I thought folks might be interested in the story on my effort start to finish.. As a first time competitor I learned a lot and would be smarter on my next effort , but it sure was fun. Thanks to those who helped me and were members of my Team.. J.C. thrashed on 3 sets of headers. Joe Craine worked over 1 pair of heads and 5 manifolds. plus both of them were a big help preparing and running the engine at Ohio. My 3rd team member was Rick Martin and he played the role of Lincoln historian to those who stopped by and had never even heard of a Lincoln Y block.
If I had not had a running engine that I was confident in, I could never have put together the effort to get an engine to the Engine Masters. What Ted Eaton did in a compressed time frame is amazing..
The idea was to pull the engine from my drag car and massage it a little bit and run it at EM. I was figuring maybe a couple weeks work and that would be it.It did not turn out that way LOL..I run E-85 in my drag car and the contest has a spec fuel so I needed a different carb. I run an automatic and the contest required an SFI certified flywheel so I had to lean on John to get his supplier to custom make one for me. With a 3000 to 6000 rpm range I was not sure if a single plane intake or a dual plane would score better so I ordered a couple to try.. I do not have any dyno headers that would match that rpm range so i had Yestertech modify some Schoenfeld headers to fit the Lincoln. We decided that Tri Y headers would likely make more low end torque so Jerry whipped up a set of those too. I had always wanted to try a tunnel ram and EFI on this engine.. On my shelf I had the lower half of an EFI tunnel ram intake that Mercury Marine used on one of their scrub based boat engines. I fabricated an upper plenum and rigged up a fuel rail with 42 lb injectors, 2 65mm throttle bodies all controlled by a FAST EZ EFI port injection system. I sent 2 intakes and the tunnel ram to Joe Craine for porting and flow testing. When i had finally collected all the parts I needed I ran my first dyno test in July.. We tested a single plane and a dual plane intake 2 different headers and 4 different carbs. Learnings from the first dyno session were that a 750 carb was all it wanted, and that Jerry's Holley 750 HP Ultra was the best of the 750 carbs we had. The Schoenfeld headers were better than the Tri Y's and the single plane and dual plane intakes were almost identical in score.. Peak power occurs at 6300 and peak torque at 4600 so the cam is not ideal. After thinking about results for a while I decided the only thing that was really nailed down was the carburetor. Everything else was still a question.. On intakes it seems what the engine wanted was a bigger dual plane intake for more top end or a single plane that has smaller runners to make more low end torque. I had confirmed that the cam is really to big for the RPM range I was working with so it decided on the next test to open the lash and advance it 4 degrees to pick up the low end torque. I purchased 2 more intakes, A Performer RPM Air Gap and a Holley Strip Dominator. My thinking was that if the RPM Air Gap could be made to flow a little better it could help the top end score.. The Strip Dominator has a smaller plenum and runners so I surmised it might make a bit more low end torque I sent these 2 intakes off to Joe Craine for tweaking and flow balancing. Also by this time I had completed fabrication on the EFI tunnel ram, so that needed to be tested as well. I was back on the dyno just before labor day. The EFI intake was a disappointment. It was down on Performance across the board. It was short on low end torque and also high end horsepower , so after tuning it the best we could with no better results it was set aside. The testing on the single plane Holley and the Air Gap Edelbrock produced scores that were very close to one another, so there was no clear choice on manifolds. Advancing the cam moved torque peak 300 rpm lower which I thought would improve the score, but it did not. Gains in low end torque were offset by equal loss of power at the higher range, with the net gain or loss being 0..Loosening the lash did help and i picked up about 20 points of score... I ran into a couple mechanical issues in this session as well, water in the oil, and the cam was walking in the block enough to change the timing 20 degrees at idle. So back to the shop to fix the problems and settle on a final combination to run at EMC.The mechanical issues were easily solved and after some thought I settled on the dual plane Air Gap intake. I also could not help thinking I could find a better header to make more torque, so I had Yestertech make 1 more set with very long primaries and a 3 inch instead of 3.5 inch collector. Last week in Sept I am on the dyno again this time trying to find the best spacer combination dial in the carb for the final time and test the long tube headers. It turns out the long tube headers did not make any more torque than the set I started with.. The engine turned out not to be real sensitive to jetting so we picked a middle of the road carb tune.. The spacer combo that we ended up choosing was a semi open 1 inch spacer shaped like a clover leaf, with a 1/4 open spacer underneath it. We could have tested different combos for days but at some point I had to settle on something so i went ahead and locked in the combination.. I made well over 100 dyno pulls tried 4 carbs 5 manifolds 3 sets of headers many spacers, cam timing and valve lash.. In the end I was able to pick up about 90 points and make a score of 2183. HRM covered the actual dyno run pretty well so I will not repeat that.. I was happy it was drama free and no surprises we made 8 pulls in 35 min and the engine never missed a beat
Here is what my combination looks like:
1957 mercury 368 block and heads.
Block bored ..060 JE pistons with 1/16/1/6 3/16 rings 10cc dome 12:1 compression
Forged crank with offset ground rod journal to 2.2 for a 3.7 stroke
TFS SFI Damper. Mummert billet SFI steel flywheel
Scat 7.1 inch BBC rod
SCE copper head gasket with O Ring
Heads max ported by Joe.D.Craine 2.05 intake 1.65 ex. Flow 255/195 @.600
Edelbrock SBC Performer RPM Air Gap intake ported by Joe.D.Craine
Holley 750 HP Ultra carb
Solid roller cam by Mike Jones Jones Cam designs 252/252 .625 lift
Lunati solid roller lifters
Smith bros 5/16 chrome moly push rods
Harland Sharp 1.6 aluminum roller rockers
PAC beehive valve springs
ARP main studs and Head studs
Stock timing set.. 57 type distributor with locked timing at 34 degrees
Pertronix Ignitor firing a MSD 6 with a Blaster coil.
NGK WR5 plugs 7 quarts Amzoil 10/30 K&N oil filter Stock truck oil pan with windage tray stock oil pump
