A 351w (stroker?) from scratch...

The heads are 60cc combustion chamber, 75cc exhaust runner, 190cc intake runner.

Intake Valve Test @ 28” of Water

.100 .200 .300 .400 .500 .600 .700

70 148 203 255 269 277 282

Exhaust Valve Test @ 28” of Water

.100 .200 .300 .400 .500 .600 .700

58 118 152 179 188 192 198

I am sure they are chinese cast iron copies of one of the better known heads, but they are from tristate whom I bought my reworked gt40p heads from (excellent service and machining) and at 710 complete with double springs and stainless valves (plus shipping) the price is right. The flow numbers they quote (and guarantee) would put them in the top 5 or 6 on the chart you linked to, how they do in the intangible areas like swirl and quench I will have to find out. Could have went with aluminum heads from tristate for not much more but I was scared of corrosion and warping, who knows what alloy they are using in china these days.

I am planning to reuse my stock PCM manifolds if they hold water, I will hit them with the die grinder and gasket match the ports. When I checked last year they looked like they would just clear the tall edelbrock covers I have on the 302 if I have to go that way. I originally wanted this motor to look fairly stock, but the intake, carb, and ignition will be hard to hide, maybe I will just polish it out like the 302.

I will run the wooden cover if I need to, I dont think I can get away with an intake less than a stealth or a performer rpm minimum with this setup or I am going to choke it off. I will actually miss the great big flat box when it goes cant beat it as a workspace to set up the boots on skis/boards, its a great stand to dive in from, and it makes a decent beer/card table.. if only it wasnt so fugly.. couldn't even find the right color carpet the day I built it.   

I have been eyeing the 750 cfm marine barry grant demon cause it looks so badass, but its almost twice as much as an 750 cfm edelbrock and with the edelbrock I know what I am doing. If the boat dr wants to trade his 750cfm holley for my 600 cfm holley and a couple bucks then I wouldnt mind going that way.

I did not talk to Cam Research because I knew I would not be buying a cam from them since I was set on either a comp or crane set of aftermarket rollers, after calling both the guy from comp cams impressed me more. However the factory direct price on the cam was about 100 more than the summit price, the factory price on the hydralic rollers was 10 bucks cheaper than summit but still 80 more than they could be found on ebay for.

Thanks for the comment Eric, I have an edelbrock on my 302 now so I have already bought the kits with the jets/rods/springs etc needed to adjust the thing, I actually prefer them a bit to the holley because I am more familiar with them but am not afraid to go either way. I will probably go with whatever I can find used.

Now for the real question eric, whats the chance that my velvet drive is going to make it through the summer without changes if I let this thing make the 450-475 horsepower that this engine might be capable of...

Joe, if your not drastically re-propping you wont have a problem.. do you know what condition the trans is in now?
when your ready I'll hook you up with the right parts for the trans and even may give away a trade secret or two

Eric,
    I haven't touched that transmission yet but it was solid and dry last year, no leaks no slipping, no burned fluid. I have two other velvet drives that are older (late sixties) in working order (one i still need to change the rear seal on) so I figure worst case I spend a few hours and switch it out for one of them mid season, then take it easy until I get the failed one rebuilt. Long term plan is to build one velvet drive stout for the 67 mustang, and sell/trade the two others to help finance buying and building a pcm for the 83 SN.

I am hoping not to reprop too extreme this year because after I switch rotation anything bought this year will have to work on the mustang which already has an OJ XMP 13x11.5 and will inherit the ACME 471 that is currently on the SN, I suppose it could use a higher pitch prop for "fuel economy" purposes...
-Joe.

I will spin more likely 5200-5400 if I have my way but the full roller valve train and balanced mostly forged rotating assembly will be more than capable of 5500 - 6000 if I want to go that way, I didn't make a horsepower prediction just what it might be capable off, the limits are as I see it going to be intake and exhaust related not in the heads.

When I have flow numbers I feel fairly comfortable extrapolating the difference the heads might make, since I am an engineer who has designed heads and valve trains for reciprocating compressors and have been paid to do such extrapolations I don't can't see why I would stop now.

As for compression, I didnt state it was remarkable just higher than the engine tested in the article. Why would I zero deck the block when I had to order dish pistions to keep the CR down to 10?

Seriously I don't know what horsepower its going to make, the heads are definitely cheap but from a supplier I trust and thier flow numbers are better than an AFR 185 head, I have already stated I don't know how they will do in terms of swirl and quench so how far I may be able to bump the timing forward on 93 octane could be effected easily to the tune of 50-100 horsepower over the canfield heads which I think are overkill for the N/A 393 certainly at inboard boat rpms, only with nitrous or a blower would I consider the canfield heads with thier poor intake/exhaust ratio ideal,they are leaving bottom mid range torque on the table with those heads.

Obviously I could buy as much horsepower as I want for this boat and could build the exact engine someone else has, but whats the fun in that if it can be done different, cheaper, etc there is where the fun is for me.   I was actually shooting for 375-400 horsepower originally but the research I have done all points closer to 450.

Either way the boat is not likely to break 53mpg, so you let me have my dilusions and I will let you have yours...

Joe, check out (Doug Herbert Performance)they have great prices on roller lifters! He is the original automotive roller cam designer!

joe...I suck at the link posting thing but when Blondie gets home I will get her to help me with it. I was looking at the hydraulic roller lifters and cam, I have a part# that I wrote down(HERTFV) vertical bar (209.99) but I have to check and see if that is right!!

Here's MY 393 (390+.020") which I just picked up from Holman Moody Friday afternoon. It's off to the painters tomorrow for some vintage INTERCEPTOR green paint. The painters are actually me and buddies at the local wooden boat shop who have the color custom mixed since you can't buy it anymore. This 390 was born in '63 as a 300HP engine with high-for-a-marine engine 9.6 compression. It's now up to an honest 10.3 according to Silvolite, who provided the forged flat tops. HM reground the cam to a more aggressive .480" lift pattern and we went with the Edelbrock Perf RPM intake shown and are hoping for maybe 340-350 solid HP. They would dyno it, but guess what,... the standard dyno won't do a rev rot engine.     





Besides being excited about getting this engine back in our '63 Classic in the coming weeks, I just wanted to comment on Joe's 393 stroker. Most likely like Joe, I subscribe to several Ford mags and have yet to see one tested that didn't run at least into the 400-425HP range, with similar parts. While like Tim, I'm not too familiar with the heads either, but specs are specs. The FRPP crate 392 is a 430HP/450lb.ft. engine, but it's got a bit more cam (.560"+, 232-240 dur), a single plane intake and rated with headers. So back-tracking a bit Joe, I'll bet you're conservatively accurate in your 375-400 guess, or 400-425 if rated by GM (intended sarcasm). And I'd say you're somewhat conservative in your speed guestimation as well, we hope. Did you mention yet if it's coming to Green Lske with you?      

Reid,

The 390 (393) looks awesome. I hope it runs as well as it looks. I'm sure it will.

You post these things in the most obscure locations. I was waiting to see a picture of this motor, but I didn't think that I would have to be looking under a 351 Stroker thread to find it. Good luck with the painter and get that thing back in the boat. Summer is coming.

-JMurph

18 inches of very heavy snow so far today. The heads came in the mail today, they are pretty serious heads, about 5 minutes with a die grinder and they will be ready to go, pictures will follow. The exhaust ports are huge, I will need to do some serious material removal on the pcms or reconsider the hytecs...

The snow is melting, and we are looking at 60's and sunny this weekend, usually would have two docks in the water by now with at least a fishing boat in a hoist maybe in a couple weeks.

Engine build update, ended up keeping the fully forged 408 kit because they hadn't actually shipped the 393 kit and the machine shop was talking about a rapidly closing window of time after which I would be waiting in line after a lot of race motors. Will be very overbuilt for a normally aspirated engine but I don't want to take the chance on having to wait for it. Compression will stay the same because I am now at a 22 cc dish but its a few more cubes displacement, now I need to think about a possible cam change as a result.
-Joe.   

408 Engine build up notes.

Balancing, made a bit more difficult by using a fully forged kit with enough weight to run internally blanced and then matching with the stock flywheel and balancer. Some connecting rods required a little material removal from the small end or large end, but in the end the assembly balanced dead on, cost me about 199 dollars. I then spent about 2 hours polishing rod ends that had material removed. The grinding was in the right direction where probe recommended but I don't like to see grind marks on areas that see fatigue loading.

The file fit pistion rings are a real time killer, debur, insert, measure, remove, file, debur, insert, measure, remove, file, debur, insert, measure, etc.. do that for each top ring (.022), and again for each second ring, (.018) and you have lost a solid day of your life.

Bottom end clearances all plastiguaged out correctly, I did have to clearance the block a bit to clear the connecting rod bolt heads. That required the block to be cleaned again to remove the debris created, and of course a tear down.   

Heads arrived completely assembled from tristate, they are monster heads with good flow numbers but they needed clean up. I found some sand in the intake runners embedded in the wall from the casting in one or two spots on each head. That was going to need to be cleaned up, and there were some pretty severe points in the combustion chamber where the milling for the two valve seats intersects, these would create a hot spot and lose me a degree or two of timing, so they had to go. So I assembled the heads to the block, tested the piston to valve clearance (it was about a mile but I had to check), measured for push rods (7.70), then pulled the valves to clean up the heads.

Everything was put back together and torqued down. One more clearance issue was found where I had to change one ARP main bolt for a stud because of the oil pump interfeared slightly with the bolt. When I am finally done I will list all the specs from cc ing the heads, how far below the deck the pistons set (about .010) etc, sorry I was rushing and didn't take many pictures but I have every measurement I took written down.

I was rushing of course to make my dyno/tuning appointment on Friday.

That didn't go so well. Engine ran well, and even strong, but we never made it to a full pull. Was just too noisy, had to shut it down, pulled the valve covers and found 4 very loose push rods. Collapsed lifter loose, 4 out of 16 brand new, top of the line Comp Cams tie bar hydraulic rollers. Guy at the dyno shop says thats funny thats the 3rd time that’s happened in 2 weeks, and they were all using comp cams lifters must be they had a bad batch. Good news is I didn't have to put this motor in the boat to find out if the lifters were going to collapse, and the dyno shop isn't going to charge me for the second session. Bad news is that session won't be until July 2nd cause he is booked till then.

Comp Cams is happy to provide me with a set of new replacement lifters, which I will be selling on ebay because I will be buying a set of the crane ones which are a hundred bucks cheaper and people seem to be having better luck with lately. What a pia, gaskets aren't cheap, and I am going to need to remeasure and most likely reorder push rods.

All just a matter of time and money… but its going to be awefully close for green lake….

Probably a 4 day wait on the new lifters, then another 3-4 day wait on the new pushrods, should be back together and waiting for the 2nd, installed on the 4th of july, broken in over the weekend before green lake.. possible but not a lot of room for error.

Joe, sounds like youre making good progress. That thing was an animal even without the carb being tuned. Cant wait to hear your results when you get it all dialed in!

Long drive, but it was pretty uneventful. Thanks again for lending me the tools to change my spring.

Another inch of pitch should be just what you need. I say change the oil and have at it!