We're still having a hard time getting some serious progress down on this!

One major detrimental factor has been the death of David Friend, mentioned right at the beginning. Dave died early in January after a sudden relapse of a cancer he thought he'd beaten fifteen months earlier.

But while this thread was begun with mention of Dave's plans, we've taken our project well beyond his ideas.

We have established a plan on how to go forward with rods and pistons. We will be working with two lengths of rods, one is 6.0" long (standard they are 5.7") and the other is in the 6.25" range. I have been told that going too long with rods has proved too harmful to low end torque with these engines so I want to offer the engines with these two options. The piston blanks we will be drawing from can be machined to suit each option.

Soon we are hoping to be in a position to supply ATI harmonic balancers for those who want to reduce the harmonics problems found around 6200rpm.

Ben keeps on getting himself more and more tied down with other things and hasn't yet really done much work on the heads. But he now owns a full engine reconditioning machine shop, so his ability to get things done is enhanced. On the other hand he recently got married!

I really do hope I have a lot more to report soon...