I have to chalk this week up as another frustrating one, where I spent a pretty fair amount of time working on this project but really didn't get a lot accomplished. Over the weekend I spent way more time than I expected doing more machining for the front mounted parts of the engine. My dry sump gear arbor needed to be shortened, and the little bracket that holds the crank sensor seemed to take forever to machine. Plus I had forgotten that I had used some washers to space out the alternator pulley that goes on the crank, so I had to machine a donut to replace those. Pretty much took me all day Saturday, and Sunday morning to get all that done. Here are a couple of pictures of the crank sensor bracket, and how it looks mounted on the engine:
Next I made up the dry sump oil lines that go to the pan; here's a picture of those:
After that was done I was FINALLY able to flip the engine right side up again, and start thinking about installing the intake manifold. Of course, pulling it off the shelf it was pretty dirty, and so I had to pull it all apart and get it cleaned up before I could put it on the engine. Here's a picture of the lower part of the intake, just sitting in place:
Here's a shot down one of the runners:
Pretty straight shot to the valve, that's for sure. As I was inspecting this whole thing I realized that there were going to be some modifications that I wanted to make to this manifold, based on what I've learned about sheet metal intakes since I built this one back in 2010. By the way, any suggestions from you guys on how much plenum volume I should use for this manifold? I'm following the rule of thumb that you should have one cubic inch of plenum volume for each cubic inch of engine displacement on a sheet metal intake like this, but one of the modifications I'm planning is some spacer plates that go between the plenum top and the intake base, to increase plenum volume if necessary. To me, just looking at it, the plenum appears too small, or at least the top of the plenum box is too close to the top of the runners, but I really don't know for sure. One thing I do know is that the runner lengths are off based on my intended RPM range, which is up to a redline of 7500 RPM. But at this point there's not too much I can do about that, and in fact even if I started a new manifold from scratch it would be difficult to get runners that were 1.5" or 2.0" longer without tipping them way up, so that the air would have to bend going into the port. At the time I built the manifold I didn't want to do that, so I'm living with a less than ideal runner length to keep a straight shot at the port. Here's a couple of pictures of the manifold top in place:
Those throttle bodies are rated at 1170 cfm each; just like two Dominators! Coming in from the front makes the tall induction system work with my hood scoop, but I'm sure that I'm leaving power on the table without having the normal Dominator carbs or throttle bodies on top of the plenum. I'm hoping this doesn't cost me too much power. I guess we'll see on the dyno.
I should be able to get the modifications I want made to the intake this week, so that hopefully this engine will finally get mounted on the dyno next weekend. Then I've got a bunch of wiring in front of me before I can run it. It's June already, and Drag Week is only 3 months away! I need to get this engine running...
