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The heads look awesome, and we can't wait to see how The Isky cam runs that was installed and degreed today, and dialed in to a 104 I.C.
We will be mocking up a head and checking for piston to valve clearance tomorrow with clay to make sure the new cam doesn't slam the valves into the pistons; fingers crossed.
Last edited by Battenrunner; March 2nd, 2019 at 08:38 PM.
The heads look awesome, and we can't wait to see how The Isky cam runs that was installed and degreed today, and dialed in to a 104 I.C.
We will be mocking up a head and checking for piston to valve clearance tomorrow with clay to make sure the new cam doesn't slam the valves into the pistons; fingers crossed.
How much lift do you have now? I’ll bet even on the tighter lsa you’ll still have a mile.
Lift is in the low .600's on intake and exhaust with a 1.7 rocker...
We checked the Piston to Valve clearance today and it wasn't nearly as much room as before, as it had about .140 clearance on the exhaust side this time.
We torqued the heads up tonight and took some measurements for the intake manifold machine work still to come.
Everything is looking good and going back together very well.
Going to clean the new 1.7:1 HS rocker arms in Mineral Spirits, dry them well, then soak them in oil and start checking for pushrod length tomorrow if we get time.
Last edited by Battenrunner; March 4th, 2019 at 07:34 PM.
Here are teaser picks of the intake porting work by Eric and Mark at Vortecpro.
Aside from the awesome port work, what you can’t see is the 5 lbs of aluminum that had to be removed from the intake to make it fit the heads. This was a rough-finished Intake, and I know what the before and after looks like, and there was literally pounds of aluminum removed from the gasket faces to make this intake fit with true precision!
Next week, maybe Dyno testing of the new upgrades!
Last edited by Battenrunner; April 19th, 2019 at 08:45 PM.
Nice
The heads look like they will deliver as does the intake.
Mark does top shelf work.
I'm looking forward to your new dyno numbers.
Thanks for sharing
Last edited by Bernhard; April 19th, 2019 at 09:55 PM.
Thanks again to Vortecpro for his huge effort on this project with my Dad and I.
This is going to make a very nice Street/Strip combo for us, and we can’t wait to finish the car and make some runs.
Also, I meant to get a picture of all of us standing with Harold Bettes, who was there most of the day, but we were so busy making horsepower and talking engines that I forgot to do so.
Harold was there to hang out with us and to share some of his knowledge with us and answer some questions I had, as well as to watch an Olds engine pass a pretty good number.
Mark says there is still more in it with with an improved distributor and a little more fuel curve refinement, and Mark and Harold suggested longer collectors would likely add more power.
All in all, we started at 8:30 this morning, and got done at 7:15 tonight, it was a long day filled with hearing an Olds grunting out some good power, with lots of little corrections to all add up.
Last edited by Battenrunner; April 27th, 2019 at 09:42 PM.
I would bet we could have seen another 15 +HP with a modern piston and ring package. Also, Locking out the distributor and upgrading to a crank trigger could have added another 5-10hp more.
Adding longer header collector extensions might add another 5-10hp.
Shimming the hydraulic lifters to convert them to be “solid” might add another 10hp.
So, moving forward, we might still modify the lifters in the future, we are already going to change to a Holley dual-sync distributor when we switch to fuel injection, and we will likely play with the header extensions at the track for the fastest times when we install an exhaust system and cutouts possibly.
We may be able to add 20-30hp more to the combo, especially if we can get a good tune with E85 vs. 91 octane pump gas the engine ran the numbers on the dyno with.
We won’t be changing pistons in the foreseeable future.
I was thinking it will be the same or better with EFI, especially with an injector plate below the throttle body to introduce fuel to the plenum instead of installing bungs and making it a true MPFI. I think EFI will shine because I can tune it for all fuel types, using the same injectors. I figured I could increase the fuel pressure to 60psi or more if needed to get the target lambda with E85 using these Green Giant injectors.
Last edited by Battenrunner; May 7th, 2019 at 10:52 PM.
Location: Colorado Springs Colorado/Thousand Oaks Ca
Posts: 1,719
Originally Posted by Battenrunner
I was thinking it will be the same or better with EFI, especially with an injector plate below the throttle body to introduce fuel to the plenum instead of installing bungs and making it a true MPFI. I think EFI will shine because I can tune it for all fuel types, using the same injectors. I figured I could increase the fuel pressure to 60psi or more if needed to get the target lambda with E85 using these Green Giant injectors.
Any way you want to look at it, the power you had is enough for a low 10 sec driver in Florida @ 3700 pounds. Goal met. The nice thing about dyno testing on my dyno is the numbers mean this:
127 MPH @ 3700 pounds = 584 crankshaft HP
1320/127 = 10.39 ET
Last edited by VORTECPRO; May 8th, 2019 at 04:16 AM.
I was thinking it will be the same or better with EFI, especially with an injector plate below the throttle body to introduce fuel to the plenum instead of installing bungs and making it a true MPFI. I think EFI will shine because I can tune it for all fuel types, using the same injectors. I figured I could increase the fuel pressure to 60psi or more if needed to get the target lambda with E85 using these Green Giant injectors.
Didn’t realize you were doing it that way. You might retain more hp that way vs a carb but you lose the cyl to cyl balance. 6 of one, half dozen of another I guess.
BUT your infinite timing control with EFI will give you as much of a benefit as any other feature.
Any way you want to look at it, the power you had is enough for a low 10 sec driver in Florida @ 3700 pounds. Goal met. The nice thing about dyno testing on my dyno is the numbers mean this:
127 MPH @ 3700 pounds = 584 crankshaft HP
1320/127 = 10.39 ET
Didn’t realize you were doing it that way. You might retain more hp that way vs a carb but you lose the cyl to cyl balance. 6 of one, half dozen of another I guess.
BUT your infinite timing control with EFI will give you as much of a benefit as any other feature.
Before we changed to the Ported Batten intake and hugely improved heads, there was quite a bit more cylinder to cylinder variation on the spark plug readings.
With the intake and a "wet-flow-plenum" fuel injector setup, I think we will be in good shape on the air-fuel variations of the tune, especially with fully graphed spark control for all possible map conditions.
Battenrunner, this was quite the post! Filled with ups, downs, drama but most importantly a ton of good information.
I'm glad you finally got to the "finish" line with this engine build. Now it's time to enjoy it in real life.
Good luck to you and your father at the drag strip!
Location: Colorado Springs Colorado/Thousand Oaks Ca
Posts: 1,719
Originally Posted by oldolds442
I was just curious about how much it cost you guys out of pocket for your build, i have no idea how much dyno time costs, and such... Thanks
I had lunch with Battenrunner today, I asked him about this post, and heres what he told me, approximately a 7200.00 investment at this point. Hope this answers your question.
Also, thanks to all for the support on our long road to success!
I have been so busy with work that I really haven't had time to post anything on here for days..... So I apologize for that.
That $7,200 could have been even less if we wouldn't have wasted money on the drama with Mile High Crankshaft and the first go-round with the heads, and the first cam grind, having to buy new bearings for the rods and mains......
Luckily, we kept it more affordable by selling whatever we weren't using that were still good parts, so that kept our cost down a little bit as well.
We do have an ATI SFI approved balancer on it now, as well as an SFI approved Billet steel flexplate, so I feel safe with those parts on-board, especially if we go to a lower elevation track and see more of the real power this engine is capable of.
In the end, we have a very solid engine, with proven durability and power numbers on a dyno with many runs, and it wouldn't have even ran more than a minute with how it came set up originally, or the first, or second time the crank was reground by someone else, before VORTECPRO got it fixed up.
If someone wanted to replicate the build, it is difficult to find many of these parts, but not impossible, and could definitely be done. As for replicating the machine work and attention to detail, not many will be willing or able to do so.
Last edited by Battenrunner; November 13th, 2019 at 08:10 PM.
I just wanted to congratulate you on your build and say this was an utterly fantastic read. I'm currently starting a very similar build and for very similar reasons. This has really inspired me.
I just wanted to congratulate you on your build and say this was an utterly fantastic read. I'm currently starting a very similar build and for very similar reasons. This has really inspired me.
Thanks so much Sonoman. I hope our struggles and lessons-learned will help others to see what can go wrong, as a lot of things did.
The original built engine was a total cluster, and would have never lived for more than just a few minutes at best with the issues present.
I will be watching for your engine thread and I wish you good luck !
Last edited by Battenrunner; August 4th, 2019 at 12:16 PM.
Decided it was time to remove the engine and pull the ported intake and send it off to get it machined and set up for the fuel injectors and rails the right way to fully utilize the Motec M8 sequential EFI. The intake was originally just rattle-can painted, and so it will probably be touched up/repainted now.
We have been mocking up everything to check for space and clearance and adding corrections as they are necessary.
Last edited by Battenrunner; November 13th, 2019 at 08:35 PM.
Looking forward to seeing the results. What are you going to use to trigger the ignition, and what ignition setup are you going to use?
We are excited about it!
Holley dual sync distributor for cam and crank signals
As for the ignition box, we have a brand new old stock Motec single channel CDI ignition box # 41009 with a single Mercury Marine CDI coil (the type that has the female coil wire terminal and has nuts on the power and ground terminals).
Last edited by Battenrunner; November 14th, 2019 at 05:53 AM.
March 2nd, 2019, 08:31 PM
