Spill the beans Jay

[KMcCullah]

In your PRI post you made mention of building a new wedge FE to test various 351C manifolds with your intake adaptor. What's it gonna be? Inquiring FE minds want to know. 

[jayb]

It's a secret LOL!   



Actually, its no secret.  Pond cast iron block that Blair used in Engine Masters in 2007, that I later repurposed for the 427 dyno mule in my book.  Now its going out to 4.28" bore, with a 4.375" crank and 13:1 pistons, along with Crower billet rods.  The heads are Edelbrocks that Joe Craine ported for me to maintain the stock medium riser port opening size, but with 2.19/1.71 valves.  Joe got 330 out of the intake ports on this set of heads.  The cam is a BIG Comp solid roller, with ZT series lobes.  I expect to run to at least 7000 RPM with this engine, maybe 7500.  I'm going to use one of my intake adapters with the water passage machined away, and a distributorless ignition system, so that I can bolt on any 351C intake, without modification, for test purposes.  It ought to make 700 horsepower, and probably more with a bigger set of heads, but for 351C intake comparison purposes with my intake adapter I wanted to keep the stock medium riser port size, so increasing the size of the head ports was pointless. 

I've got all the parts, but I do need to machine the heads for EZ Loks in the rocker shaft studs, because I'll be running a set of Erson roller rockers and they rely on the factory stud locations (as opposed to a set of T&Ds).  Funny you should ask about this today, because I just got done ordering a set of rev kit buttons and springs from Comp Cams for this engine.  A while back somebody came up with the idea of putting a rev kit on an FE using my intake adapter, so I'm going to use this opportunity to see if I can make that work.  I think it would be pretty cool to have an FE with a rev kit installed.

I'm going to try to get this engine together over the holidays, so that I can make some noise on the dyno in January.  Stay tuned...

[wayne]

Jay there is a offey dail-a-flow for a 351 c on e bay now i dont know if they still make the insides or how well they work. You dont see many of them.

[BruceS]

Jay,
Pardon my ignorance; I've heard of the term Rev Kit but don't know what it consists of specifically. Can you describe it and what parts are involved?

Thanks,
Bruce

[thatdarncat]

Here's a picture lifted from the internet



Generally consists of a set of auxiliary springs located between the lifters and head to aid in valvetrain control. Normally hard to do on a FE since our heads don't extend over the deck surface like others. But with Jay's intake adapter and the access plate it might be do-able.

[jayb]

I talked to the guys at Comp about rev kits at the PRI show.  In addition to allowing a little less valve spring pressure on a solid roller cam, they offer the advantage of keeping the cam roller in contact with the cam at all times.  Without a rev kit the cam roller can lift off the cam by the amount of the lash, so when the lobe comes around there is a hit or shock to the roller wheel as it comes back into contact with the lobe.  So the rev kit should make a solid roller last quite a bit longer.

They also mentioned that a rev kit would help a hydraulic roller lifter rev higher.  Back when the aftermarket hydraulic rollers first came out, guys were using rev kits to extend their range.  Now Comp offers a more sophisticated, limited travel hydraulic roller lifter for the more popular engines, which they claim will rev to 7000 RPM, so that a rev kit is not required.  But of course, they don't offer those hydraulic rollers for the FE.  So, adding a rev kit to the FE hydraulic roller lifters should help with the RPM range.  I don't know if the other manufacturers of hydraulic rollers, like Morel, offer a better one for FEs or not, but in any case a rev kit would offer at least some advantages. 

Hope I can make it work...

[XR7]

Sounds like an interesting "mule" build. That will be a pretty cool engine! 504 CI. Will you also be testing a few "normal" FE intake for comparison sake, against all the adapter/351C combos you plan on testing, on the same mule? It would be interesting to do a few as a baseline, like an RPM, a Victor, and maybe a DOVE tunnel ram.

As for the T&D rockers, remember they have a "street" set-up that would use the normal stands and bolt locations, and no special machining required too. A lot of people think the T&D is a race only system, but they have both available. I think the better thread inserts are a good idea when using the 4- 3/8 stock location threads. What kind of spring pressure do you think you will run on that for an aggressive lobe to 7500 RPM.

[jayb]

I already have the Erson rocker setup, so I'm just going to use that, rather than buy the "street" T&D setup.  I'm going to be running some pretty big springs, probably 280 on the seat and 700 over the nose, or maybe a little less if I can get the rev kit to work, so going to the inserts in the heads will be required.

I do plan to run some straight FE intakes along with the 351C intakes at some point.  But one of the draws of this dyno session is that I won't have to spend hours changing intakes like I would with an FE.  Although a few years ago I was pretty good at that 

[XR7]

Yeah, I kind of figured you already had the Ersons. Nothing wrong with them for sure, I have several friends that run them without issue. One of them has springs that are just under 800# open so you should be fine.

I can only imagine what you went through on the original intake comparo. I bet you really did get good and fast at changing them. This second round should be "cake" for you! And if you O-ring the adapter for no gasket to the upper, wow, that will be a quick change deal. Looking forward to your results and write ups as always.

[KMcCullah]

Awesome Jay! It sounds like a hairy chested version of the 504 I'm building. I hope somebody sends you a CHI 3V with a Dominator flange to test. It's too damn pricey for me to pull the trigger on and then find out it doesn't work well. But I bet it does..... 

[fe66comet]

I remember the rev kit idea, I was told I could not do that LOL. I was thinking of doing a rev kit with hydraulic roller lifters. Kinda abandoned the idea as it would take a lot of custom parts.

[BruceS]

Thanks again for the education y'all!  The Rev Kit idea sounds really good as does the rest of the build Jay is planning... that 504 Mule is gonna be a strong one.

Bruce

[cjshaker]

Of course it's easy for me and lots of others to suggest you spend more time and money doing experiments, so I'm going to make a small comment on.....making you do more work...lmao

I don't recall on your last run of intake tests, once you did the baseline, then tested the (seemingly) thousands of intakes, did you re-do the baseline test to see where the engine stood after all the dyno runs? It would be good to see where the engine stood before and after, just to see if anything was lost after all the runs and how it may have affected the later dyno tests.

That is all 

[jayb]

In fact I did do that on a couple of the dyno mules.  The most notable one came on my rebuilt 428CJ, where I started and ended with the Blue Thunder intake.  This was a brand new motor, and over the course of the testing it picked up 6 HP, if I recall correctly.  The engine was making around 425 HP.

I think I did the same thing with the Performer RPM on the 390 stroker engine, and the results before and after were nearly identical, within a couple horsepower.  I can certainly do that again on this engine, when I finally get it together and running.

[BB-63]

Jay - Have you ever detailed out your distributorless ignition setup on the forum?  If not, I'd be interested to learn how you did it before and what you plan to change for this new mule.