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Original Message
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| RE: You want more specifics? |
| By Gerry Proctor - 07/15/2004 7:27:55 AM; IP 207.133.188.254 |
I responded based upon what you asked, Richard. But if you want more specifics I, or anyone else here, can do that.
First, you do have options and they are many but as the axiom goes; "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?"
The FE has very robust internals (okay, excluding the 331) so you can easily make a lot of power without having to bankrupt yourself with overkill. How much you ultimately spend or how you prioritize the build depends on how much you can do yourself. With a $7k budget for the build, here's how I would do it for a near-stock build with a little more oomph:
Factory 390 crank and rods and hypereutectic pistons. Mag the rods and crank and if they check out, replace the factory rod bolts with ARP Wavelocs, have the big ends machined and re-bush the small end. I wouldn't machine the crank unless it didn't spec out. Do nothing to the block other than an overbore and torqueplate hone. Use premium rod and main bearings (FM77 would be my choice) and spec moly rings. As to the type of piston, try to keep your calculated static compression in the 9.5:1 range. It's far easier to make power if you don't have to pull a lot of timing out of the engine. As to the cam, again, the factory cam is not bad but you can make improvements there if you talk with a couple of the cam grinders to discuss your particulars. I would work with Comp Cams, Crane, Isky, and Erson. Crower can be very "iffy" on the tech support for their cams but at any rate, you need to compare the advice the companies give you to see if they are somewhat within agreement. Throw out the opinions that are wildly outside of the norm. Unless you're trying to make power over 6,500rpm, stick with a hydraulic cam and regular lifters and as long as you don't go to wild you should be able to use the factory rockers, shafts, and supports. If the cam starts getting big and you go with anti-pumpup lifters, you'll have to go with adjustable rockers and other valvetrain upgrades. You can easily make power to 6k rpm with durabilty with the factory bottom end parts and a good piston. I still do not recommend putting a lot of expense into the factory heads beyond blending the bowls. Sure, get some SS replacement valves and have the exhaust insert upgraded for unleaded fuel, replace the guides; but beyond that (porting and polishing) is a waste of money since that level of professional attention easily puts you in the zone for alloy heads. As for the support components, you can use a standard oil pump (Melling, Milodon, or whoever you like since they're all about the same) but upgrade the pump drive to the ARP driveshaft. A large capacity oil pan isn't really necessary but it doesn't hurt to upgrade the pan and pickup and it does add a bit of durability into the engine. Tend to the ignition system with an electronic drop-in module for the factory distributor and make sure the distributor functions correctly (vacuum and centrifugal advance working correctly since if you want to make the engine make as much power as possible you'll want to tune the advance curve).
Want to make more high-rpm power? Keep the factory crank and rods but upgrade to a forged piston. If you are able to do some of the detail work you can save a lot of money. At this point I would get a weight scale and a good high-speed hand grinder because now you're going to work on building durability into the engine for its higher redline. Polish the rods and then bring them into balance. Take the crank, rods, and pistons to the machine shop. Have the rod bolts upgraded to the Wavelock bolts and, again, have the rods machined. Have the entire reciprocating and rotating assembly balanced. Once the balancing is done, have the rods shotpeened. Now send the crank and rods out and have them cryogenically treated. Using aftermarket H-beam rods is not really necessary but if that's the direction you want to move in, I would look to Crower or Oliver (much more expensive, mind you) since they are quality rods. The Eagle and Scat rods look nice but the quality is really nothing to rave about. You can easily exceed the cheaper H-beam rods by just doing a polish and shotpeen on the factory rods. Now you can move to the blueprinting of the block. You'll want to have the block specs up to snuff and that includes measuring the crank saddles, bores, and decks for square. This adds a lot of expense since the machining operations are more precise and precision takes time. Once all of this is done, you want to use premium components and that includes file-fit moly rings (I'd opt for the Zero-Gap rings if they were available in your bore size but I doubt they are) and start screwing it together with ARP bolts. You may want to consider studding out the bottom end but you have rear main cap considerations due to pan/bolt issues. Now that you have all this durability in the engine, you can be more critical of the power-producing components like the cam, heads, intake and exhaust. This is where you need to be careful since cam and airflow potential have to complement each other. If you keep the C8AE heads, there's not much you can do to them that makes economical sense as they are, with the durability upgrades, redundant.
Now if you really want to do it right, start with a Genesis block and go from there. But your pockets have to be a whole lot deeper.
Look up Gessford Machine on the web and be prepared to spend a considerable amount of time digging through all of George's material on the FE. George is one of the most respected machine shops in the country and that he specializes in the FE is a bonus. He's also not shy about hiding what it can cost to build an FE. |
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