Went to engine shop to pick up finished shortblock.. found the oil squirters had not been drilled intothe plugs up by the timing chain. Also no oil pump installed.

Called engine shop after I calculated the compression ratio using the measurements theyprovided. I had asked for a CR of 10.25:1, they delivered a CR of 9.8:1. They used the 10.25 KBpiston that is correct but did not set the deck clearance to what KB rates the CR at. KB says they use deck plus gasket equals 0.040 inches of height in the cyllinder. The deck is 0.0200 and the gasket I was planning to use was 0.041. If the 12cc dish was a 10cc dish that would do but the shop would have to disassemble it, or disassemble it to re-trim the deck. Quench is a mystery to me and I'm not sure if I should just leave it at 9.8 or what.

1/21/00

Picked up the short block today. the rod bolts had contacted the camshaft on assembly so they had to be ground downby 0.0020". $500 down and $1632 upon delivery. The bugger was the balancing... the kit supplier claims a pre balanced kit, with a known bob weight but more had to be added to get it right. not even close as accuracy goes.it is an Eagle cast steel unit for a 400 balancer. no weight had to be aded to the front. The balancing was done externally, with weight placed on the 153 tooth flywheel ($75).

Put engine on stand last night and noted that the timing marks do not line up. HERE is a picture with the engine at TDC #1. Its possible that they moved the cam to allow the crank to pass safely.. that wouldn't be cool. If it were off in the other direction I could live with that but this thing has enough low end torque already.

Removed engine only. Left trans in place. Some of the trans bolts were hand tight. Found a marking on the torque convertor that looks like it was rebuilt in 12/1996. The hardest part of removing all the things attached like harness etc was getting to the the bolt where the grounds are connected to the back of the heads. Once I removed the aluminum canister for the A/C, I could get my hands in those notoriously tough to reach spots. Luckily the A/C was completely dead already. I ordered the A/C Delete package The GM part number is 10055890, the bracket replaces the A/C Compressor and probably shaves 30 LBS off the front end with the compressor and evaporator removed. Theres a picture link below. My block needed new deck pins (metal dowels) that were removed for machining.. $5.50. I noticed pooling of oil on top of a few intake valves.. those heads are brand new and factory assembled.. hmmm. Might be the screw in studs that penetrate some of the runners. I also was "gifted" one of those timing covers that allow cover removal without having to disturb the oil pan. I installed the timing mark for the 400 balancer.. looks 2 degrees off but thats by eyeball and has not been measured really. I have the lifters installed.. the NEW GM lifters have no bevel on the lifter near the roller, the OLD ones did. Just a note. I confirmed that the lifters in a factory ZZ4 has no bevel. My stock L98 lifters did however.
Some more things I noticed... One plug wire (7) was burned beyond all repair. the angled plugs really play havoc if you have no shielding.. should have guessed this, I just did not put a cover on that particular wire. oops, lesson learned. Also the oil leaks were coming from the drivers valve cover. I had used a set of alum covers with a thick gasket, now I have a set of stock 305 covers (taller than the 350 covers on one side!) we'll see if they fit better on the aftermarket heads.

HERE is a picture of the low profile ZIF socketed chip holder.

HERE is a picture of the new a/c-delete bracket.

Here are links to pictures I have not scanned yet:
HERE is a picture of the timing cover.
HERE is a picture of the dowell pins in place.
HERE is a picture of the old and new lifter edges.
HERE is a picture of the new timing cover mount.

Cleaned heads using top engine cleaner and a cloth and razor blade. Lots of carbon in the chambers. Installed the deck pins in the block, they tap in but you gotta hit them pretty hard.. one sent a metal chip flying at me. Probably a good idea to have this pressed in at the machine shop??
HERE is a picture of the exhaust ports showing how small they are compared to the stock manifolds.

HERE is a picture showing the notching that needs to be done to the surface that the oil pan mounts to in order for the longer stroke crank to clear the block. This is probably the most commonly known bump in the SBC stroker build. It is also common to have to trim a bit off some of the rod bolts to clear the camshaft.

4/11/00

Finally have all the stuff back in place. the engine bay looks stock. only the thirdgen entheusiest can spot the 305 valve covers, the slightly larger runners, and the A/C delete bracket. The aluminum heads are peeking out a bit too. the hood is rusted and the nose is blue and one fender is black.. no one would steal that would they?
HERE is a picture of the engine bay.

We fired it up and a few little things made themselves known.. the baffle in the driver's valve cover was interfering with one of the rockers. A little persuasion with a vise and all's well. Suprisingly it started right up and idled perfectly after we put plug #7 fully on the distributor ;-} . I still have a problem with hot-restart. an exhaust leak at the y pipe and a minor coolant leak from a loose clamp was the only other hitch.

4/25/00

The silly GM engineers forgot to put a tag on the exhaust manifold that says "hey idiot, put ALL the heat shields back on". turns out I burned a harness a bit, took a while to troubleshoot a blown instrument cluster fuse.. had the dang cluster all the way apart.. cool little modular guage setup they do in there. well its fixed, I am tuning and tracking down possibly an injector problem with #4. the zero to 60 is about 5.5, I expected better. guess among the tuning issue its time to let it breathe better. Heres the infamous F-body A/C DELETE bracket you may have heard tell of. Heres a pic of the Ported stock lower intake. I only ported the square area to match roughly the heads. The round areas I did not touch. the picture shows a ported one next to an unported passage. It really needs an aftermarket unit anyway. Heres the Ported stock upper plenum Here is a picture of the correct Bronze Distributor gear you need when you put a ZZ-4 camshaft in where a stock one was, at least in my '89 one piece rear main seal roller block. There are different gears for different size distributor shafts so don't go get that part number, find out what you really need first. The deal is, you want to wear the distributor gear faster than the cam gear, so its easier to inspect and replace. The ZZ-4 camshaft gear is made of something softer (hows that for techno-grearhead stuff) and will wear away if you use the stock distributor gear. Mine was sheered a bit anyway, 127k miles and all.


5/25/00
Here are some drag runs with the new block: Remember, I had gone 13.50 with the supercharger on the stock 350...

Well I put the N.O.S. Bottle in the spare tire compartment and a 32 jet in the TPI N20 Plate system(NOS #5151). You can see the Throttle Switch on the nose of the throttle body, and the semi-hidden NOS solenoid. By calculations there is about 80 CFM of N2O flowing in to replace 80 CFM of standard air, with an estimated net effect of +45 HP. Here is the fastest timeslip with the new DRY system using a 32 jet:

I have tuned the STOCK 22# 5.7L injectors to provide 0.89-0.91 readings on the GM o2 sensor. Amazing the stock injectors are still within an acceptable duty cycle range at a max of 88% for a brief moment. Realize that my shift points with the stock TPI lower intake are at 5300 RPM, lower RPM's contribute to the stock injector's usability.

This car is fun as heck to race now. Dump the throttle off the line - no thinking or feathering needed, just punch and GO! Nitrous flows as long as the throttle is WIDE OPEN and at launch the tires dont break loose too bad. I took 0.05 off my best 60 foot time but it feels like much more. It feels like I'm ready to lift a wheel!

Been a while since I added anything here.. some stuff is not "swap" related but this is the place I choose to update things. Where to start... Here are some changes since last update:

Re-piped the Nitrous so that there are 2 lines with NOS in them leading to the plate. One port in the plate is usually used for FUEL, but I do that with a change to the fueling in the ECM. I put a few combinations of jets in the inlets and dyno checked each setup. once I get to about a 38 RWHP gain (a 14 and a 42 jet) I see a jeggedness and a disturbance in the nice smooth HP curve. a single 42 jet has taken me to within 0.16 of an eleven second time.. so I hope that on a good traction day I can get an eleven with the 2-jet system. Heres an interesting piece of data.. tells you just how *little* nitrous I am using on a run.. I can turn the bottle OPEN, then close it and when I activate the solenoid.. I can get about 8 seconds worth of flow thru the 42 jet. the 14 jet is so small that I can't see light thru it. a 14 / 24 jet combo gets me 10 RWHP.

Replaced the bronze distributer gear. I forget if I detailed it elsewhere, but the ZZ3 cam has a sorta soft metal compound (ductile iron?) on the distributer drive gear so you need a softer distributer gear so that you don't wear the drive gear off the cam and have to replace the cam. The first bronze gear (accel part number elsewhere on this site) wore in about 8000 miles. Replacing the gear took a little slop out of the distributor.

Swapped in a ported edelbrock lower intake. Net gain was like 8 hp and 10 TQ or something over my hand-ported stock base... either I did a real good job with my stock base or I got a cursed base for $300. The gains are throughout the entire RPM band and netted me a bit more than a tenth and 2 MPH. The peak HP actually shifted DOWNWARD overall by about 200 RPM. DYNO RUNS are elsewhere on the website.

I have re-weighed the car with the rear speaker box out, with me IN IT and it is 3550 lbs. Seems a little lite compared to the certified scale weight I have elsewhere on this site (I'm link-lazy yes).

Had a little problem with the car at the 2nd annual SLP customer appreciation day at Englishtown raceway.. I was running a bracket race and caught the guy at half track.. let off the gas for a sec and pushed it down again only to get half power. I reviweed the scan results and the MAP sensor only registered 65 Kpa as the TPS was at 100%. The only theory I have is that the NOS plate made a curtain of pressure in the throttlebody that the engine had a hard time pulling intake air thru. That or the new '92 MAP car intake bellows had collapsed on itself when I pushed the gas again. I have some more testing to try and reproduce it.

The lesser NOS jetting (a 32) give me a better 60 foot time cause I don't have to feather the throttle at the launch and it sticks well using just a 32 jet (which was a dyno'd 30 rwhp gain). the 42 + 14 jet combo is enough to break the tires loose at launch if I don't do it just right. Last year when I put in a 55 jet, the trade off in upper MPH was not enough to offset the loss in 60 foot due to not being able to launch on NOS. this is an important concept cause the pay-back point is where more than DOUBLE the nitrous flow is required to acheive enough MPH to offset the 60 foot loss.



more later...

note 1: my ratio is 9.8:1 calculated. KB rates the CR with 0.040 deck plus gasket. Mine has 0.060 there. oh well really could have used a tight quench area.. now I guess I can use lower octane pump gas maybe even 89.