Sorry for the slow build progress. I'm doing the whole car of course, and there is only so much money each month to spend.
Ended up with 0.03 over LA block, stock Mopar cast iron crank, clevite main and rod bearings, Eagle forged steel "H" beam connecting rods, Engine Pro 9 position timing chain and gear set; the crank gear has the 9 keyways cut into it. Ross forged pistons, flat top with 5cc valve reliefs. Edelbrock RPM air gap intake manifold and Edelbrock RPM magnum cylinder heads. Using OEM stock 5 quart oil pan and stock pressure/volume Melling oil pump. I'll be adding an flat baffle down in the oil pan to keep the oil from sloshing around. I plan to make an oil scraper for the pan.
The Eagle rods needed the small ends trued up, they were a little tight, and had a slight taper. The big ends were slightly small with one rod almost 0.001 below the minimum spec. They probably would have been ok as is, but I had a real picky machine shop correct the rods to spec, with the big ends set to the minimum spec for maximum bearing crush.
For static and dynamic compression ratio, using the KB silvolite calculator
http://www.kb-silvolite.com/calc.php?action=compInput the following info:
cylinder head volume:62cc, unshroud the valves on the Edy heads, and 0.010 deck cut
piston head volume: 5cc
head gasket thickness: 0.039 felpro 1008
head gasket bore: 4.18
cylinder bore diameter: 4.03
deck clearance: 0.005 thats below the deck surface, quench=0.039+.005=.044 inch
stroke: 3.58
rod length: 6.123
intake closing: 63 degrees after bottom dead center
RESULTS:
static compression ratio: 10.75 subtract 1 point for alum head heat loss=9.75, should run on premium pump gas.
dynamic compression ratio: 8.66
From the Speedtalk forum, check ratios by dropping compression to regular pump gas level:
increase cylinder head volume: 74cc assumes cast iron head
intake closing: 58 deg. ABDC earlier intake closing for conservative street cam
RESULTS: static ratio 9.4 and dynamic ratio 7.9 these are both good for cast iron head and low-mid grade pump gas, so this means the higher ratios are also ok for pump gas.
I'll be using Edelbrock RPM Magnum heads with the pushrod oiling. I chose these heads for somewhat low cost, rocker arms of various ratios are relatively cheap, they have good dual quench pad combustion chamber that is shaped to promote intake mixture flow to center of cylinder not just along the cylinder walls washing off the oil. The pushrod pinch is a concern, but I found an article in the Spring 2008 Engine Masters magazine for a 340/414 stroker. They used the Edel magnum heads, and added brass tubes to the intake pushrod holes to allow porting the pushrod pinch out as much as possible. So I copied their idea.
I noticed on the Shady Dell website they did not use brass tubes, rather only widened the port to leave some small amount of cast aluminum between the port and pushrod hole. I made an "E" tool to allow accurate removal of material. I wrote that tool up in on this forum: "Intake port pushrod pinch E-tool" in Engine & Go Fast Goodies.
For a cam, I'm going with flat tappet to keep initial cost down. I could not find a solid lifter cam with short enough duration for good street use, and keep the power brakes happy. I looked at Bullet cams 260/260 with 234/234 duration at 0.05. I called their tech dept. They verified that to compare solid to hydraulic, take the solid duration at 0.05 and subtract 8 degrees to account for the solid cams valve lash. So this makes the 234/234 into 226/226 which is right where a good street cam 0.05 duration should be. BUT, the Bullet tech said that the 260 cam has obviously real short seat duration considering the 0.05 duration. They asked how much street driving I'd be doing. I told them 90-95% would be street driving, and maybe 5000+ miles per year. The tech said the cam would not hold up. Slow driving doesn't throw enough oil onto the aggressive lobes to keep them alive.
So with Engle cams out of business ( I was going to use their K56 cam with 272/272 and 223/223 at 0.05), I chose to go with Bullet cams HC 272/336. This cam is hydraulic flat tappet, specs are seat duration 272/272 and 0.05 duration 224/224. lobe lift is 0.336 inch, when combined with 1.6 rocker arm ratio gives valve lift of 0.537 inch.
Other valve train parts include:
ARP rocker studs: #334-7204 with 8.0 total length
Comp Cam pushrods # 7995-16 5/16 diam, chrome steel
Comp ProMagnum full roller rocker arms #1305-16 steel, 1.6 ratio, with polylocks, these were recommended on the speedtalk forum for holding up well for street use.
Pushrod length includes allowing for 1/2 turn for lifter preload (0.060 inch) and 0.04 inch for valvetrain deflection, so the pushrods are 0.10 extra long. The contact pattern is on the exhaust side of the centerline of the valve stem, and sweeps an arc from near the stem centerline toward the exh side, then back toward the stem centerline. The total roller tip sweep across the valve stem tip was about 0.04 inch. I'll check the roller on valve tip pattern at 500 miles to see if change of pushrod length is required.
Checking valve lift at the valve spring retainer showed the 1.6 roller rockers are really about 1.65 ratio, and that's after accounting for the 59 degree lifter angle. The valve lift difference amongst all 16 rockers was only 0.007 inch which is 1.3% deviation.
I tried Comp Cam High Energy hydraulic lifters, but they are so loose internally and have a weak internal spring that they were collapsing under the load of a Crane Cams check spring.
I bought the hydraulic lifters from Bullet to go with their cam, these lifters showed no amount of collapse against the check springs, so accurate valve lift was obtained using a Snap On magnetic base dial indicator, and lift was double checked with a dial caliper and straight edge.
Lift at both intake and exhaust valves was 0.554 inch, which should make good use of the ported heads.
The centerline of the pushrods were close to the intake manifold gasket surface. I measured from the intake manifold gasket surface flat along the valve cover gasket surface ( 0.642 to centerline) and flat along the head gasket surface (0.507 to centerline). Add 0.05 inch to pushrod diameter (5/16 = 0.313) for measurement variation recorded at valve closed and valve full open: 0.313+.05=0.363, so a 0.375 hole for the pushrods is all that is needed, rather than the Edel hole which is 0.545 diam. It's that big round hole that makes the magnum head pushrod pinch so bad. If they would have cut a slot (like cheby does) then the port could have been made wider. With today's CNC equipment, cutting slots is easy. Edy is just being lazy, maybe favoring the chebys.
The intake port pushrod pinch could be much reduced by installing aluminum round dowels lightly pressed into the original pushrod holes, then the new smaller pushrod hole could be drilled, and then the entire original pushrod pinch could be removed to widen the intake ports, rather than the brass tube idea I used. I epoxied the brass tubes in place, the aluminum dowels could be installed with sleeve retainer or lock tight, and tack welded top and bottom.
Allowing for the new 0.375 pushrod hole, the port could be widened from the stock width of 0.88 inch to 1.0 inch. This would increase the port cross section area from stock 2.125 x 0.88=1.87 sq inch to 2.125 x 1.0=2.12 sq inch.
Peak torque RPM is calculated with the equation: PTQ=CA x 88,200 / cyl volume
where CA is intake port minimum cross section area, and cyl volume is volume of 1 cylinder.
So stock Edel peak torque RPM PTQ=1.87 x 88,200/45.64 = 3600 rpm
For the ported intake port PTQ=2.12 x 88,200/45.64 = 4100 rpm, which would place peak horse power at about 1500 rpm greater = 5600 rpm. Just about right for the camshaft, intake manifold, and typical street driving.
