Yes, you read the title right. Thank god my roomie is an understanding person (or pushover, depending you your perspective). As witnessed in the first couple pictures, I've kinda taken over a good portion of the room.
As far as the project goes, the block is out of 78 Volare. Got it from a local yard for $150, and they even loaded it the back of my truck for me. My uncle has a machine shop and shaved the head .90, installed new valve guides, cut the seats for oversize SI valves, did a mild port job, and even cut down the valve guides, should I ever want to go w/ the teflon style seals. Also hot tanked everythign for me and installed my cam bearings for me. He's quite the mopar guy and claims to have built and maintained the fastest 440 in the midwest for quite a while. (I think it was sometime in the 80's, but I digress.)
Anyway, I've been attacking the block w/ my dremel, trying to get rid of all the ugly flash and casting defects, and I'm nearly done w/ that part. Don't have the block prep all done yet (had to go buy smaller grinding bits and haven't had time to finish cause of class work), but I hope to sometime w/in the next week. Then it's off to the car wash to get it immaculately clean and begin final assembly.
Internals:
Bottom end:
Stock pistons, stock size, with sealed power moly rings.
Clevite 77 rod and main bearings
Melling oil pump; currently have HV, but after more research, thinkin about going with the standard instead. I'm gonna hardness test the gear on the replacement vs. the stock one that I pulled and see how they compare. (It's great bein an ME major at an engineering school.)
Top end:
head shaved .90, ported, swirl enhanced; soon to be mildly polished
oversize SI stainless valves
Comp cams springs, retainers, and locks for 360 (barely clears stock spring pocket)
Hoping to keep stock length pushrods (bought a new set from Sealed Power)
Double roller timing set from Cox bros.
Erson cam, 268 advertised duration
Factory iron supersix intake w/ 2300 Holley from an unkown ford product
Has the reverse idle screws, hope to upgrade to a Clifford w/ 390 4 barrel or EFI at a later point.
Stock exhaust manifold; headers/dduals in the future
Goal is 9ish:1 compression, but still running 87 octane. With the head shave and a little tweaking on the advance, I think I shoudl be there. The drive from home to school is 3 1/2 hours of two lane roads w/ lots of hills, so hopefully this setup should get my truck to where it can get out of it's own way and everyone else's. Right now it's a stock '82 that goes through a quart of oil every 300 miles or so.
Enough talk. Pics:
Couldn't believe the coolant ports were as clogged as they were. On closer inspection 99% of it was actually casting flash.
Five minutes w/ a dremel had it beautiful:
There were similar flow problems in the waterpump pocket.
Hopefully I can get some pictures of the de-flashed block and crank up once I get them finished. Then if we could just go back to a few days warm enough to make a trip to the car wash and clean all the accumalated filings out, it's time to start final assembly. The goal is to get it in the truck and running by the first part of March. We'll see.
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