Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Biebel
Yes a CK-10 was state of the art back then but you forgot one very important part....
The man doing the honing......Honing is right up there with other very specialized skills......I honed many many sets of rods and worked my butt off to make them straight and round....
I worked in a shop that did a great deal of machine work for Ralph at T/K's
The owner was named Bill Crowley at Crows Head Shop here in northern NJ.....If he honed your block you could be assured it was right and Ralph often called up after an engine that had just been dyno'ed with a fresh hone made more power than ever before.....
By then the super smooth cylinder wall finishing idea was long gone.....
Bill was fanatical about blocks and had a little technique for the final finish that seemed to always work.....
He was also a super talented head machinist and long befoe there was a Serdi or similar type machine his VJ's were just about perfect....
He also was a very skilled head and manifold porter.....and did some intakes that were not topped for many years....
He went to Nascar country......along with many others in the engine business......
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I remember Crow's Head Shop and Bill very well. He did my blocks for my SS/EA '69 Camaro; also some head work under the valve and intake manifold work. His shop was special. The thing about Truppi Kling is that they didn't do any machine work, but rather sent each part to the people he found could do the very best work on a particular part; and then told them exactly what HE wanted. Later when the head rule opened up he used Brandwine head Service a lot.
I used to let Ralph send my blocks, heads and manifold to Crow's; Got my crank work done at RC Automotivr in Alex., VA and then go up to T-K to assemble, dyno and tune the motor there before taking it home. In those days we only had stock blocks so we had them all checked for wall thickness, especially on the thrust side of the bore (at least .100) and hardness checked. Good (thick) but soft blocks may have gotten the chrome stainless rings and hard blocks the moly rings. I had a time convincing Ralph that I wanted to use cast cranks. Of course we needed to have them "magged " to find a good one; but they were lighter and while they made no more power on the dyno at a given rpm, I always felt the motor was able to accelerate through the rpms faster.- and hit the converter harder.