Dumbo The Flying Elephant

[Larry Hill]

I have all the main studs assigned and checked for Bullet nose contact. While making protective bearings from old main bearings I noticed an aluminum bearing that all of the aluminum was worn away it was difficult to see at first glance but steel and aluminum are almost the same color. A pocket knife can tell the difference. Block is ready to go to the car wash to be cleaned before installing gaskets and honing plates. Before we have it honed we will check ring gap and bore size and tension of oil ring.

[Larry Hill]

Upon further inspection it looks like the tap drill was larger than spec leaving the thread form short for 7/16- 14 NC. Who or what to blame, I will take responsibility I had a torque wrench that was not true, and I payed the price. Measuring the thread pull out it was about 20 % undersized.

Y’all have a good July 4th weekend.

[Larry Hill]

Block is cleaned well enough to take to the machine shop next week to be honed. The manes are installed with protector bearings and torqued. Honing plates and gaskets are installed and torqued. It has taking a while to get the gaskets to be large enough to go to the next size overbore if it is necessary. A steel gasket hanging in the bore will eat up a set of stones.

Most if not all machine shops appreciate receiving relatively clean stuff and sometimes you can save some money by cleaning it yourself.

Time to clean up my shop its a wreck.

[Larry Hill]

A tip of the hat to Mahle Pistons. I checked the next size +.005" over pistons for the engine and size varied .0003" and weight of the eight pistons varied by less than a gram. I forgot to check weight of small piston to larger piston for balance. The bores checked OK just not very straight. With us going to the next size Jeff Taylor Performance will have it round and straight. Honing
using a Profilometer assures the values of RVK and RPK are closely observed. New equipment is always plus for any shop.

[Paul Precht]

Originally Posted by Larry Hill

A tip of the hat to Mahle Pistons. I checked the next size +.005" over pistons for the engine and size varied .0003" and weight of the eight pistons varied by less than a gram. I forgot to check weight of small piston to larger piston for balance. The bores checked OK just not very straight. With us going to the next size Jeff Taylor Performance will have it round and straight. Honing
using a Profilometer assures the values of RVK and RPK are closely observed. New equipment is always plus for any shop.

Hi Larry, would you be willing to share the RK, RPK and RVK you got on average as well as the oil ring pull tension.

[Larry Hill]

Paul I’m not trying to be evasive but that information is with Jeff Taylor Performance in Sellersburg In. Some things I prefer not to know. The reason being, if I don't know some proprietary information and for some reason it gets known it could not come from me.
On ring pull are you curious about RB or Gen 3?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I believe all the parts are here. It’s all on me now.

[Paul Precht]

Originally Posted by Larry Hill

Paul I?m not trying to be evasive but that information is with Jeff Taylor Performance in Sellersburg In. Some things I prefer not to know. The reason being, if I don't know some proprietary information and for some reason it gets known it could not come from me.
On ring pull are you curious about RB or Gen 3?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I believe all the parts are here. It?s all on me now.

Thanks for the reply Larry, both the RB and Gen 3 if you're willing to share but the RB being 3/16ths is what's in most of my builds so it's interesting to see what is working for other people as I'm a bit shy about going too light. Back in the day Hastings used the old TRW style black expanders and I could grind one end to give me the tension I wanted, I recently mixed a standard tension Speed Pro expander with Hastings rails as they had a shorter radial wall which is going in a low budget 383 for my bracket 62 Dart. I target the middle of Total Seal's specs for RK, RPK and RVK and it's a bit tricky getting there and like with oil ring tension, it's interesting to see what's working for others.

[Larry Hill]

Best I can remember for the RB is using an old fish scale that had a needle it was about 10 to 12 lbs. Once something worked I would reuse the the oil ring in the next setup. The Gen three stuff I haven?t had much success on oil control. I?m trying something different this build.