Rebuild progress all in one thread

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:38 pm

So, I just want to start this post off by saying:

Degreasing engines sucks.

And, degreasing American V8's REALLY sucks, because they are always coated in about 4X as much gunk as other engines

Done last night:

Stripping the stuff off the engine:

Separated from the drivetrain:

MMM, nice and greasy:

Scraping gunk off the drivetrain:

My floor was CLEAN when I started...

Comparison of the NP435 Granny gear trans cap to the NP445 Sychronized close ratio:

NP4530 (AKA NP445):

NP203 Case:

Done tonight:

LOTS of grease... EVERYWHERE:

Even on the drivetrain:

BUT, she's looking better:

N1VSM · Post by **N1VSM** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:49 am

Nice work! You did that in one night?? It's amazing what you can do with a little Tidy Cat and some scrubbing ...

That is truly a labor of love! I'm glad you learned your lesson - I once rebuilt a carb on my livingroom rug. SHE darn near killed me - that would have been justifiable homocide (or moronicide).

Lifer · Post by **Lifer** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 5:08 am

[quoteI once rebuilt a carb on my livingroom rug. SHE darn near killed me - that would have been justifiable homocide (or moronicide).[/quote]
I feel your pain, Brother! I once rebuilt a Citroen 2CV engine on my wife's kitchen counter. She was somewhat less than pleased, but when ya live in an apartment with no garage or off-street parking, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. 20 years later, I built a kit car body on our dining room table. She tolerated that one because all the parts were clean, but she was glad to see it get bolted to the frame.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:07 pm

Lots of work done roday:

Pull the heads and intake, got the heads degreased, pulled the valvetrain out and put in new seals, and ported the ports. Nothing too extreme, just a nice bowl blend and tapered the guide boss. These heads had some of the biggest machining cuts I've ever seen on a guide boss. The heads we make at work are die cast aluminum, and as a result have big bosses, but jeepers, these things were HUGE! There was a pretty nasty undercut at the bowl as well, should be good for a few ponies when I get her up and running. Rest of the engine looked good, lifters and cam looked great, as did the cam drive. Pistons were extremely clean, and the bores measured .030 over, indicating a rebuild at some point. They are not perfect, there is a very small ridge at the top of them, indicating some wear, but it is livable, at least for a few years. No scuffing on any of the bores, so that was good. I did find two concers however, that made me glad I decided to pull the heads:

These UGLY valve stem tips... the two center exhaust valves from the passenger's side head. These will have to be replaced. Luckily, they didnt screw up the rockers. I have no idea what would cause this, I've never seen anything like it... All I cna figure is improper break in after the last rebuild. they had a nice polish to them, indicating tehy have been like that for some time now.

And, whoever did the rebuild has got to have the record for cheapest engine rebuild, as they bought no new gaskets... they reused EVERYTHING, even the factory head gaskets, and, both were weeping into the rear cylinders. luckily, I caught it in time before it caused any serious pitting or other damage. Below are some pictures of the port job, and the general condition of the engine.

After a gentle wire brushing of the chambers:

Those are some CLEAN pistons!

Cam looks good:

weird stain on the bore... no noticable surface finish difference:

Intake, to start:

intake bowl blend start

Exhaust, to start:

exhaust bowl blend start:

Tapering the guide boss start

Nice morning sun, Made it easy to see what I was doing!

All done:

Reassembled

A little copperseal on the gaskets:

Clamped and ready to go:

Before port, exhaust side:

After port, same head:

Cleaned up... the second head is waiting for a few new valves:

Lifer · Post by **Lifer** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:01 am

Nice work so far. One question remains, however. Once ya get it all fixed up and put back together, are ya gonna paint it that pretty shade of OD green that we all love?

M37UK · Post by **M37UK** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:48 pm

All I can say is rather you than me !!
Crikey, you must have more than a little knowledge of mechanics and engines before tackling this kind of job

.
Keep up the great photo story, it is really interesting.

Stuart

VROD02 · Post by **VROD02** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:31 pm

As much as I hate re-fab engines at least its a DODGE gasser.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:55 pm

more work done tonight:

Got the second head finished, and put back on. My dad brought down a spare head and I pulled a few matching OEM valves out of it, lapped them in, and put it back on.

Wasn't comfortable with the mish-mash of hardware that was holding them on before so I went and got some new grade 8 bolts to hold em down with. Also got the intake cleaned and put back on.

Pulled the timing cover... wasnt going to, but, I'm glad I did, as you can see the timing set is tired... another thing to order. I also popped the pan and put a proper gasket on it... the pile of red RTV in the one pic was what was holding it on...

Bad news on the supercharger front... going to have to create my own pulleys, as the 400 has a differnt bolt patters and back spacing from the block than a 360, so 360 serpentine pulleys wont work. I'm going to get it back together, and then take some measurements. I think I have an idea on how to make it work, and do it cheaply.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:28 pm

No real serious work done tonight, just some brainstorming and fit up testing... Have some interesting results, thats for sure!

I ended up ordering my Mopar Performance cast valve covers, as well as a nice Comp Cams double roller timing set. I also ordered a fuel pmp block off plate, and the accessory kit for the valve covers.

Anyway, on to the good stuff tonight...

Was looking at the factory manifolds... and something occured to me...

the only issue is that I can't get to the spark plug holes...

However, if I make spacer blocks 2" thick, I can get in to the plugs no problem. The total width of the engine with the spacer blocks, outside of one manifold, to outside of the other will be 30"... same as the frame, and pretty close to what my 360 measured with it's goofy mounts that I made. Near as I can tell, using the stock 1977 cross member will mount it approximately 1-2" lower in the frame, which will be perfect... The plugs will be almost laying on top of the frame.

It's been a while since I pulled the Holset and Supercharger out of the closet... so, here they are...

I also sat down and did some math and have some semi-bad news...
P1XV1=P2XV2

So, lets assume that, I want around 6 PSIG, or 20 PSIA of boost from the blower. This is P2. This should make the intake the highest pressure point in the engine, and, make that porting work that I did very, very effective at creating power. Now, let's take the turbos out of the equation to simplify things a bit. So, P1 is the atmospheric pressure, which would be 0 PSIG, or 14PSIA, and V1 is how much volume the blower needs to move, and what we want to figure out...

Now, V2 is the engine displacement, and, the 400 is a 6.55L engine, and I'm going to assume a 6K RPM redline. However, to fill all cylinders at least once, the engine has to make 2 revs, since its a 4 stroke, so in reality, we're only turning 3K... at least how the blower sees it.

Now we have:

P1= 14 PSIA
P2= 20 PSIA
V1= What we want to know
V2= 6.55L per 2 revs, X 3000RPM = 19,650

so, we put this back into the equation, solve for V1, and we get

393,000...

Now, I know the blower moves 1.7L per rev, and I know it has a Max RPM of 14,000.

So, putting that together, for volume I get a max from the blower of only:

23,800 L/Min.

Now, times that by the pressure, and we come up with:

333,200

So, were short, which means the blower is too small for a 6K RPM rev limit. Now, what we can do, is put the max of the blower in, and solve for our engine speed, if we do that, we get:

14X1.7X14,000=20X6.55XS Where S= max RPM of the motor.

Solve for S, and we get:

2563!!!!

Ah, but, remember, it's 2X, because it's a 4 stroke. Taking that into account, we have about a 5200 RPM redline before the blower begins to loose boost. Now, that doesnt mean we cant spin it to 6K, that just means the blower looses it's ability to compress air past 5200 Crank RPM.

However, one more caveat. We assumed that at 5200 RPM, the blower will be giving it all she's got, so, we are limited to 5200 RPM.

Now, the pulley diameter on the blower is 3". and, we have a drive ratio of:

14000/5000, which is: 2.8:1

2.8:1 is a relatively high belt ratio, but, is still within operational specs for serpetine systems, so, we are good. We are limited to 5K RPM, which, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

This means that I have to find a 6 groove serp pully thats, *gasp* 8.4" in diameter!!!

Mocked up in that position, the carb is almost as tall as the blower... should be plenty of hood clearance...

Went ahead and cut the manifold, and mounted it out about 1.5" from teh head, as far out on the factory studs as I could get it... I'll go to the hardware store tomorrow and get some longer bolts so I can mock it up exactly...

Hmmm, turbo is WAY to high... the flange doesnt fit the manifold very well either...

I'm fully aware that welding Mild cold rolled to cast is very difficult, so, I'll be taking it in and getting a local shop to nickel/Iron braze the 1" thick turbo flange on...

Made a second cut, this time at an angle, and about 1.5" lower...

almost 1/2" of iron to play with... that will hold the heat in well.

Template I made of the turbo flange...

Spark plugs will definitey be needing a heat shield...

Lets see how they look together...

Notice how close I can tuck the turbo outlet for the compressor in to the valve cover... the piping from turbo to supercharger is going to be insanely short.

Going to come off both sides and come into the back of the charger. Am going to toss that silly black plastic backing plate and replace it with a steel one with pipes coming in from each side at about 45*. That should just sneak past the carb. In the pic below, I plan on adding a water to air intercooler, where the carb hat will face to the passenger's side head, and the intercooler will be a simple in off the supercharger discharge seen there, make a 90* bend into the core, through the core, then a 90* bend into the carb hat. Again, nice and short plumbing... might not even need to use tubing, might be able to make it all fit with silicone couplers.

Very, Very tight...

Lifer · Post by **Lifer** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:41 am

Whew! I'm sure glad my computer isn't still on dial-up. It would take a week to open all those beautiful pics!

I'm glad you didn't spend all your study time on the Big Electric forum during your college days. You seem to have actually learned something and are now putting that knowledge to practical use. That we get to benefit from your education is a major plus! Keep those pics coming and, for cryin' out loud, paint that engine OD!

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 4:48 am

haha, thanks Lifer! It will be the world's first, and probably only, twin turbo, supercharged, big block M37

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 9:39 pm

Sent out two autocad files to a local machine shop for a quote on the flanges and manifold spacers. Flanges are 1" thick, and the spacers will be 2" thick. I could make them myself, but, I really would rather just pay to have it done, as cutting through 2" of steel doesn't exactly sound fun...

refit1701 · Post by **refit1701** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:25 am

An amazing project!

Wayne64 · Post by **Wayne64** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:27 pm

Josh, great project and I have one question before you get the exhaust spacers made. Understand I know nothing about 360 Dodges but I do know my SBFs and when you flip a manifold on those you lose your port match by close to 3/8" up and down. I had to do it once and made tapered spacers to get the flow smooth. Like I said I don't know the 360. Here is the one I did the flip on. And that one everyone said I should have added Turbos, by any chance is there a 360 exhaust manifold that isn't a center dump Rams horn style?

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Josh · Post by **Josh** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:19 am

wayne,

It's a 400 big block now, I sold the 360. The 360 you can't flip manifolds, as the studs are not straight. The 400 they are, and centered. However, I got the quote back, and he wants a thousand bucks to cut a few holes in a 2" block of steel, so, that went in the circular file. I can make my own shcedule 10 headers for less than 1/2 that , and they will flow better and last longer. I'm working on the 3D model of them now...