Hi,
Man things go slow sometimes! Moving right along, just sloooow... the bottom of the engine is sealed up, should pick up the head tomorrow.
I've finally settled on oil pump mods for the full-flow cooler. Basically I made a replacement for the top cover out of 1/4" steel with a second piece welded to the top to provide the drive gear lube pocket and 1/2" of threads for the outlet. Basically, I plugged the pump's block outlet (which feeds the main gallery directly) and put the outlet in the cover.
The welded on section also provides additional stiffness. I am exceedingly paranoid about this mod, I can't afford to experiment with ruined engines working out oil mods! I wonder if I should have made it from 3/8" or 1/2" plate. It's only 60psi, but heat etc if the gear clearance jumps from .001" to .002" volume will drop.
I'm also dialing in the pump guts. I've ground the gear flat ends truly flat (emery paper on a ground cast iron plate) and made them the exact same height (NOS gears were nearly .001" height difference), ground the new end plate mirror flat (magic markered the plate, 600 grit paper on glass, 3 strokes takes the marker off 100% evenly). I'll grind the pump housing the same way to get gear to housing clearance .001" dead nuts.
I've got a "Cam Pro Plus RV1" cam, 202 duration no overlap! Moves torque DOWN a bit! I can't afford to make a 6000 rpm motor so I made a 4000 rpm motor :-)
I static/bench balanced the pistons+rods+pins within half a gram, polished the tops.
The ports and combustion chambers were very rough castings, so I polished them all (80 grit) and removed only some metal around the valve guides.
Weber 32/36 carb, on a *one barrel* top plate; I have a 2 bbl, but the 1bbl base was easiest to put a "Weber Jeep" kit and I blended them together and smoothed the sharp 90's into broad radiuses. That should be the (a) right carb for this engine, tiny primary, progressive linkage secondary. I've used it before, very nice carb to tune.
Also, I fit a Ford EDIS ignition to the (new) harmonic damper while the engine was apart. I welded a nice bracket for the sensor to the timing cover. I'll do the rest of the conversion later, after it's running.
