cylinder, so I put clay on 7 of the 8 pistons before putting the heads on the block. Here's a photo of the pistons with the clay on them, and then another photo of the engine assembled with the heads in place:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/clay.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/headinstall.jpg)
Next I had to put together the chain drive so I could roll the engine over and get impressions in all the pieces of clay. This engine originally had the factory style .222" chain, which is a non-roller chain setup, and I had earlier decided to transition to Paul Munro's chain drive setup. This meant that I had to change out the gears on the tensioner arm and the fuel pump gear stand. This was pretty straightforward on the fuel pump gear stand, but when I got to the tensioner arm, Munro's gear wouldn't fit. The tensioner arm I had on this engine was an aftermarket unit I got from Doug at Precision Oil Pumps, and it just wasn't wide enough to take the Munro gear. Fortunately I have a spare stock tensioner arm, and a quick check showed that Munro's gear fit fine on the stock piece. So, I pressed out the pin, removed the old gear and bearing, and installed Munro's gear with a new bearing.
From there I took some time to clean up the backing plate that goes behind the timing cover; this has to be in place before the tensioner arm and fuel pump gear are installed, otherwise the gears won't line up correctly with the secondary drive gear on the stub cam. Once the backing plate was installed I put it in place on the engine and then installed the two gears. Next I found the cams I want to use on this engine, which are actually the same cams that I ran on my 585" motor last year, and after lubing the bearings installed them in the heads, tightening the first cam cap to hold them in position.
Now it was time to put the chain on, and the Ford chains had three colored links, red, white, and blue, that lined up with the dots on the two cam gears and the dot on the secondary chain drive gear. Munro's chain didn't have the markings on it, and few of the aftermarket chains do, so I took some paint markers (black, white, and yellow were on hand) and marked the chains in the correct spots. In case anyone is interested in how far apart these marks are on the chain, you can randomly mark the first link to go to the left cam sprocket, then move 58 links to the left and mark that link to go on the secondary drive sprocket on the dot, and then move 64 more links to the left on the chain and mark that link to go on the right cam sprocket on the dot. Here's a photo of the chain loosely installed on the engine:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/chainloose.jpg)
Before you tighten the chain you have to install the front cover. The reason is that if you don't, you will deflect the nose of the stub cam with the chain tension, potentially leading to an inaccurate timing reading or damaging the stub cam (especially if it is a cast iron stub cam, rather than a steel one). The nose of the stub cam is fixed by a bearing in the front cover. Mike was asking about this earlier; here's a photo of the bearing just placed on the nose of the stub cam. You can see the snap ring groove in the stub cam just past the bearing location. The bearing is pushed back against the step on the stub cam, so once the bearing is pressed into place in the front cover, and the stub cam pokes through the bearing, the snap ring locates the stub cam front to rear. After the photo of the bearing is another photo showing the bearing being pushed into the Pond front cover:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/frontcoverbearing.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/frontcoverbearinginstall.jpg)
Once the bearing was in place I installed the front cover on the engine with a few bolts, and then tightened up the chain before I called it a night. Tomorrow I will find top dead center, time the cams, and then install all the rockers so I can roll the engine over a few times, and also check piston to valve clearance. Then I'll pull it back apart and look at everything; hopefully I'll have plenty of clearance and I can assemble the engine for good after that. I'll try to post a few more photos and details about this whole procedure tomorrow.
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Youv'e been busy, as usual. Lookin' good!
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Looks like great progress to me Jay; but then I'm a Cammer wanna be and don't know enough about them to understand the significance of what you're doing. Are there books of manuals available where one can read up on or study these SOHC beasties?
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The only book available is the original factory service manual, which is being reprinted and sells for around $45 these days if I recall correctly. However, now that you mention it, my next book project is an SOHC book. It will probably be a couple years before that one is ready, though.
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Do you know where I could get one of those manuals? I've looked on eBay and Amazon with no success.
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Try Cushman. The internal website link to the SOHC manual is broken but an e-mail could verify if they still sell it or if they can supply you a source. Btw, if they don't e-mail back I'd spent a few bucks to call them.
http://www.cushmancompetition.com/ford427.htm
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I've seen them on ebay in the past; Cushman Competition may be a source as Bob suggests. That book was $45 even 25 years ago, when I bought mine. I remember how painful it was to shell out $45 for a car book in 1985. To be honest though, that book is not the greatest source of information on the SOHC engines; there's a lot about the engine that they don't talk about. I've learned the hard way about a lot of that stuff, which is why I want to write a book on them eventually.
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Thanks guys, I'll do some digging and see what I can come up with.
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Jay, you got off easy! I went to Columbus with a pocket full of money about 15 years ago and I think I paid $75 for my copy. (And I'm told mine may be a re-print also!)
KS
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I got mine in 1993, from one of the original Ford engineers on the SOHC project :-) There were still a few floating around the building then.
My only regret is that another old timer had his Cougar GT-E for sale for $7K in reasonable driver condition. Didn't have the room!
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You are a brave man Jay messing with those cammers. I can't wait to see the updated pics and hear how the valve clearances are working out. Those motors are awesome but considering the additional nuances they bring to the planning an build I am glad I only have a simple TunnelPort.
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I was going to be out of town today, but the family plans changed at the last minute, so I had the opportunity to get more work done on this engine. As it turned out what I had planned to do this morning before we were going to leave took me all day anyway LOL! Its easy to forget that these engines don't just slam together like a normal FE; it takes a lot of screwing around to get one together and check everything.
With the chain and front cover installed, I continued on mocking up the engine by installing the valve train. First thing I did was loosen all the rocker arm adjusters and back them way off; I like to do this on these engines because you have to turn the engine over several times when you are going through the cam timing procedure, and if the timing is off by a significant amount you could run into piston to valve clearance problems if you were opening the valves all the way. After backing off the adjusters I installed the rocker shafts and rocker arms into the heads, and then put the caps on the heads to hold everything in place. Here's a photo of the engine at this point:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/vtmockup.jpg)
Notice in this photo that the rocker arms for cylinders 6, 7, and 8 are not over the valves; they are slid to one side on the rocker shaft so that they aren't in contact with the cam lobe, and therefore can't open the valves. This is how you install the rocker shaft assemblies on these engines. For the rocker arm and shaft assemblies on the left head, you have to rotate the engine until the rocker arms are on the heels of the cam lobe on cylinder 5, and then install the shafts with the remaining rockers slid out of the way so they aren't contacting the valves. As you can see in the photo the rocker arms on cylinder 5 can't slide; they are captured by the cam towers on either side. Rotating the cam so that these rockers are on the heel of their respective lobes, and sliding the other rockers away from the lobes on the shafts, allows you to install the shaft without tightening them down against the force of the valve springs. So, there's no tension on the rocker shafts when they are installed using this method, as compared to a standard FE, where you have to install the rocker shafts and tighten them down against the valve spring pressure.
The same situation holds true with the right bank, where the rockers on cylinder 4 are captured between two cam towers but the other three rocker pairs are free to slide on the shaft. After getting the shafts and rockers installed and the caps tightened down, you just turn the engine over a little at a time until one at a time the heel of each cam lobe comes up to the correct position and the associated rocker arm can be slid over into position on the valve; then the rocker arm spacer clip for that rocker is snapped in place over the shaft to hold the rocker in position. Usually I end up taking two or three complete revolutions of the engine to get all the rocker arms into position.
Next I timed the cams. I wanted to be at 110 degrees ATDC with both cams, but the caveat with these numbers is that based on the testing I did in 2007, the right cam retards about 2 degrees between 3000 and 7000 RPM, and the left cam actually advances 2 degrees over the same range. So, I wanted to target for 108 on the right cam and 112 on the left cam. I wasn't real firm on these numbers, though, because the original tests I did in 2007 were with a standard .222" pin timing chain. Munro's chain is a lot beefier, and has the .250" pins that you normally see on a doube roller timing chain set, so it is quite likely that the chain stretch would be reduced with this setup. With that in mind I started the process by finding top dead center for cylinder #1; I use a dummy spark plug with a metal rod welded into it that protrudes into the combustion chamber and acts as a piston stop. After going both ways and looking at the markings on the fully degreed ATI balancer, I made an adjustment to my wire pointer to set TDC. Next I stuck a dial indicator on the #1 intake valve spring retainer and found the intake valve centerline using the Comp Cams method; it was at 116 degrees. Changing the cam timing on these engines is pretty easy, and involves pulling a pin out of the gear that bolts to the end of the cam, rotating the cam with respect to the gear, and then replacing the pin in a different hole. Moving the pin one hole moves the cam timing 1.5 cam degrees, or 3 crank degrees. It looked like I would need to move the pin three positions to advance the cam to 107, which would make it close to the 108 that I wanted. But when I did this it turned out when I rechecked the timing that the cam was exactly at 108 degrees; sometimes those holes aren't quite perfect, and in this case that worked to my advantage.
With the right cam timed I wanted to check piston to valve clearance. On cylinder 1 I had not put in any clay, but instead had put checker springs on the valves so that I could read piston to valve clearance off a dial indicator. Worst case piston to valve clearance is around TDC on the overlap portion of the stroke, and is usually around 10 degrees ATDC with the intake valves, and around 10 degrees BTDC on the exhausts. I started with the intake valve at 20 degrees BTDC, and continued in 5 degree increments checking the clearance with a dial indicator. I had adjusted the lash on the rocker arms to zero previously, so this was a worst case measurement; valve lash would add to the piston to valve clearance. I found the minimum clearance at 10 degrees ATDC; it measured 0.078". At 5* ATDC it was 0.087", and at 15* ATDC it was 0.092". I try to maintain a minimum of 0.080", so with any valve lash at all I would meet this requirement, so it seemed like I was good to go here.
Moving to the exhaust valve, I had a whole bunch more clearance. Minimum valve to piston clearance was 0.212" at 10 degrees BTDC. I was kind of expecting this; the lobe separation angle on these cams is 114, so I'm running them quite a bit advanced, which will decrease piston to valve clearance on the intake and increase the clearance on the exhausts. In any case, the exhausts had tons of room.
Next I moved to cylinder #6 to dial in the left cam. I use cylinder #6 because then the markings on the harmonic balancer will be the same as they are for cylinder #1. I repeated the process there, and after a couple of pin position changes on the cam gear I was able to get the cam dialed in at 110.5* ATDC.
Finally I went all around the engine and set all the valves to zero lash, and then rotated the engine through several revolutions, to get a good impression in the clay of cylinders 2 through 8. This whole process had taken me most of the day, but now I was really curious about what the clay looked like, so I spent another hour tearing the whole thing down. Seems like this was a lot of work to go through to just check everything and time the cams, but that's what you have to do with these engines. The clay held a lot of interest for me because on my 585" SOHC, I had seen piston to valve contact on about five of the cylinders, and none on the other three. So I clayed everything in hopes of ferreting out any issue with the heads; maybe the valves were not spaced evenly in the heads or something. But after pulling the heads all seven clayed cylinders looked alike, with the intake valve imprint right in the center of the piston's valve relief. There was so much exhaust valve clearance that the valves didn't even hit the clay; here's a photo of one cylinder, showing the imprint from the intake valve:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/clayonpiston.jpg)
After taking a break I got back out to the shop tonight to start the assembly for real. I pulled the checker springs off the number 1 valves and put the real valve springs on, then cleaned up the block and head mating surfaces and the head gaskets and bolted everything together. I went a little heavy on the torque, 115 lb-ft on the long head studs and 105 lb-ft on the short head studs. Then I got ready to start with the front cover backing plate. The gasket situation for this piece is that there are five gaskets that go between the head and the block, and the backing plate. Then, another five gaskets go between the backing plate and the front cover. Finally there are two water pump gaskets that go between the front cover and the water pump. If you were to try to put this all together at once, you would find that by the time you put the backing plate in place, assembled the chain drive, installed the front cover, then installed the water pump, and then tightened everything down, the sealer would have dried and you would have a bunch of leaks. Ask me how I know this ;D Therefore, instead of doing this all at once, I do it in stages. The first stage is to get the backing plate stuck to the block and heads. I use a bunch of short bolts with nuts and washers on them to bolt the backing plate to the block and heads, and then let it sit overnight so that the sealer can cure. I've been using a new sealer that Barry R turned me onto, a gray sealer from Ford that is a lot like The Right Stuff, but its gray instead of black, and comes in a caulk tube so you don't have to rely on the pressure in the sealer can (I've thrown away quite a few tubes of The Right Stuff where there is more sealer in the tube, but it just won't come out). The sealer tube says Motorcraft RTV Silicone Sealant, for use on 7.3L Diesel Engines. From the tube the part number appears to be TA-31. I applied the sealer to the block and heads and stuck the five gaskets in place; here's a photo:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/gasketsbehindcoverplate.jpg)
Then I put more sealer on the gaskets, and installed the cover plate. The photo below shows the cover plate bolted in place with my temporary bolt arrangement, which bolts the plate firmly to the block and heads while the sealer is drying:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/coverplateglue.jpg)
Now that the mockup is all done, P-V clearance is checked, and the cams are timed, the engine should go together without a lot of drama. I hope to be able to finish assembly this week, and with luck be on the dyno with this engine next weekend. I'll post more on the project later in the week.
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The TA-31 is great stuff and I like it better than the Right Stuff. The best way I have found on either one when you are done using it is to leave one inch of squeezed out sealer and let it sit and dry.
It works better for me than what I used to do which is stuff a nail or wire into the end of the tube and cover it.
As far as gasket sealer on the water pump and timing cover, I have stopped using any sealer on them years ago.
My 460 timing cover, waterpump plate, waterpump, was a messy job using sealer and leaked. I tore it apart and used nothing and had no leaks.
My 390 is put together with no sealer on the timing cover or water pump and I have no leaks.
I got the idea from looking at how Ford does it on their crate motors on the 302's. They don't use sealer and they don't leak.
I also don't use any on the oil pan gasket except 4 small dabs for the timing cover to oil pan and rear main cap edge.
Lastly I quit using sealer on my 9" rearend pumpkins and no leaks anymore.
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Using no sealer is kind of a paradigm shift for me; I've always used it on pretty much any gasket except valve cover gaskets. Typically for me, the valve cover gaskets are the ones that leak, although oil pan gaskets are close behind. Anyway, with the SOHC you have that plate behind the front cover that tends to be a little wavy, kind of like a windage tray after it has been installed once, so I don't think I'd want to try to run without sealer on one of these engines. Maybe I'll try it on a regular FE at some point...
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I've been able to get more work done on assembly of this engine over the last couple of days. After getting the backing plate glued into place, I started assembly on the timing components. I put the chain tensioner in place in order to get the chain installed, so I could install the upper chain guide. A photo of the tensioner is below, showing the top section of the tensioner where I brush some machinist's blue on the part. You can see the grooves in this factory piece, showing where the chain has rubbed on it in the past. I like to keep the chain tight enough so that you don't see this kind of rubbing, so with the machinist's blue dye on the top of the tensioner, you can pull the inspection plate on the right side of the front cover and look at the tensioner to see if there are any witness marks in the dye after the engine has run for a while. If there are, I usually will tighten the chain tensioner bolt an eighth of a turn or so, re-mark the tensioner with dye, and then run the engine again and look for contact. I just keep doing that until there is no contact between the chain and the tensioner during a dyno pull.
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/tensionerblue.jpg)
After installing the tensioner I put the chain on, and then installed the upper chain guide. Next I tightened the tensioner so that the slack was out of the chain; you don't want to go any tighter than absolutely necessary here, because the front cover is not yet installed and you don't want to pull too hard on the nose of the stub cam. You just need to have enough tension so that the chain doesn't droop between the two cam gears. Here's a photo of the guide installed before the chain was tightened:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/upperchainguide.jpg)
The upper chain guide has to be adjusted so that its nylon rubbing blocks are just a whisker away from touching the chain, as shown in the photo below. There are two bolts that hold the chain guide in place at either end, and the chain guide is slotted so it can be moved up and down with respect to the chain:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/chainguiderubbingblock.jpg)
These chain guides are aftermarket units. The rivets used to hold the nylon rubbing blocks to the sheet metal of the guide stick up from the top of the chain guide by a fair amount, and this will interfere with the front cover during installation. Before installing the guilde you need to grind those rivets down a fair amount, as shown in the photo below:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/upperchainguiderivets.jpg)
Next you have to install the lower chain guide, but in order to do that you have to remove the tensioner arm, because the lower chain guide bolts are behind it. Fortunately you really don't need the chain tight to install the lower chain guide. The bolt holes in the lower chain guide are oversize so that it can be moved around a little bit; you need to try to make the lower chain guide nylon rubbing blocks parallel with the rubbing blocks of the upper chain guide. Here's a photo of the lower chain guide installed:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/lowerchainguide.jpg)
Next I reinstalled the tensioner arm and snugged up the chain so it was close to its final position, and then started installing some of the other bolts. On the right side there are two bolts that go into the block and the holes pass into the water jacket. One of them is the lower water pump bolt, which goes on later, but the other is a bolt normally used for a stock FE timing cover, and this bolt is not accessible once the front cover is in place. You don't want a leak here, so put sealer on the threads and also around the head of the bolt after it is tightened in place. See the photo below; sorry for the poor quality:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/boltholesforsealer.jpg)
For my engines I install supplemental oiling tubes to do a direct shot of oil onto the fuel pump gear bearing and the tensioner arm gear bearing. I like to do this because these bearings are normally oiled only with splash, and at idle I don't think there's a lot of splash in this area. Since my engines are all run on the street for extended periods, idling for long periods is required, so I like to provide supplemental oil. On each side of the engine I tap into the front oil passage coming out of the head, and run a small inverted flare tube up to the bearing as a squirter. I pinch the end of the tube so there is about a .010" orifice there, so only a small stream of oil will come out; you can see this during pre-oiling. Here's a photo of the left side squirter tube close to its installation position, and then a shot of it from the side showing it pointing to the roller bearing behind the fuel pump gear; you have to oil this one from behind, because the gear blocks access to the bearing from the front:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/leftsideoiler.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/leftsideoiler1.jpg)
Here's the same arrangement for the bearing in the tensioner arm, which can be oiled from the front:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/rightsideoiler.jpg)
The photo below shows everything installed, ready for the front cover installation. The two studs shown in the photo go into the block, and it is best to cut up a scrap piece of gasket and put it between the block and the backing plate before you tighten it in place, otherwise you will be trying to distort the backing plate and front cover a little when you tighten those bolts. The small piece of gaskets basically spaces the backing plate out from the block the same as the normal gaskets between the block and heads, and the backing plate:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/readyforfrontcover.jpg)
If you'd done everything right the front cover will then just slide into place along the two studs and over the stub cam nose. Mine went together very smoothly. This is a Pond front cover, and is an excellent piece compared to some of the other front covers that are available:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/frontcoverinstalled.jpg)
Note that the water pump is not yet installed, but the bolts are used with spacers to tighten the front cover against the gaskets between it and the backing plate. At this point the stub cam is not yet in its final position; in order to pull it forward and install the snap ring, you need to put a bolt in the front of the stub cam and pull it forward with a pry bar, as shown in the photo below:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/stubcampull.jpg)
Last thing I did before calling it quits was to set the valve covers and the sheet metal intake with the Dominators that my friend Greg lent me to try out on the dyno, just to see how it would look:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/mockedupwithtr.jpg)
I should be able to finish the engine up by the end of this week, then put it on the dyno on Saturday. We'll see what happens...
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I love this thread, Jay. Your supplemental oil squirters are fantastic! Thanks for sharing.
Phil
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I can't wait to see it on the dyno. I know way more about SOHC timing chains than I ever thought I would. The oil sprayers remind me of the Suzuki GSXR motors and their air oil cooling.
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Fantastic thread. I really hope I get to build one of these one day. Thanks for sharing Jay.
And as for: "Last thing I did before calling it quits was to set the valve covers and the sheet metal intake with the Dominators that my friend Greg lent me to try out on the dyno, just to see how it would look"
I'd say, it looks freakin awesome!
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Got finished up with the assembly of the engine tonight. I should be able to get it on the dyno tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll actually get any running in because I have family obligations for part of tomorrow, and of course Sunday is Easter, so I don't know if I want to subject the neighborhood to 7500 RPM cammer pulls on Easter Sunday LOL! We'll see what happens. One thing that happened this week which was a bit of a disappointment was that I wasn't able to fit the sheet metal intake on the engine. I had forgotten about that when I changed my plans and went to the high port heads. This change requires a spacer plate between the intake and the head on each side, and the intake manifold bolt holes have to be slotted so that the manifold will still fit. I got ready to fit the sheet metal intake on the engine and the intake bolt holes weren't even close. This is not my manifold, so slotting it to make it fit wasn't in the cards, so I went straight to the Hilborn intake instead. Too bad, because I'll bet the engine would make more power with the sheet metal manifold. Oh well...
Here's some photos of the engine going together, including a shot of the valvetrain on one side, a shot with the engine upside down on the stand (I always liked that view for some reason), the front components, and a couple of photos of the completed engine on the stand. I'll post more when I have some dyno data to share.
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/SOHCvalvetrain.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/SOHCbottom.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/SOHCfront.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/SOHCfinish1.jpg)
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/SOHCfinish2.jpg)
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I noticed the water pump pulley has counter sunk bolts. Is there a reason for that, to clear something maybe?
Looks good!
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Looking god Jay, I'd love to hear that sing. Would be the sort of music I would like to hear on an Easter Sunday.
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Oh so cool Jay! Hey, screw those neighbors I say!
Just kidding.
Yah know, I don't care how much better the coil-on-plug ignition is but seeing the clean lines of that traditional SOHC look is truly inspiring.
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Countersunk bolt heads on the water pump pulley are cosmetic at least they were on March stuff. If you are running a mechanical fan then tey would be replaced.
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Yes, I don't recall countersinking them for any reason, they probably came that way from March...
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That's interesting on the countersinking. I have had many sets of March pullies including FE, 460, and small block, and I have never seen that.
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Maybe I did countersink them, but just forgot that I did it. I can think of one potential reason why; the supercharger belt on my 489" supercharged engine comes pretty close to the front of the water pump pulley. Maybe I countersunk those bolts to gain some clearance there. I don't remember doing it, but it would have been in 2005 or 2006, so I could easily have forgotten about it...
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It was quite the struggle on the dyno this weekend. I didn't get going on getting the engine installed on the dyno until Saturday afternoon, and it took a while to get everything hooked up. Mostly I struggled with the EFI system, which is a FAST system. It has an unbelievable number of wires and connectors, most of which you don't need, and there is also some custom wiring required for the distributor and crank sensor. This setup uses a FAST distributor with the crank signal from the distributor disabled, in favor of the crank trigger. The cam signal from the distributor is enabled though. allowing for full sequential operation. I always liked this particular feature of the FAST setup, but there's a lot of special stuff you have to do to make it work. After I finally worked through the rats nest of wiring I was ready to fire the engine at six o'clock Saturday night. Unfortunately, no joy; the engine would not even kick. I spent an hour looking at all the crank trigger and distributor wiring trying to find a problem, and finally when I started moving one particular bundle of wires around I heard some noise coming from the front of the engine. Turns out it was the coil, and apparently it was trying to fire when I moved the wires.
I traced the problem to the wire harness leading into the distributor. Pulling the wires up into the distributor itself, I could see that two of the wires had been rubbing on the distributor body and had worn through, shorting to the body when the cable was pulled on. I taped up these areas, still hoping to get the engine fired before 8:00, but still no joy. This time it seemed that the engine wasn't getting fuel for some reason. At that point I called it a day on Saturday, and spent the rest of the evening reading my FAST manual and looking at the schematic to see if I had missed something along the way.
Today when I got back out to the shop I decided to slow down a little and check everything more carefully. I found again that I was able to trigger the coil by pulling just right on the distributor cable; apparently my quick fix hadn't worked. I pulled the distributor out of the engine and fixed it correctly, plus I sleeved the cable going through the distributor housing so it wouldn't do this again. After the distributor was reinstalled and the cam sensor and crank sensor timing double checked, I tried to start the engine again but still no luck. Again it was fairly clear that the engine wasn't getting fuel. I checked the fuse and the relay for the injectors, messed with the cranking fuel table and throttle position sensor calibration in the FAST software, and did several other things trying to resolve this problem, but no luck. Finally I resorted to dumping some fuel into the injector stacks and cranking the engine. With one cough it fired right up and ran for three seconds until it was out of fuel. At least I knew for sure what the problem was.
I called my pal Scott Clark on this, and he gave me some pretty good suggestions. One was to swap out the FAST EFI box itself with my spare; I did that, but there was no change. Scott also suggested disconnecting the injector wiring harness and checking the voltages going to the injectors to see if I had voltage there. Sure enough, there was voltage for each injector, and it decrease when the injectors were pulsing as the engine cranked. Everything looked good there.
Scott's last suggestion was to pull the injectors and check them, and this turned out to be the problem. I've never dealt with this before, but these particular injectors have been on the shelf for about four years, and apparently sometimes injectors will stick when left dry like this. Four injectors did not click when I removed them from the engine and applied 12 volts to their terminals. Three came around with repeated applications of 12V, but one of them had to be smacked a couple of times with a screwdriver before it loosed up and starting clicking with voltage. I cycled all the injectors several times and cleaned them out as best as I could, then reinstalled them in the engine. By this time it was after 6:00, and I had to go in for dinner with the family, but just before 7:30 I got back out to the shop to try the engine. I cranked it up and... nothing. What the hell? However, when I went into the dyno room to look at the engine, I saw that my coil trigger wires had come loose from the MSD when I was removing and replacing the injectors. I figured this was the problem, so I reconnected them, but now I had an engine full of fuel. Sure enough, when I cranked the engine this time it fired right up and revved to over 3000 RPM. For about one and half seconds I was really happy, then the oil filter deformed and blew off the motor, spraying oil all over the dyno room. Sheesh, if its not one thing its another. The filter was a Napa Gold filter, which I've had good luck with, but I guess I'm going to have to go back to those heavy duty Mobil 1 filters.
Anyway, now that I knew the engine would start most of the drama had gone out of the day. I cleaned up the oil and replaced the filter, and a little more gingerly this time I fired up the engine. I warmed it up to operating temperature while doing some minor tuning, and then shut it down so I could lash the valves hot. One thing I noticed was that the engine has really excessive oil pressure. I don't know why this is; even idling at 1000 RPM hot the oil pressure is around 60 psi, and when revving it up it will go to over 120 psi. This is the same oil pump I've used in the past, and it never behaved this way before. I'm thinking that maybe the bypass is stuck or something, which would be bad, because pulling the pan off this engine on the dyno stand would be no fun at all. I'm hoping that with a little use it frees itself up.
In any case it looks like I can get to tuning this thing now, and if the oil pressure situation works itself out I should be able to get some dyno data by next Saturday, or maybe sooner. I will post more info on this engine when I have it.
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Great Stuff as usual!
Interesting about that filter. I was just in NAPA the other day and picked up a NAPA Gold.
It does not look like the Gold of just last year.
Kind of a cheesier paint job. It just didn't look as good as the old NAPA Gold "black one with NASCAR logo".
Hmmm.... Maybe I won't use it now?
I'll post some pics of the old and new.
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Jay, that's frustrating when all that stuff happens. At least you can try to find all the problems on the dyno, rather than after the motor is bolted in the car.
After seeing the assembly proccess on your Cammer, I find it ironic that your URL name is simplemachinesforum. ;D
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napa filters used to be Wix filters. Maybe they are changing over to somthing cheaper?? the wix 5151R is pretty stout, maybe grab one of them untill you get the oil pressure fixed.
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Jay, I have had those filter explosions before on a 428 in R&R dyno cell.. Ron was NOT happy.
He almost demands a Fram HP filter for any dyno session if the engine has heavy oil or a high pressure pump....they are stout construction. Same filter as top fuel guys use. Now if you had a Y block with an external oil pump .....
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If you have a 'Y' block, be sure you use the right oil pump shims. Ask me how I know! (If I can remember---it was 45 years ago!)
KS
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It's a stuck bypass IMHO.
Had a Ford 300 CID in-line six I re-did long ago for a relative (never does a good deed go unpunished!). Blew off 3 filters in a row. Turns out, it was my boo-booh in cleaning the pump and cover in water/non-solvent bath and I failed to WD-40 or oil the bypass valve.... it rusted up a tad. A new pump and all was well. Btw, not saying that Jay did the same thing but in my experience with blowing off a filter, 9 out of 10 times it is a stuck by-pass.
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It's a stuck bypass IMHO.
Had a Ford 300 CID in-line six I re-did long ago for a relative (never does a good deed go unpunished!). Blew off 3 filters in a row. Turns out, it was my boo-booh in cleaning the pump and cover in water/non-solvent bath and I failed to WD-40 or oil the bypass valve.... it rusted up a tad. A new pump and all was well. Btw, not saying that Jay did the same thing but in my experience with blowing off a filter, 9 out of 10 times it is a stuck by-pass.
I'll bet you are right on that. The pump sat since I pulled the motor apart in 2009, and we've had a couple humid summers here since then. Probably it rusted up a little, and it will need to come out. I ran the engine again tonight and got it good and warmed up, and the idle oil pressure dropped to about 45 psi, but it still jumped up to 110+ when I revved the motor. I'm going to try running a lighter weight oil and see if it is more tolerable; I am really unhappy with the idea that I might have to pull the pan. Sheesh, stuck injectors, stuck oil pump bypass, what next? This thing better make some big power numbers...
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Jay
I know it seems like a lot of $$ for a filter but I bet it would have been worth it to not have to clean the mess or worry about bursting.
http://www.gopurepower.com/site/products/default.asp#FILTERS
It's a handy way to periodically check what is being cleaned out of your oil.
Rob
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Well now that you lost a NAPA Gold on the 519" and I was going to spin one on
the lowly 390 TODAY. I have changed my plan.
I picked up a Mobil 1 M1 301.
Put it next to the 1515 NAPA Gold and there is a difference.
The Mobil 1 is a little longer about 1/4" and the top is just a little more robust looking.
The seal is some how crimped on were the NAPA is loose and you can just pull it off.
The Mobil 1 is just a bit heavier, I don't have a scale that can measure the difference, but it is .
The Mobil one box says "Heavy Duty filter canister withstands 9X the normal vehicle oil system operating pressure".
I doubt I will ever buy another NAPA Gold and put it on my FE's.
On a cold start early in the morning I see about 85 psi on the gauge on the 390.
A popped oil filter would just ruin my whole day. :P
What actually let go Jay?
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q128/ScotiaFE/cam1012.jpg)
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q128/ScotiaFE/cam1013.jpg)
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Couple things to add.
Never popped a filter on the dyno. At least not yet. But I have had a couple of Doug's pumps and they tend to have pretty high cold oil pressure that normalizes once the engine gets warmed up. Must have a fairly high bypass pressure and tight internal clearances. I caution customers using them to let things get warmed up before winging the engine. They work very well at normal temps.
On the chain oiling - have you ever run a Cammer with a valve cover off? I did on a problematic customer engine and was amazed to see the amount of oil that spins off of the chain. You could hit the fenders at 2000 RPM. No problems with oiling up front. All the drainback from the heads runs out of that 2" diameter hole up front & gets caught up in the action...
I've missed that bolt that does not go through the front cover before. Serious leakage.....
The F.A.S.T. system works well, but the connectors have been problematic for me. Particularly the ones going into the box itself - they come loose enough to interrupt cam signal, crank signal while still looking OK. I blamed it on my required EMC mounting directly to the engine. Very high vibration environment and at certain speeds the LEDs and lettering on the box was just a blur. I also cobbled up the harness for EMC/dyno work - cut everything apart and de-pinned/removed anything I was not using - like leads for vehicle speed sensors, fan on/off function, multilevel power adder engage. Likely took ten pounds of wire out...and then Tim added a couple big noise capacitors.
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If you can deform the filters thin shell with your bare hands it's asking an awful lot to trust that essentially a crimped on base plate will not be ruptured from the can when you figure out the Sq In and PSI just how much total force is acting on that plate. There is a reason they make "racing oil filters" with high burst pressure ratings. However as far as I know they don't make any "racing filters" that don't sacrifice fine filtration for high flow/lower delta pressure. The large can spin-on hydraulic filters use the same shells and construction as the new "Pro" racing filters, (the new Pro racing filters design were essentially pirated from Pall and the fluid power industry.) Hands down bang for the buck when you go into an Auto Parts Store that sells all of their Filter Mfgs filter models for one set price, when you see the large can big thread filters by Mobil 1 etc Wix Fram etc that fit the large can racing remote filter head-mounts someone's losing their ass at the $10 or so they sell em for. Those design filters were a bargain at $100ea years ago in the filter/fluid power industry. Pick the filter up and feel the weight!
Perhaps emphasis should be placed on limiting the oil pressure to what the engine needs rather then just getting filters that can deal with high pressure. Pumping 10 to 20 GPM of even a moderate weight oil at 80-100+psi requires a pretty dam decent amount of power and that also loads and wears gears and pumps. You also have to wonder if there is so much oil being pumped the bypass valving can not bleed it off: The Ford Muscle Parts catalog (p48) states "the C9ZZ-6900-A oil pump flows 22 GPM under 70-80psi @ 4,000 rpm.". I don't know about you guys but somehow capturing/sucking up 22 gpm in an FE's pan, shoving even half that much oil (50% bypass??) through a filter and on up into the blood system of an FE and expecting it to make its way back down into the pan seems like it would be a great Mission Impossible plot.
I once was a Factory Rep for high pressure hydraulics, "Enerpac", the thought of forcing 80-120psi of oil down on to the top of a crank that essentially anyway wants to lift the main caps off the bottom of the block always makes me wonder if that crank's top fed bearings ever act on the crank and make it resemble a hydraulic ram.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fram-Racing-HP6A-OIL-FILTER-OFFICIAL-NHRA-FILTER-/390401025384?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&vxp=mtr&hash=item5ae5b6e568
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NASCAR-CV-PRODUCTS-REMOTE-OIL-FILTER-MOUNT-CV-749-arca-fram-wix-race-imca-cooler-/290695257938?pt=Race_Car_Parts&vxp=mtr&hash=item43aec99f52
Quote from Jay:
"even idling at 1000 RPM hot the oil pressure is around 60 psi, and when revving it up it will go to over 120 psi."
If I was running a dyno I'd buy the large remote NASCAR head and run the off the shelf MOBIL 1 filter that fits that head w/ the 1-1/8 -16 size thread you'd have pressure capability, flow w/o worrying it would go into bypass and you'd know your getting fine filtration all at the same price as a Mobil 1 Ford FL1 filter price.
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Jay
I know it seems like a lot of $$ for a filter but I bet it would have been worth it to not have to clean the mess or worry about bursting.
http://www.gopurepower.com/site/products/default.asp#FILTERS
It's a handy way to periodically check what is being cleaned out of your oil.
Rob
I've got a System 1 filter like that, but I don't like it. I ran it for a while when I was doing my intake manifold testing, but I would always see fine silver particles in the oil, probably smaller than the 15 micron size that the filter is capable of filtering out. The particles would disappear instantly when I replaced the System 1 filter with a normal oil filter, but then would gradually come back again if I changed back. As a result I try to stay away from screen filters for the oil.
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Well now that you lost a NAPA Gold on the 519" and I was going to spin one on
the lowly 390 TODAY. I have changed my plan.
I picked up a Mobil 1 M1 301.
I used to always run those too, Howie, but there is no place I can get them locally so I always had to mail order them. Eventually it became easier to just buy the NAPA filters, but now that I've had this problem I'm going back to the Mobil 1 301 filters; in fact I just ordered 8 of them yesterday.
The NAPA filter failed by bulging out and breaking the O-ring seal. The whole bottom of the filter rounded, and the top plate also rounded, causing the gasket to lose contact to the filter itself, and pumping a bunch of oil into the pan on the dyno.
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On the chain oiling - have you ever run a Cammer with a valve cover off? I did on a problematic customer engine and was amazed to see the amount of oil that spins off of the chain. You could hit the fenders at 2000 RPM. No problems with oiling up front. All the drainback from the heads runs out of that 2" diameter hole up front & gets caught up in the action...
I have indeed run one with the valve covers off, at Drag Week 2008 in fact, in the pits at Montgomery Intl Raceway. I kept losing rocker arms that year and I wanted to make sure that I had good oiling to the top end, and it was no problem LOL! However, despite this I am not convinced that all that oil will end up on the bearings for the tensioner arm and fuel pump stand. The oil slings out from the chain, not in, where it needs to be get to those bearings. So I'm sticking with my squirters; to me they are a no risk insurance policy.
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If you can deform the filters thin shell with your bare hands it's asking an awful lot to trust that essentially a crimped on base plate will not be ruptured from the can when you figure out the Sq In and PSI just how much total force is acting on that plate. There is a reason they make "racing oil filters" with high burst pressure ratings. However as far as I know they don't make any "racing filters" that don't sacrifice fine filtration for high flow/lower delta pressure. The large can spin-on hydraulic filters use the same shells and construction as the new "Pro" racing filters, (the new Pro racing filters design were essentially pirated from Pall and the fluid power industry.) Hands down bang for the buck when you go into an Auto Parts Store that sells all of their Filter Mfgs filter models for one set price, when you see the large can big thread filters by Mobil 1 etc Wix Fram etc that fit the large can racing remote filter head-mounts someone's losing their ass at the $10 or so they sell em for. Those design filters were a bargain at $100ea years ago in the filter/fluid power industry. Pick the filter up and feel the weight!
Perhaps emphasis should be placed on limiting the oil pressure to what the engine needs rather then just getting filters that can deal with high pressure. Pumping 10 to 20 GPM of even a moderate weight oil at 80-100+psi requires a pretty dam decent amount of power and that also loads and wears gears and pumps. You also have to wonder if there is so much oil being pumped the bypass valving can not bleed it off: The Ford Muscle Parts catalog (p48) states "the C9ZZ-6900-A oil pump flows 22 GPM under 70-80psi @ 4,000 rpm.". I don't know about you guys but somehow capturing/sucking up 22 gpm in an FE's pan, shoving even half that much oil (50% bypass??) through a filter and on up into the blood system of an FE and expecting it to make its way back down into the pan seems like it would be a great Mission Impossible plot.
I once was a Factory Rep for high pressure hydraulics, "Enerpac", the thought of forcing 80-120psi of oil down on to the top of a crank that essentially anyway wants to lift the main caps off the bottom of the block always makes me wonder if that crank's top fed bearings ever act on the crank and make it resemble a hydraulic ram.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fram-Racing-HP6A-OIL-FILTER-OFFICIAL-NHRA-FILTER-/390401025384?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&vxp=mtr&hash=item5ae5b6e568
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NASCAR-CV-PRODUCTS-REMOTE-OIL-FILTER-MOUNT-CV-749-arca-fram-wix-race-imca-cooler-/290695257938?pt=Race_Car_Parts&vxp=mtr&hash=item43aec99f52
Quote from Jay:
"even idling at 1000 RPM hot the oil pressure is around 60 psi, and when revving it up it will go to over 120 psi."
If I was running a dyno I'd buy the large remote NASCAR head and run the off the shelf MOBIL 1 filter that fits that head w/ the 1-1/8 -16 size thread you'd have pressure capability, flow w/o worrying it would go into bypass and you'd know your getting fine filtration all at the same price as a Mobil 1 Ford FL1 filter price.
I knew I could count on you for a response on the filter issue, BB ;D I like your ideas, but as you say the best approach is to solve the overpressure problem, rather than band-aid it with a killer filter setup.
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I've never heard of the Mobil M1-301. I've been using the FL-1 HP. What's the difference? They seem to cost about the same.
phil
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I don't know if there is a big difference; seems like they both feature heavy duty construction and they both work. Probably six of one, half dozen of the other...
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bang for the buck on their motor the MOBIL 1 spin-on filters are impressive. The fact that they are commonly all sold for the same price regardless of part number means you can score the large spin-ons for absurdly cheap money. Since the dyno operator or even filter user can pay the same money he's going to pay for a standard sized filter and get the big monsters it's pretty much a brainless decision. That big filter covers all the bases and does not sacrifice anything so during a break-in etc when particle counts are about as high as they ever will be it's handling any flow rate thrown at it and filtering to a state of the art level. It's tossed away and replaced for a mere $10 or so.
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Jomar filters, no bypass, 600 psi burst. Great break-in filter.
http://www.jomarperformance.com/pro-filter.php
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I also cobbled up the harness for EMC/dyno work - cut everything apart and de-pinned/removed anything I was not using - like leads for vehicle speed sensors, fan on/off function, multilevel power adder engage.
Geez, I thought your harness was one of the best looking at the event. "Cobbled Up" is not how I would have described it!!
We put our ECU on a well isolated mount for the exact same concerns, ours being homemade I worried about shaking apart some fragile components inside.
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I guess it was not THAT bad...but I did have to tighten the sip on connections during dyno testing when I saw we lost cam synch a couple times based on the LEDs.
But if I had Tim do it I'd have been 6 weeks late for the contest. All the connections would have had high spring tension connectors, and the harness would have had military grade strain reliefs supporting the kevlar outer wraps. We would have had hydraulically dampened mounting brackets attached to the engine by shouldered stainless steel fasteners within high durometer synthetic bushings. Power would have been supplied through a secondary regulated battery source using the contest power only as a trigger for relay actuation. Contacts at Honeywell would have been online to analyze running data and make corrections via satellite uplink.
If he ever reads this he'll probably kill me.... ::)
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Barry, that is the damned funniest thing I read all day!
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If I ever meet Tim I'll make sure to tell him about this web site ;D I sure hear you about going overboard on the electrical stuff; I have to hold myself back every now then. Stripping and crimping would be so much easier than soldering and heat shrinking...
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Stripping and crimping is for Chevy guys! 8)
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Jay, all this drama is why you're going to like running the Peterson set-up on the 585. I see 75 at start up and it falls to 51-52 PSI when the 15-50 synthetic warms up. After that it doesn't move idle to 7500.
Way back when I ran a conventional in pan Melling I saw more varaition but nothing like you've reported. I vote for the stuck bypass too. I know its a PITA but its better to address that rather band aid it as excessive pressure could show up in a number of inconveinent and potentially damaging ways.
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Finally got this engine ready to go, I think. Tuesday night I installed an HP-1 filter and some 10W-30 and that seems to have reduced the peak oil pressure to about 105 psi when the engine is fully warmed up at 4000 RPM. I'm hoping I can run on the dyno like this, and then wait to pull the oil pump until the engine comes off the dyno next week. On Tuesday I also decided to order a couple of spare injectors, because while running the engine on the dyno I noticed that cylinders 6 and 7 seemed to be running at a higher exhaust temperature that some of the other cylinders. I'm thinking that those two injectors may not be working quite right, so a couple of spares will allow me to swap them out and see. The spare injectors should be here tomorrow. Wednesday night I decided to try a couple of lower RPM dyno pulls, but the dyno gave me some trouble; the brake wasn't reliably holding the engine. Sometimes this happens with the dyno, especially if it hasn't been used in a while, and I haven't used it since the beginning of December. So tonight I pulled all the filters and cleaned them. In the process I found a cracked check valve on the absorber inlet, so I picked up a replacement tonight at the local home improvement store. Then I pulled the servo valve and made sure it wasn't stuck or anything. Finally tonight I brought the engine into a pull and the brake held just fine, so I'm finally ready to make some power starting tomorrow night. I've also got the day free on Saturday, so if everything goes according to plan I should have plenty of time to get the engine tuned and see what kind of power it will make. Hopefully I can post some dyno charts and dyno video on Sunday. Not counting my chickens just yet, though. This engine has already given me far too much trouble, and something else could go wrong, but I'm hopeful...
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Stripping and crimping is for Chevy guys! 8)
And us USAF Electricians,very few connections are soldered.
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We're "pulling" for ya Jay! Here's hoping there are no stray minks skulking around your dyno room. ;)
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Jay, RCI where I bought my injectors has a pretty reasonable cleaning and flow checking service. I sent mine back to them in 2010 as I began to get ready for DW 11. Its nice to know exactly what you have as you get graphs for each injector and flow rates at at specified pressures.
I'm sure someone local to you would provide a similar service. Believe it or not I add Chevorn Techron to a tank of gas every three or four months to keep things clean as well as using Chevron gas, which is this part of the world seems to be the safest adn best for EFI cars.
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Got some preliminary dyno results on this engine today; it peaked at 864 HP and 698 lb-ft of torque after all the tuning was finished up. I'm hoping to pick up another 10-15 HP tomorrow with some timing and fuel changes, but for the most part this is the power that the engine is going to make.
Friday night I got home from the usual family activities a little late to be starting a dyno session, and the situation with my fuel injectors was still bugging me, so I decided to take the evening and check out all of my injectors. I received a package from Summit on Friday with two brand new injectors in it, and in order to test them and compare them with my existing injectors I decided to make a little test fixture. I took a short section of spare fuel rail, machined it to accomodate fittings and an injector, and then machined a separate piece as a bracket that would hold the injector in place. Here's a photo:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/injtest1.jpg)
Then I took my spare fuel pressure regulator and some fittings and attached it to the fuel rail, so that I could hook the test injector up to the fuel pump on the dyno:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/injtest2.jpg)
I took a spare injector harness and soldered a pushbuton into one of the wires, then put alligator clips on the ends so I could hook it to the battery, then attached the whole setup to the dyno fuel system. When the fuel pump was on I could energize the injector and look at the spray pattern, so that I knew what to expect from all the injectors. From there I turned on my precision scale and using an old plastic oil bottle, I weighed the bottle empty, then sprayed fuel into it for exactly 60 seconds, and then weighed it again. From there I was able to calculate pounds per hour of fuel for the injectors. After running this test on the two new injectors, I removed the eight old injectors from the motor and ran them too. I got the following data on the injectors; numbers 9 and 10 are the new injectors:
1: 69.9 lbs/hour
2: 68.2 lbs/hour
3: 71.1 lbs/hour
4: 70.9 lbs/hour
5: 69.2 lbs/hour
6: 70.1 lbs/hour
7: 67.7 lbs/hour
8: 67.5 lbs/hour
9: 67.7 lbs/hour
10: 71.8 lbs/hour
This test made me feel a lot better about the injectors. They were all in the same ballpark for flow, and despite the fact that they were not being pulsed during this test, I felt that since the new injectors behaved about the same as the old injectors the old injectors were probably working fine. Looking at the numbers, I threw out the high and low flow rate injectors, and then separated the others into two groups with equal average flow, one for each side of the engine, to try to even up the side to side A/F readings that I would get.
This morning I spent a couple hours making some last minute adjustments and checks to the engine, and also hooking up the air induction system so that the dyno could monitor the engine's air usage. Here's a photo of the engine at this point:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/519ondyno.jpg)
After this was all finished up I had to make a run to get some more race gas and a new belt for the vacuum pump; I was almost out of adjustment for the existing belt, because it was too long. When I got back my friend JC (he of the Y-block persuasion :o) was waiting to give me a hand. We had a quick bite to eat, and then I got started putting the new belt on. However, after it was installed I realized that it was bending the brackets that hold the vacuum pump in place and causing a pulley alignment issue when I tightened it sufficiently. This led to an hour long CNC project, where I built an additional brace for the vacuum pump to address this issue. Finally, around 1:30 I was ready to run so I fired the engine and let it warm up to an oil temperature of 160F. This was kind of the moment of truth for the oil pump and oil pressure issue; I had previously decided that if the oil pressure during the run increased past 120 psi I was going to have to pull the pan with the engine on the dyno. My first checkout pull went from 3000 to 4500 RPM, and the oil pressure peaked at about 108 psi; what a relief!
From there, I started tuning the engine in 500 RPM increments, starting from 3000 to 5000 RPM, then moving to 3500 to 5500, 4000 to 6000, etc. At the higher speed levels I started seeing a slight drop off in oil pressure on the top end. Reviewing the crankcase vacuum data in the dyno logs I saw that I was pulling around 15 inches of vacuum at speed, and I suspected that this was causing the oil pressure behavior. But we didn't know for sure; JC suggested that we film the sight glass I had installed on the side of the oil pan during a pull and watch to see what happened. I thought that was a pretty good idea, so I set my tripod and camera up on the left side of the engine, looking at the pan, and made the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y28pPcml59U&context=C417ba0cADvjVQa1PpcFO96Jdxl9sme8uDkAMZmmIXxBOxFFaXY6c=
You can see the oil level go up and down before, during, and after the pull, but at no time did the oil level in the pan drop too far down, so I concluded that the vacuum pump was causing the oil pressure behavior, and as long as the oil pressure stayed at a reasonable level I didn't have to worry about it.
We continued tuning the engine and finally ran from 5500-7500 RPM. The engine made 719 lb-ft of torque at 5600 RPM, and 858 horsepower at 6900 RPM. I was pretty happy with that; a quick calculation showed that to be 1.65 HP/cubic inch, which is certainly a respectable number. But the engine was peaking in power too low; the torque converter for the Galaxie has a 6000 RPM stall speed, and I felt that a higher power peak would be more beneficial for running a good number at the track.
Since this is an individual runner intake manifold, one of the things I'd been itching to try was to tune the RPM band by shortening the injector ram tubes. I decided to give this a try, so with JC's help we pulled all the ram tubes off the intake manifold and cut them down from 9" overall length to 7" overall length. This took an hour or so, but wasn't that difficult, and by 5:45 we were up and running again. This time I started at 4000-6000 RPM and worked my way up to 5500-7500. I had to make some changes to the VE map to add fuel at the upper RPM ranges because the change in ram tube length definitely had an effect. The torque peak of the engine was shifted about 600 RPM up by the shortened stacks. In this configuration, average horsepower from 6000-7500 RPM was up about 13 HP over the longer tubes, so shortening the tubes was definitely a worthwhile exercise.
Here's a graph of the engine's power band from 5500 to 7500 RPM:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/dyno11.jpg)
Here a graph of the power band from 4000 to 7000 RPM; note that this is two separate dyno pulls merged together, so some of the data points overlap:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/dyno7+11.jpg)
Here's a graph showing the best results from 5500-7500 RPM with the two different injector stacks length. Looking at this data it appears that I got lucky, and adjusted the injector stacks to exactly the right length, because at 6000 RPM the HP curves are at an identical point, but from that point forward the shorter stacks take over. So, with the 6000 RPM converter cutting the stacks didn't cost me any power; its only a gain.
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/stacklength.jpg)
It is interesting to compare this engine to the original trim of my 585" SOHC. Compression ratio is the same, heads are the same, cams are the same, and the ignition system and EFI system and injectors are the same. This is a really instructive comparison of engine sizes, and really points out the differences very clearly. For the 585" engine, peak HP per cubic inch worked out to 1.60, while with the shorter stacks on the smaller engine, peak HP per cube was 1.66. So, the smaller engine made more power per cube. Makes sense; that would be expected. Also, with the exactly same setup but 65 more cubic inches, the 585" engine peaked at 931 HP, while the 519" engine peaked at 864. Again, seems to make sense. Here's a graph showing the 585" engine and the 519" engine together on the same chart. The differences are really obvious:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/585vs519.jpg)
Which engine will be faster down the track? Duh. You can't beat cubic inches.
Finally, here's a video of one of the last pulls. I had a lot of trouble with my camera, trying to get it to take a decent video while showing the computer screen in the dyno room, but finally I got some reasonable results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ma6-rlv01s
This thing sounds so good at 7500 I'm really tempted to take it to 8000 RPM on Sunday. But its not going to make any more power if I do that, and if I cut the stacks again I'll start losing power at 6000 RPM, and I don't want to do that either. Plus, 8000 RPM and a 4.5" stroke crank is 6000 feet per minute piston speed; Yikes! I might run it to 8000 anyway, just to listen to the freaking thing; it sounds so cool! If I do I'll post another video. Nothing like an 8000 RPM SOHC, after all...
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Love the graphs. They start at the point I'm trying to get to. LOL
The "small SOHC" looks awesome on the pump.
What size diameter are your stacks? I have a set of stacks that I doubt I will ever get around to using.
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Very nice results! ;D
I'm glad you're slaying the dragons now in April, as opposed to the waning days of August. Looks like this thing is going to be a playa'. Still planning to stick the 519" into the Galaxie and then build up the 585" SOHC for the Shelby clone?
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What size diameter are your stacks? I have a set of stacks that I doubt I will ever get around to using.
The stacks are Kinslers, 2 5/8" OD. They are aluminum, and a lot nicer than the steel stacks that came with the Hilborn setup. If you have a set of aluminum stacks that are 2 5/8" OD, send me a picture Howie, I might be interested in those. Thanks, Jay
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Still planning to stick the 519" into the Galaxie and then build up the 585" SOHC for the Shelby clone?
That is the plan. Unfortunately, I'm currently waiting for parts for both the High Riser and the big SOHC, and those are the two Drag Week engines. The Galaxie isn't going, although I hope to have it reassembled and running by the end of the month. Hopefully those other engines will be together long before August...
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I found myself waiting for that last pull to start with almost 'wedding night' anticipation. ;D
Now, when you get a pair of turbos putting about 40 pounds into it...
KS
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Jay, that is awesome! I'm with Howie...you're graphs start where i hope my motor ends up! Sounds simply amazing. I hate to sound like one of my spoiled kids, but I'm still dying to see how the 545" hi-riser turns out. Sorry...
Phil
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Way cool Jay! Good guess on the stacks as well.
Love the upside down USPS looking plastic bins that form the dyno's air chamber....I won't tell if you don't...LOL!
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Did a little more fine tuning on the engine today. It seems to like a little less timing on the top end, and the power curve hung in there for a little longer as a result. I fined tuned the EFI map a little more and picked up another 3-4 HP, but nothing real substantial.
One thing I had noticed was that the engine was creating a fair amount of exhaust backpressure at the top end of the pulls, close to 1 psi. Here's a graph of the back pressure data from the dyno:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/backpressure.jpg)
Keeping this in mind, for the last pull of the day I decided to run with the exhaust open in the dyno room, and hope that my neighbors would forgive me LOL! This netted the best peak horsepower number of the day at 878 HP at 7300 RPM. Here's a graph of the data:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/519SHC19.jpg)
In the end I decided not to run to 8000 RPM; I'll save that for the track. Tonight this engine is coming off the dyno, and during the week this week I'll pull the oil pump and get to the bottom of the oil pressure issue. As long as I have the pan off I'll look at the bearings as well, and provided there are no problems, this engine is going in the Galaxie next weekend. I'll update this project with some track numbers when I get the Galaxie to the drag strip.
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Very cool stuff Jay!
I really noticed that torque bump around 4,700 rpm. Simulations I've done with various flavors of cammers on Engine Analyzer Pro seem to produce such a bump. I'm guessing it's the header primary scavenging?
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I'm pretty sure the torque bump is related to the individual runner manifold. When I first ran an SOHC back in 2007 with all the different manifolds, the fuel injection manifold was the only one that had such a lumpy power curve. It may also be that it is a combination of the header scavenging and the IR intake working together to produce that bump in the torque curve, but I don't know for sure. All I know is that this manifold is difficult to get tuned right in the midrange, because the torque curve is going up and down like a roller coaster, and the other manifolds I tested didn't show that behavior.
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Jay, the motor sounds great, congrats!
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I'm pretty sure the torque bump is related to the individual runner manifold. When I first ran an SOHC back in 2007 with all the different manifolds, the fuel injection manifold was the only one that had such a lumpy power curve. It may also be that it is a combination of the header scavenging and the IR intake working together to produce that bump in the torque curve, but I don't know for sure. All I know is that this manifold is difficult to get tuned right in the midrange, because the torque curve is going up and down like a roller coaster, and the other manifolds I tested didn't show that behavior.
It really is a shame you couldn't test the sheet metal intake and dual Holleys. It would have been very interesting to see the difference between the two intake combos. As always your build is an impressive combo. I can't wait to see the high riser on the dyno.
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I would like to see the data from my 527 overlayed with the 519 - - since peak power is similar it might make a nice comparison between the IR and a tunnel style 2x4.
I don't have your "numbers" so you get to key in mine :)
(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e135/Barry_R/527SOHC-1.jpg)
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Hi Jay,
Awesome video- thank you for sharing. I did have a quick question: during the dyno pull video there is some vapor coming off the left side of the engine. Is that fumes from the vacuum pump or something else?
thanks
Joe
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Hi Jay,
Awesome video- thank you for sharing. I did have a quick question: during the dyno pull video there is some vapor coming off the left side of the engine. Is that fumes from the vacuum pump or something else?
thanks
Joe
That's the exhaust of the vacuum pump that you are seeing. It goes into a can with a breather on top, and typically it will smoke a little bit during a pull because you get condensation in the can, and water vapor will come out of the breather.
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Jay understand I know little to nothing.....
Would running 2 different length stacks maybe flatten the torque curve?
My Sprint Car racing cousin does that on a slick track with a SBC says it widens the torque curve.
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I would like to see the data from my 527 overlayed with the 519 - - since peak power is similar it might make a nice comparison between the IR and a tunnel style 2x4.
I don't have your "numbers" so you get to key in mine :)
Here's the data, with both ram tube lengths on my engine plus your engine:
(http://fepower.net/Photos/Posts/519SOHC/cammercomparison.JPG)
Your motor is a torque monster compared to mine below 5500 RPM, but after that they come in a little closer. Gotta be the induction setup. Although the tunnel wedge setup isn't known for a lot of low end and mid-range, it must be better than the Hilborn setup down there.
You can sure see the effects of the ram tube length on the torque curves on my engine...
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level sight glass so that the thrown oil or oil wall would not be so much of a factor?
Just always figured that windage could really effect the level of a sight glass by placement and actual probes entrance configurations, thank goodness you run a vac pump which obviously should help cut down on the 8) windage factor. Great to watch!
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Jay, awesome motor and glad to see the results from intake port length changes.
Not sure how easy it would be to measure on the motor, but could you do some before and after calcs based on the old Ramcharger's wave tuning math?
L = 80500 / N
L = duct length (inches) from Plenum ( the first reflection point) to the back of the intake valve.
N = Engine RPM for maximum tuning effect
Solve for N before and after and see which one was closer to where you made power? Needless to say the shorter stacks did well so it should be closer, but it would be interesting to see what the numbers came out to be. For an IR manifold L should be from the valve to the end of the stack
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Jay understand I know little to nothing.....
Would running 2 different length stacks maybe flatten the torque curve?
My Sprint Car racing cousin does that on a slick track with a SBC says it widens the torque curve.
I'll bet that would actually work pretty well; probably would make the engine much less peaky.
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level sight glass so that the thrown oil or oil wall would not be so much of a factor?
Just always figured that windage could really effect the level of a sight glass by placement and actual probes entrance configurations, thank goodness you run a vac pump which obviously should help cut down on the 8) windage factor. Great to watch!
There's no baffling in front of the sight tube openings, BB, so you are definitely seeing some windage effect in the tube. I think it is fairly clear that as the engine speed climbs and the oil level comes up, that is probably due to windage. What I keyed in on was the drop in the oil level when the engine finished the pull; despite dropping in the video it remained plenty high to ensure that the pickup was covered.
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Jay, awesome motor and glad to see the results from intake port length changes.
Not sure how easy it would be to measure on the motor, but could you do some before and after calcs based on the old Ramcharger's wave tuning math?
L = 80500 / N
L = duct length (inches) from Plenum ( the first reflection point) to the back of the intake valve.
N = Engine RPM for maximum tuning effect
Solve for N before and after and see which one was closer to where you made power? Needless to say the shorter stacks did well so it should be closer, but it would be interesting to see what the numbers came out to be. For an IR manifold L should be from the valve to the end of the stack
L for the two different ram tube lengths is 15.75 and 17.75. Based on the formula the engine should tune at 5100 RPM for the short tubes and 4500 RPM for the long tubes. Not to close to what really happened, BUT it is very interesting that the difference between the projected speeds is 600 RPM, and that is the amount of the shift I saw in the torque peak.
I have a program called Pipemax that calculates this kind of stuff, and it has also not proven perfectly accurate for these kinds of calculations, but it does seem to be pretty good at predicting a delta in the peaks. Pipemax told me that a 2" tube length change would give a 600 RPM increase in the peak torque RPM, and that's what happened.
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Thanks Jay, I had hoped the vapors were from the vacuum pump vent. It makes sense, the vacuum pumps at work do the same thing when they're pulling vacuum.
Joe
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Jay, awesome results. The comparison with Barry's 527 is fascinating. Your IR setup is a clinic on Heimholtz resonance tuning. Did you see any EGT or AFR correlation to the 'lumps' in the torque curve? Since the fuel curve is fixed, the changes would have to be related to reversion/ram tuning from the changing air flow resulting from the individula runners, IMHO.
Secondly, the oil level, another priceless bit of information. Did you happen to log the crankcase pressure and oil pressure? My theory being that when you pull the throttle back the crankcase pressurization past the rings falls to almost nothing, yet with engine speed high the pump is still at maximum and literally sucks/holds the oil in the top of the motor until it releases as RPM rapidly falls. The net no big deal unless you see a huge drop in oil pressure at that moment which coupled with heavy braking at the end of the 1/4 mile could starve the pick-up briefly.
As an aside I don't see anything like that on mine and I have videotaped the guages to be sure. Yes different pans, engines but similar in terms of front sump, vacuum pump, RPM range and big displacement.
The net absent a big pressure drop no sweat, right?
Now could you please build an original 427 cu. in. engine for Drag Week Street Race NA? Please?
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http://www.dragzine.com/features/interviews/randy-seward-the-crazy-story-behind-4000-miles-in-an-8-sec-stang/
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No Bill, I will not build a stock 427 for Drag Week LOL! I don't know why you're worried with that 1000 HP monster under your hood :D
The hilly torque curve is not reflected in the exhaust gas temps, but it is definitely reflected in the A/F numbers. I agree with you that this is all part of the sonic tuning effect. The engines I've run this induction setup on are nearly impossible to tune in the 3000-5000 RPM range; you need a bunch more resolution in the VE map to get close. When I did my first SOHC with this manifold converted to EFI I ended up with RPM increments of 300 for part of this range to get the A/F stable. I concluded a while back that kind of effort just wasn't worth it, and so I end up living with A/F numbers that vary widely in this range.
The dyno does log the crankcase pressure and oil pressure, but unfortunately once the engine reaches the end of the pull it stops logging, so I don't have the data on what happens when the throttle is pulled back. That would be interesting to see. Oil pressure drops during the pull, after the first 500 RPM or so, but it typically would start at 95 psi, and maybe drop to 65 psi by 7500 RPM. Vacuum was stable during the pull at around 14"-15".
I'm thinking this engine is probably good for 9.70s or 9.80s in the Galaxie. We will see...
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Jay, awesome motor and glad to see the results from intake port length changes.
Not sure how easy it would be to measure on the motor, but could you do some before and after calcs based on the old Ramcharger's wave tuning math?
L = 80500 / N
L = duct length (inches) from Plenum ( the first reflection point) to the back of the intake valve.
N = Engine RPM for maximum tuning effect
Solve for N before and after and see which one was closer to where you made power? Needless to say the shorter stacks did well so it should be closer, but it would be interesting to see what the numbers came out to be. For an IR manifold L should be from the valve to the end of the stack
L for the two different ram tube lengths is 15.75 and 17.75. Based on the formula the engine should tune at 5100 RPM for the short tubes and 4500 RPM for the long tubes. Not to close to what really happened, BUT it is very interesting that the difference between the projected speeds is 600 RPM, and that is the amount of the shift I saw in the torque peak.
I have a program called Pipemax that calculates this kind of stuff, and it has also not proven perfectly accurate for these kinds of calculations, but it does seem to be pretty good at predicting a delta in the peaks. Pipemax told me that a 2" tube length change would give a 600 RPM increase in the peak torque RPM, and that's what happened.
Neat stuff Jay, I am familiar with Larry Meaux's Pipemax, although I haven't built anything since I bought it. :-[ USAF keeps getting in the way lately.
1 more year until they send me off to finishing school yet again LOL, 2 years until retirement eligible, either will give me time to play more
I wonder if there is a second harmonic coming into play with the long runners?
Another question, do you run any line damper on the EFI? I don't have a way to log it on my car, some claim there is power to be had in an inline fuel pressure damper, on a dyno it could be seen with wiggle type gauge.
The larger the injectors, the more it can affect other injectors. I run one one in addition to the regulator, and considered running one on each rail. Before and after it did seem a bit smoother, but it could have been my wallet talking
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Very interesting data indeed seing them laid out like that. The two engines are not directly comparable - significant differences in heads and cam, as well as competitive intent, dyno brand & cell. But as Bill noted you can really see the wave tuning impact of the stacks as compared to the plenum intake.
Some of your prior testing ha shown significant gains in midrange with the stacks & that was what I was looking for. I have a feeling that if you played with diameters and lengths you'd see that big tuning wave again - just seeing how it "comes on" here. Probably very application dependent.
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Decades ago I sold an enormous ASME flanged "mushroom" like looking filter housing of Stainless Steel that accepted a single cylindrical filter element (much like a K&N but industrial grade-you don't see light holes in the media) about 2-1/2ft x 3ft for an equally enormous Sullair two cylinder air compressor. We're talking about something like a 16" bore and stroke measured in feet. About a week after it was installed I got a call that every weld on the filter housing was cracking and it was falling apart. Long story short the 15 foot length of the inlet piping was right in the "critical length zone" as determined by a formula in that industry for that bore and stroke and RPM. The piping was lengthened about ten additional feet, the housing repaired and there never was another cracked weld. The fact that serious guage metal was shattered like it was hit by a sledge hammer was a learning experience and indicated the forces inherent in intake pulses and perhaps just as likely in exhaust pulses
Nothing else has ever impressed me as to the effects of intakes pulse strength until I saw the deviations from so small a change as those short vs long tubes.
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Neat stuff Jay, I am familiar with Larry Meaux's Pipemax, although I haven't built anything since I bought it. :-[ USAF keeps getting in the way lately.
1 more year until they send me off to finishing school yet again LOL, 2 years until retirement eligible, either will give me time to play more
I wonder if there is a second harmonic coming into play with the long runners?
Another question, do you run any line damper on the EFI? I don't have a way to log it on my car, some claim there is power to be had in an inline fuel pressure damper, on a dyno it could be seen with wiggle type gauge.
The larger the injectors, the more it can affect other injectors. I run one one in addition to the regulator, and considered running one on each rail. Before and after it did seem a bit smoother, but it could have been my wallet talking
I'm certain that you are seeing two different harmonics with the two different torque peaks. Probably the second and third harmonics, if you can believe what Pipemax is saying.
I'm not running any kind of line damper in the fuel system, but I do run the large 11/16" bore fuel rails and #10 AN fuel lines, and keep the pressure in the 45 psi range. The dyno logs the fuel pressure every 100 RPM and I don't see any significant variations. From the start of the pull to the end I do see a fairly steady drop in fuel pressure of 2-3 psi, but it isn't bouncing around any. That would be a bigger issue if the fuel rails and fuel lines were smaller diameter, I think.
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Very interesting data indeed seing them laid out like that. The two engines are not directly comparable - significant differences in heads and cam, as well as competitive intent, dyno brand & cell. But as Bill noted you can really see the wave tuning impact of the stacks as compared to the plenum intake.
Some of your prior testing ha shown significant gains in midrange with the stacks & that was what I was looking for. I have a feeling that if you played with diameters and lengths you'd see that big tuning wave again - just seeing how it "comes on" here. Probably very application dependent.
I agree, after thinking about this a little I'm sure that the large stack diameter and large throttle butterfly diameter of the Hilborn setup is hurting low end torque production. On the other hand, it is needed for top end power, and in fact I've had a few knowledgeable people tell me that the injector butterflies are really too small for this engine. I guess this is why you don't see the Hilborn style setups on a lot of drag cars.
On the other hand, they sure look cool ;D
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I think the fuel rail issue resolves itself with a large ID, the Wilson Manifolds 'D' shape rails I have are similar in x-sectional area to yours and coupled with the large Aeromotive EFI regulator and #10 lines in and out I don't see fuel pressure variations through the RPM range or heading down track.
Our biggest fuel pressure issue was on the engine dyno where the flow meters to derive BSFC numbers caused an issue. We had to take the retunr meter out to solve the problem and still saw 2-3 PSI drop at the top of the pull similar to yours. I don't see that in the car.
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I'd agree with your quote that the injector butterflies are too small for the engine's CID and head flow. Adding larger butterflies would increase top end hp but hurt torque...it's your call but getting a larger i.d. could get pricey. When one looks at the now very old Algon F.I. setups for the FE the butterflies were tiny compared to your setup, although early and essentially passenger car FE head flow rates (b/4 high risers, tunnel ports, etc.) rpm levels and 390-427 CID's didn't need any more I.D. Would be cool to pursue much larger injectors but hey, it's not my money ;D
Very interesting data indeed seing them laid out like that. The two engines are not directly comparable - significant differences in heads and cam, as well as competitive intent, dyno brand & cell. But as Bill noted you can really see the wave tuning impact of the stacks as compared to the plenum intake.
Some of your prior testing ha shown significant gains in midrange with the stacks & that was what I was looking for. I have a feeling that if you played with diameters and lengths you'd see that big tuning wave again - just seeing how it "comes on" here. Probably very application dependent.
I agree, after thinking about this a little I'm sure that the large stack diameter and large throttle butterfly diameter of the Hilborn setup is hurting low end torque production. On the other hand, it is needed for top end power, and in fact I've had a few knowledgeable people tell me that the injector butterflies are really too small for this engine. I guess this is why you don't see the Hilborn style setups on a lot of drag cars.
On the other hand, they sure look cool ;D
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Its not so much about the cost as it is about availability. There isn't a set of injectors available for the engine with bigger throttle bodies, so I would have to build my own. Kinda figured if I was going to go through all that trouble, I'd be better of building a conventional sheet metal intake.
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Jay understand I know little to nothing.....
Would running 2 different length stacks maybe flatten the torque curve?
My Sprint Car racing cousin does that on a slick track with a SBC says it widens the torque curve.
I believe you'll find that the 'two different stack lengths' phenomenon you sometimes see on a BBC is due to the 'good' and 'bad' intake runners that are found on the 'rat' motor. However, some NASCAR engine builders have experimented with different (calculated) lengths on their headers---with good results---and it might well be that multiple stack lengths would offer similar results!
KS
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Actually, there are much larger injectors available, although they would not have the look of the individual stacks. Using one of these injectors (or a similar one) on that custom sheetmetal EFI intake would be a snap.I only wonder if they might pass too much air when closed at idle since they weren't designed for gasoline engines.
http://www.dmpeinc.com/superchargers/index.php/other-components/injector-hats.html?mode=list
Perhaps a couple of throttle bodies merely for air handling from Ron's would work better as he has a large range of high cfm 4-hole bodies.
http://ronsfuel.com/efi_throttlebodies.cfm
Its not so much about the cost as it is about availability. There isn't a set of injectors available for the engine with bigger throttle bodies, so I would have to build my own. Kinda figured if I was going to go through all that trouble, I'd be better of building a conventional sheet metal intake.
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I was talking about SOHC specific injectors. Once you go to a custom intake there are no limits, but the issue is building the custom intake. No time for that at the moment...
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Jay understand I know little to nothing.....
Would running 2 different length stacks maybe flatten the torque curve?
My Sprint Car racing cousin does that on a slick track with a SBC says it widens the torque curve.
I believe you'll find that the 'two different stack lengths' phenomenon you sometimes see on a BBC is due to the 'good' and 'bad' intake runners that are found on the 'rat' motor. However, some NASCAR engine builders have experimented with different (calculated) lengths on their headers---with good results---and it might well be that multiple stack lengths would offer similar results!
KS
I knew that about BBC, this is a SBC I have no clue power wise what it does but it "softens" the hit to the tires so it laps faster on slick tracks.
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With the engine back off the dyno I pulled the pan tonight, and then removed the oil pump to find the source of my high pressure. After punching a hole in the soft plug and removing it with a screw, I immediately discovered the problem. The pump spring had a shim behind it. This is the shim that Precision Oil Pumps includes with their pumps, in case you want to run a higher oil pressure. Apparently I had installed this shim in the pump when I put the motor together the last time in 2008. I had completely forgotten about it. Back then I was experimenting with some light weight synthetic oil, and had installed the shim to boost the oil pressure. It never occurred to me when I was putting the engine together this time that I had done that. Oops :-[
Well, at least the problem is resolved now. Just gotta put the pan back on and slam the engine in the Galaxie... 8)
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So, you really are human after all?? ;) Good luck with the Galaxie. Joe-JDC.
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Stop goofing around with the daily driver and get back to work on that 545 high riser. ;D
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LOL! I'm kind of anxious for that one myself. Pistons should be back from coating in 2-3 weeks, then a week for balancing, then assembly and dyno. Look for the high riser towards the middle or end of May...
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LOL! I'm kind of anxious for that one myself. Pistons should be back from coating in 2-3 weeks, then a week for balancing, then assembly and dyno. Look for the high riser towards the middle or end of May...
Maybe my Tunnelport can make it a back to back wedge dyno weekend. It should be together by the end of May. ;D
My hp target is a lot lower than yours but it will be interesting to see where it ends up.
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That would be cool... 8)
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How much oil pressure would you like to see on your small SOHC?
I have a POP Melling M-57AHV and have the heavy spring to put in it.
I plan on running this pump in my Genesis build.
I'm thinking it will make about 110 psi.
Using a 10w30 oil.
To much?
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Oil pressure is somewhat overrated, IMHO. The real oil pressure is generated inside the bearing/crankpin interface; as long as you have enough pressure to supply oil to the bearing clearance area at the rate that it is leaving, you have enough oil pressure.
I like to see at least 15 psi at idle, and 60-70 psi going down the road at 3000 RPM. If it goes over 90 psi going down the track, I'm thinking its a little high.
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For optimum oiling the question isn't pressure, its adequate volume at every point where the oil film or splash lubrication/oil cooling is required. The pressure requirement derives from what is needed to maintain the oil film at the bearings, lifters, rockers etc. throughout the loaded RPM range. Extra pressure is just wasted horsepower and a system that sees pressure out side the norms for typical similar engine design with simialr clearances indicates an artificial restriction starting with Jay's shim in the pressure relief valve, but commonly in misaligned bearing shells, rocker shafts, lifter to bore relationships or casting issues.
Its the volume requirements that have to be managed when looser clearnaces, spring oilers, piston oilers or vacuum pumps among others are added to the build requirements. This is oil pump voulme output, not system capacity. I like larger over all system capacity as a way to keep temps under control and allow for adeqaute top end oil supply with appropriate managment of oil return and windage. This has become of big part of making big cams with solid rollers survive street driving and racing such as we do at Drag Week.
The real FE experts here can weigh in but 110 sounds way high to my thinking.
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Bill -
Excellent explanation. This agrees perfectly with what I learned at Ford and in tribology (lubrication) classes in grad school.
A journal bearing creates its own oil film by pulling oil in from a source. There only needs to be enough oil available to keep that film going under all conditions. Actual pressure inside the bearing film reaches thousands of psi, way beyond the capability of our oil pumps.
The benefit of excess oil flow is to carry away heat, especially in rod bearings. You want as much volume flow as the system (clearances) will support without building up excessive pressure. Like you explained, too much pressure just wastes power and beats on cam gears, etc.
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I thought the factory was 110 psi at the filter mount and then a vent at
the rear main at about 80 psi.
I have two stock vent springs and one is thicker than the other. ???
Melling pegs the sideoiler at 125 psi at the gauge.
During Jay's oil test and using my basic math skills this is what I think I would see at the rear main bearing.
110 psi on the gauge at the filter mount. 84 psi at the rear main bearing at 180* oil temp.
Approximately 24% reduction.
The Genesis block is not actually drilled for the vent at the rear of the block
This is right in line with what Ford was doing back in the day.
I plan on spinning my 427 to at least 7500 rpm.
I love the sound of a high winding pump. :P
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Hey I am working on a SOHC build myself, I was trying to hunt down one of those Paul Monroe gear drive sets. I was hoping you could tell me where you got yours from. It would greatly appreciated.
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You can get them directly from Paul; his email address is paul_munro1@bigpond.com. I believe he has a US distributor on the East coast, but I don't know the guy's name. Email Paul and I'm sure he can give you the info. He doesn't always respond to emails real fast, so give him a few days to respond after you send him one.