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Yeah I saw one like that too, might be the same video. The tunnel port was a disaster as they just went "bigger is better" without any smart design on the port itself, and with that big pushrod tube right down the middle, it was a dog's breakfast. It made some good figures at peak rpm (8000) but the engines didn't last because they had to sit at those rpm all the time. When they made the Boss, not only did they properly shape and tune the 4V port for the intended rpm range, but they tested the bottom end to 9600rpm to make sure that it would hold together no matter what. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

In that case, you could bump the compression up a bit of you have a set of 302 heads available. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Yeah how does that saying go?...... "Blue and Green should never be seen" Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

I don't mind the blue, but Kents were black originally for a reason... To hide the Pommy oil leaks [emoji23] Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Hope the bores and jackets are ok Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

If you have a Karcher, you can get an attachment for wet sand blasting that will bring it up smick. I did my set of snowies a few years ago and they came out like new. Just used river sand out of my kid's sandpit. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

I think a lot of people have been through exactly this scenario and came to the same conclusion, hence the reason why they can charge that much for the pistons. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

I think nearly 1/4 off the top of a piston is way too much. They're not very thick to start with, I reckon that's a recipe for a big, hole-melting disaster. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Yep, that's what they go for. No getting around that and the s*** thing is, 5.0 Windsor kits are about half that but won't go into a clevo without the aforementioned issues Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

I would go with the spiders, only because that's what Ford used from factory. It needs some drilling/tapping but if you're getting it all machined, that's easy once it's all in bits and getting washed anyway. I think there are retrofit spider type for clevos, best off getting a kit with the correct base circle so the oil holes don't pop out of the bores Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

If you take heaps off the block and/or heads, you'll need new pushrods, so add that to the expense. Don't bother with cheap heads, that's a recipe for disaster. Too many horror stories getting round regarding that kind of product. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Going to closed chambers with the pistons 70 down will make it behave like an open chamber. Add 40 for gasket, and you're at 110 from piston to quench pad. Not really much point in doing that. You'd be getting the closed chamber heads for nothing. The only time you'd go zero deck with with closed chamber is for the quench effect, which makes for a more efficient combustion but in this case the comp would be too high on 400 cubes. You could go with zero deck and the closed chambers but carve a bit out of them to get the comp down to reasonable. Also a bigger cam will bleed off compression to help on that front too. Again, extra expense for the heads. Finally if you go with open heads and zero deck, the effect is of course still open chamber but more comp which is handy, as you're using your existing heads. this would be the most economical route. Just punching different data into Wallace Racing Calculator, these numbers come up: Zero deck, closed 58cc: 12.23:1 Zero deck, open 78cc: 9.82:1 0.070 deck, closed 58cc: 10.38:1 0.070 deck, open 78cc: 8.64:1 http://www.wallaceracing.com/cr_test2.php Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

I think they make decent manifolds for 400s now, but maybe not an air gap. The pistons are T Meyers aren't they? That company specialises in getting 400s to boogie Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

If I had my time over, I'd go roller cam straight off the bat... No fkn around with flat tappets, breaking in and zinc oils, etc. Full roller drivetrain, screw it all together, turn the key and forget the whole shooting match inside. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

I can see it only being a problem when adding mineral oil to used synthetic already in the engine. As synthetic is much more able to absorb moisture, its content will be higher so if you go adding mineral to that, it may congeal into a milky mess. Other than that scenario, unless a lube engineer can correct me, both are ok mixed. Otherwise, there's be no such thing as a synthetic/mineral blend. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Certain castings up to 77 from Michigan Casting Centre were the faulty ones, the one you had before would have been fine... Action Man..... why did you move it on ? Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Ford did some funny things back in the day, they developed the FMX from the BW and used a Ravigneaux planetary set, but produced that box alongside the C4 and C6 which used a completely different Simpson planetary set. Then, when they were done making the FMX in the late 70s, they developed the AOD from it while the C4 and C6 were phased out. So in a roundabout way, the FMX design predated, then outlived the other gearboxes that were supposed to replace it. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Agree on the ATF, it's pretty foolproof stuff. We even used to use it on plant equipment as a hydraulic oil. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Ok that makes sense, use one as a spacer against the face of the chuck, makes it easier to true it up Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Yeah I looked at that and thought they'd be as hard as a dog's forehead, also hard to grip in the chuck. Unless there's an easier way of grabbing them? Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

The halves of the hemisphere can be machined internally a bit to allow cone engagement again, what happens is the tapered friction surface wears in the housing and the cones sit deeper and deeper into the taper as it wears. Eventually they bottom out on the internal face (where the axle comes through), which prevents the cones from biting in the taper. Machining this flat internal surface a couple of mm will allow the cones to bite again, but now the spider gears (which rely on the cone depth to set backlash) now need to be shimmed up by the amount that you machined off the housing, so that backlash is back up to spec. I think mine needed 20 thou machining and shimming each side. You'd be surprised at how much difference there is with a 5 thou shim. Where I stuffed up first time round, I actually shimmed the cones up too much, and when I put the two halves together, the spider gears bottomed out on each other before the housings touched. That's right, the hemisphere faces actually didn't meet, the two were held apart by the spider gears! So I bolted it all together and thought "jeez this limo is tight" but it was because it was all bound together and the spider gears could barely move, and the two halves were driving purely on the 8 little bolts. They all broke off eventually, and carnage ensued. So next time I did one, I made sure that the spider gears had backlash with the halves butted together. So far, so good. The limo's nice and tight too, but actually works. There's either a build thread on it somewhere or it's buried in my gergwagon thread. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

2.92s are apparently getting harder to find now, as everyone used to just chuck them when upgrading to 3.45s, etc. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

My diff came out of an XG and all the old gear swapped over, but spot-on Dean about the annoying parts randomness of Aussie BW diffs. My original diff build had a 25-spline LSD centre out of an EA, put into said XG housing that originally came with 28-spline open centre and axles. I had 3.27 gears but felt they were too short, so late went over to 3.08s when I had to replace the centre with one from an XD. I'd made a mistake when assembling the first build by shimming out the clutches too much, and the bolts broke that hold the halves of centre together. They came out and one got caught in a couple of gear teeth and bang! Still drove fine, but the centre was mangled from having no bolts holding it together. Only the carrier bearings were holding the diff centre halves together. It wasn't pretty. So the current setup has an XG disc brake housing, 25-spline 2-pinion LSD centre from an XD, and Commodore 3.08 gears. This is behind a 302 so the pissy axles are what I always think about when tempted to launch hard. Being XF, yours should have the same internals as XB. So I'll say a tentative "yes" to them being interchangeable. The usual setup with shims and preload needs to happen though, don't fuss hugely about tooth pattern, just as long as your coasting contact patch is ok and backlash isn't way out (aim for less than 10 thou at the crown). The drive contact pattern matters less because that will lap in over time. You really need a diff housing spreader if doing the carrier bearing preload properly. If you've got fresh carrier bearings, you need preload on them otherwise they will wear out quickly once you put power through them. If you can slide the carrier in without spreading the housing, you have no preload. Some like to get the preload close, and hammer the shims into place but that just knocks the crap out of them and that's the reason why good ones are hard to find now (diff bloke told me that). Do it once, do it right. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Yeah it sucks that engine reconditioning has become a niche industry, as opposed to the old days when a vehicle would go through 2 or 3 engines in its life and there were plenty of mobs around that would do that work. Nowadays, the only machinists/builders left can pretty much name their price. $880 is an insane amount. There's probably a couple of hours max in that job, I've worked at a reco place and the crank grinder would pump out cranks all day long. Also, consider just carving a bit out of each chamber where the quench area meets the open bit. You could take outba few ccs there. Costs you nothing and no piston thickness to worry about. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk

Most cam companies quote cam timing at 0.050" lift because that's the point where any appreciable flow starts to occur. Before that, it's negligible and 0.006" specs are only given to take into account pushrod and rocker flex, oil clearances, etc . Also to demonstrate the amount of cam ramp up; the 0.006" duration will be a lot longer than at 0.050" if it's a stock-type, flat-tappet grind. You'll notice on hydraulic rollers that the advertised vs 0.050" figures are much closer because the ramps can be made much more aggressive. So to answer your question, you'd enter your specs at 0.050" lift (if you have them handy). You can calculate the intake valve closing event at 0.050" from the other calculators on that page (assuming the cam is a symmetrical pattern), inputting LSA, etc. After a lot of reading about dynamic comp, an ideal figure for a street engine is around 8:1, getting up around 8.5 for a well-prepped, closed-chamber engine, up to 9:1 with an alloy head and racey fuel. Going too high in comp is an exercise in diminishing returns. Once you get up to the ideal, going higher only causes more problems for very little gain in HP. In my opinion, you should start with a camshaft and build the engine around it. If you want to use the cam you pulled out, make sure you keep every lifter in order so they're going back on the lobe they ran on. If you've mixed them up, throw the whole lot in the bin. One wiped lobe will mean a full engine pulldown to get all the shavings out. Trust me on this one, I've wiped 2 cams in 70,000km. If going for a new cam, Thom's recommendation is sound, as well as some offerings from Elgin (low-end and OEM spec cams) which some folks on here have used and have had good results with. I've used Crow and Precision's house brand (forgotten the name) but to be honest, I wouldn't mind an upgrade soon as I was a bit disappointed at the HP I got from the 208/208 I'm running. Great torque, just falls on its face after 5000. Some good rules of thumb: * Stock rockers and springs don't like lifts much above 0.5" * If you want to take your engine past 5000, or upgrade the cam, or go up in lift, you need to upgrade the valvesprings. * a narrow LSA will give a narrow powerband, a wide LSA will give a wide powerband. That's why towing cams have a pretty tight LSA. They're made for midrange. * The small parts will be what cost the most. The engine itself is pretty simple. Carb, coil, dizzy, plugs, leads, gaskets, nuts, bolts, water pump, alternator, all add up. Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk