Just laid the crank in tonight, finally starting to assemble. It's like laying a keel to a boat... This motor has a little something from everyone.. Heads and intake by Bob, block from GSGTX (Joe), rods from Carmen, crank and pistons from Tom, etc...this one should go pretty well.
Following as well, can you explain the name "Stone Soup 401"? I thought you were doing a 425 N/H for your GS?
A clever young man tricks an old woman into believing that soup can be made from a stone. As the pot of water boils with the stone in it, he urges her to add more and more ingredients until the soup is a feast "fit for a king."
exactly -but the way it was told to me as a kid, all of the townspeople kept adding ingredients - meaning just about everyone on this board had a part in this one, from hard parts to advice.... Derek - It was a 401 that I was doing, and this is really the continuation of that project...for whatever reason, that block had heat management issues and I decided to start again from scratch. We recycled what we could, and grabbed new parts where we had questions.
Cool, how about some pics of those mentioned parts you have accumulated? What are your HP/ET goals with this build? And are you going to go with the ST400 behind this one? Sorry for all the questions but the first post left me wanting more, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Tom, thats right.. So I honestly dont know? There's more effort in the valve job than the ports, I've spec'd a pretty small cam (basically within PSMCDR rules) and gonna run the AFB, hydraulics, ST300 and stock rockers out of the box. This was always a pure stock effort and because the car is a convertible I'm capped at 13.50 as a max ET before they kick me off the track, at least in Michigan. For 3950 lbs, that equates to 325 RWHP and thats the target. The original motor made 265 RWHP, so the target is 60 addl HP at the wheels, or 85hp at the flywheel.. Will an .040 overbore, 220 CFM, 1.90/1.52 valves, 9.75 static/7.7 DCR and a 218/222 cam do that? I guess we'll all find out soon? My projections on the desktop dyno projects an average 95 hp difference between 3k and 5k rpm, but we all know what we can do with that.. If everything goes like i hope, it'll run mid 13''s in stock config, then swap the Q-Jet, solids, Toms rockers and steel shim gaskets to run FAST/Supercar in the high 12's Little concerned because the steel shims will only give me maybe .027-.030 quench. I have the pistons in at .004 bore clearance, so I'll have a better understanding of piston rock soon, hopefully it's not crazy. And as far as pics, none of this is too sexy but Bob's heads, Toms crank and pistons, Joe's block, etc......you cant really see it, but Tommy did a lot of work bullnosing the crank, and he did the valve work, fitting them with 11/32nd valves and guides.
I was using 3.23's for years, just jumped over to an 8.5 with 3.42's in 2016. Once this motor comes together I'm thinking of running 3.73's - should cross the line about 5300 RPM with 215/75/R14's
Did you clean the rockers & shafts??? .025-.050 quench is OK. Can the dynamic be raised any significant amount by advancing the cam 4*???
Hey Tommy! So the DCR stacks up like this: Installed straight up, I get 8.0 with .018 shim gaskets, and 7.69 with .043 composites. With the cam advanced 4, I get 8.3 and 7.87.I assume the target is 8.0 for a street motor on pump gas. Like we planned, I'm moving the power band higher (a little) installing straight up, and the desktop dyno shows an extra 11 peak hp at 4500, and an extra 5hp average from 3000 to 5000 with another 3 lbs torque that way.. Take all that with a grain of salt, but it shows we're moving in the right direction. yeah I cleaned the rocker shafts, theyre ready to go.
Interesting Build, always learning something and lots more to learn. I'd never heard of bull nosing so googled it and now have a better idea. I love this forum, with the knowledge and experience you are all so happy to share.
Derek - Tommy and I talked about it, but by that time it was time to assemble the first block..maybe next build. I still have the numbers matching engine to run through!!
I'm impressed there are still parts being produced and available for rebuilding and hot rodding these engines. It's been 54 years since the last one rolled off the assembly line
we're pretty lucky that we have people who specialize in producing not only stock but performance parts for these engines: Tommy, Centerville, Carmen Faso and TA Perf to name a few. In fact, Centerville has my dual quad spread bore manifold right now, doing their thing... I suppose that most interesting motors have a small group of suppliers that support a build I know Corvairs do...It'd be interesting to know who supports the Olds 371/394, the Packard 352, the International 392, etc... I sourced a cam for this motor from Camcraft, that has a line of cams for all those types of motors so at least there's that...https://www.camcraftcams.com/catalogs-links/antique-cams/
