[Vamp]

Well, I finally got the budget 437 in the truck and on the dyno. 1st pull was 300 hp and 299 torque. Not happy!! With a timing adjustment and jet change it made 345 hp and 319 torque.These numbers are at the tire with 33 in tires. Not bad for a very low budget build!! Took it out to a local mud race. after almost rollin the truck on a hop at about 70 foot in and the truck cut out, (or I lifted..LoL) the truck came back to life and ran a 8.59 in 200 foot. Not bad for a weak ole 429!! Ill see if i can figure out how to get a video up shortly. Thanks to all the input and help from everybody on this site!!


_Greg

 

[McQ]

Greg,

Get the video up if you can!! I think I would be pretty disappointed to finding out how much rear tire hp i actually have. I'm sure the drive train eats up a ton!! I'd always like to find out, but its much nicer to sit back and do the desktop dyno and come out with a "Happy Number"!

You made some substantial improvements with the timing and jet change. 50 hp alone over what you would have been running is a huge increase

I think if we had one close I would still like to do it just to see if I could improve my output!! If you don't mind saying how much does a pull cost where you are from.

Looking forward to the video!

Jeffro

 

[Vamp]

Grain Valley Missouri. Bout 25 miles east of KC. I was wondering where you are from. We have a service shop and small race shop. We put the dyno in a few years ago do alot of local drag racers tunes. Very rarely do I put a mud truck on there due to bulkiness of the trucks. If you wanted to make a trip i could give ya the hook up for sure!! The first engine was the 532 that made 422hp and 399tq but a bad dizzy made its life short lived by rattling out the pistons! Couldnt afford to put it back together right and had this hyper piston 466 that i had and installed the heads and cam in it. Won alot of races with that and people told me they thought it ran better than the 532 given the dizzy problems with it. It kicked a rod in april making things even slimer with me buying a house and renovating it.....money was really slim so I put this engine together using all my old parts out of an earlier build. The rods i got on trade. Total with some machine work help from my Dad this build cost me 187.00 to build the shortblock with gaskets to assemble the rest. Here are the specs

.040 trw flat tops..(weighing 803!!!)
Eagle SIR rods 7/16 bolts
stock 3.59 stroke crank
Assembly balanced @ 52%
Bullet solid roller vacuum cam.. still pulls 14 @ 900 rpm
Crower lifters
Dove heads well ported with 2.19in 1.80ex
12.5 compression
Blue thunder dual plane intake
C&S E85 aresol carb..4150 flange but flows around 1100
2.25 headers 4 in collector
3.5 to 3in bullet muffler

I suspect its around 475 at the crank but some will argue power loss through the drive train. c6 is right there with the t400 with about a 29 to 32 % loss. Then on top of that youve got the t-case and rearend. Its all in perspective. I was really proud of the ole girl cuz it does weigh in at 4600 with me in it. There was only a few mean mod trucks even get out of the pit before our class and the second place truck in my class ran in the 11 second range. The fastest time of the night was I think in the 6 sec range!!
Anyway, Hit me up Jeff if ya want and we can see what shes got!! Its not the number in makes......just that it makes all it can!!

_Greg

 

[McQ]

WOW Greg sounds like your set up for racing for sure!!

Thanks for the offer, If I ever get anywhere close to Desmoines I'll go ahead and make the trip on over to the other side.

Sounds like you've kinda had the engine luck I have. I lost a rod first couple runs testing this year after freshing it up. I did something wrong but for the life of me I don't know. I know the Scat parts didn't fail at 7200!!

Have a couple questions for you?? I put my own stuff together but I am no machinist. are you saying those TRW's are heavy? Also with that 4150 carb and E85 I wouldn't think you'd be able to jet it big enough for anything other than a small big block. You weren't able to use that carb on your big engine with E85 were you?

Sounds like you have made one heck of an engine out of spare parts!!! That's Awesome!!


Thanks again for the Dyno offer!!!
Jeffro

PS we are from like the Peoria, IL area...

 

[Vamp]

Well, 803 grams are what the trws are and my probes were 550 in my 532. That weight is scary at 7000 rpms. The SIRs are the only hope I have to life in this engine and just pray they hold with that piston. This engine hits 7200 right now!! Also helps bein its only 359 stroke. We will see. What happened to yours? Did it blacken a rod bearing or main when it went? Or was the rod just broken? Anyway, Maybe in the off season you might think of makin the trip. Peoria is a ways but to be honest, I thought of makin the trip to check out the racing there with Overlanders. Looks cool!! The E85? It took some doin to make it work! I always fill up a 55 gal drum and tune it to that beins the unpredictability of the fuel. The carb works great with jetting in either engine. A/F is alot like alky. The detonation was all me on that engine. Put a reman stocker in for the class rules in some places and didnt lock it out. It was set at 34 deg when reved at 3500 or so. After i installed the 466, just on a hunch, I reved it to about 5500 with the light and it jumped from 34 to over 60!!!! There it is! Stupid me. Anyway, Ive run 15:1 engines on E85 with no faults. Just needs tuning and patients. How close to st louis are ya? Do you ever race that way?

_Greg

 

[McQ]

Greg,

Guess you need to spin it pretty high with that stroke don't you!! Sure hope it holds strong for ya. So if I understand you correctly you detonated your big engine at 60 degrees because the dist was advancing on you? We raced down by st louis several times this summer. Once in Otumwa, Ia that should have been kinda closer to you I think.

When I put this engine together this winter just freshening it up, #6 rod cap seemed to kind of bind up just before it got tight enough to torque. So I pulled the cap back off checked the bearing tabs then reassembled. It once again got a little snug then i torqued it down in three stages and spun the crank and it was as free as it should be.

Warmed it up held about 80 lbs of pressure but dropped pretty quick to 50. Then on a restart it was never close to 80 again. Should have pulled it apart then. Checked for metal in the filter couldn't find any. Took it out and it ran hard!! Then on the 8th pass it went pop. See the piston and video below. I used to cry when I saw them but now it's ran so many passes I'm pretty comfortable that it's going to hold. I did try a different block angle of installing my rings this time and bent an oil ring. Had to get it together that night so I installed an oil ring from a 125,000 engine. I think thats why it smokes some. Compression and leak down is good so we just keep racing it!!

 

[Vamp]

Yes, timing took that engine out. Its accually back together in a friend of mines truck and runs very well. When I tore it up I put the 466 in and it ran well enough to leave it in and he needed an engine. Well, he helped with the money and i put a set of pistons in, put it in his and its pretty rowdy! Mine went south and this is all i could muster together for now. Im happy but we will see the life span.

Yers looked like it got that rod pretty hot. Was any mains hurt too? Probably just to tight on that one? Less than .0025 on the oil clearance? Oh well, looks like youve got it right now!!

I could make a st louis area race!! It would be cool to meet ya and race against those chebbys. Let me know when the next time yer out that way!! Im 3.5 hrs from there.

_Greg

 

[kjett]

Your combo looks good, but I have a few concerns if you want to spin it 7000 and up and expect it to hold. 1st being those SIR rods. In reality they are not really much stonger than a good set of reconditioned stock rods. You'd be better off with a set of SCAT h-beams in there. You didn't give too much info on the cam, so you might be leaving some on the table there. Lastly the other big thing that sticks out is your header choice. I went the same route thinking bigger is better on the tube size, but after some dyno testing I found that my 466 made more hp/tqe with a set of 2" headers as opposed to the 2 1/8" and 2 1/4" sets I tried. I'm also running a fairly aggresively ported set of d0ve's as well and they just don't flow enough to need the larger tubes. Unfortunately I already had the 2 1/8" upright headers, but this fall I'll be building a set of 2" headers to get my few ponies back! I squeezed a mild 630hp @ 6800 out of mine.

 

[Vamp]

Thanks kjett! I couldnt agree more. Dont really want to spin it up there and wont if not needed, but this thing revs very quick and gets up ther in a hurry. If you read through the post again you will see why these SIRs are in this engine. Its all about the dollar and utilizing what I already had on hand. In some of my previous posts I was concerned with these rods, but, for the couple hunderd bucks I have in this short block, I figured it was worth a try.

The cam is a vacuum custom solid roller. Its pretty big on duration @ .050 but short on lift. 245 in/253 ex @ .050 and 628 lift. its on a 108. Sounded like a dump truck in my 532 and 466 but pretty thumpy in the 437. It used to pull 17 @ 1000. now its 14 @ 900 which still puts me in the class I run. Like I said, its solid roller and has 250 psi of seat pressure so it goes as high as needed. I have the limit @ 7500 but its pretty scary there!!!lol.

The headers? Well, thats a touchy subject. I paid a local muffler shop to build these headers. They are 2 1/4 in frame. The tubes are very long and not mandral (spell?) bent. So they are not what you call "free flowing". The only other options were LnL 1 3/4 and i didnt think that would matter either way. Also, these headers cost me 1000.00!!!!!Stupid I know!! Live and learn on that deal.Not to mention they fit NOTHING else!! All in all i dont think they are too much diameter.

_Greg