Well, I've decided to focus on the engine, as I am going to need it in the chassis pretty soon to work on plumbing & wiring, however, I think it is going to be very similar to the transmission, lots of hours & not a lot of interesting stuff to post, plus, like the transmission I am doing a new engine for the buggy at the same time, both engines I have been gathering or already had parts for a few years now.
This engine will be big block ford based (460) starting with a brand new Ford motorsports A460 block, out of the box they require quite a lot of machine work, the bore is supposed to be ready to hone to size, it's not, there is to much material to hone, & boring the cylinders is pretty tricky since there is very little to work with, (.009 if I remember correctly) also the deck is only rough machined, & not square, Then it is pretty common knowledge in the Ford world that the crankshaft main bores really should be line honed, not to mention stuff like oil mods, honing lifter bores, etc.
I usually do my own engine assembly, but leave this type of machine work to the pros,
One of my very best friends of 20 years or so (Randal) has been doing this type of stuff for as long as I have known him, not only do I trust his machine work & opinion, I almost always pull on his knowledge for parts selection like camshaft, bearing material for the application, or maybe even what head gasket to run if it's a specific build, & I rarely even assemble an engine without having him help/consult while I install & torque bolts,
Even though none of my engine stuff 100% me alone, I'm still not the guy that drops a pile of parts off for machine work & assembly, or whip out the credit card & order an off the shelf engine from someone like Shafiroff, Steve Morris, or Jon Kaase, (this would no doubt speed up the process though)
Also tooling is a point of interest in this build, while neither myself or Randal have many of the machine tools needed for engine work, we have access to some through other good friends, one being Randal's old boss (Steve), Who I have know since I was about 9, Steve has a long history of circle track, & drag racing in his younger days, he came out west about 30 years ago & went to work at the mines, He worked with my dad for a while & this is where I first met him, fast forward several years after his family was pretty much raised & gone, he quite mining, knocked the dust off of his old equipment & opened his own automotive repair shop with a pretty well equipped machine shop, which he has ran & employed people for at least the last 25 years or so,
The next option for tooling is another long time friend (Jason) another local gear head that loves anything with an engine, Jason & I have known each other since 5th grade, He & Randal have also been friends for many years, Knowing Steve isn't going to stay working forever Jason started buying a lot of the same tooling so he would always have machining options later on,
This is kind of a long winded post, some may find interest in it, the rest will scroll to the pics, I'm good with either, but I think it's important to point out what "build an engine" is to me, It's not swapping heads & gapping rings on a junk yard LS so you can run china turbos, it's not researching the closest machine shop that has the latest tooling, & it's also not me hefting a chunk of aluminum on the Bridgeport to see if I can build my own block,
It is, getting together with people I've known most of my life, swapping ideas, learning how things used to be done, or how they're done now, It's working with equipment that has been around longer than me, & is one of the very few parts of any build that I actually enjoy working with other people,
So, now that the back story is out of the way & everyone has been introduce, back to the engine,
As stated I bought a brand new mess of an A460 block, I put it on the stand & started with general cleanup, deburring sharp edges, drilling/blending the oil feed galleys, & measuring for the upcoming machine work,
The first thing that needed done was cut the deck, both to get it flat, & then square with the crank journals, along with the correct height (distance from the crank) There are a couple ways this can be done, Randal & I did it on Steve's Van Norman head surfacing machine, I did not get any pics, but here is a google image of what the machine looks like,
Basically the block is setup on the machine with the deck to be cut face down on the table, then shimmed based on measurements previously taken to get everything square, the block is locked in & a pass or two was made, taking measurements after each one to makes sure everything is going the right direction, once finished the block was rolled over & the same thing took place on the second surface,
Once both sides were square, & flat, the block was setup in Steve's home made, bore/honing station, there's no google pics of that setup, but it's basically parts of a drill press that has been modified for honing use, but before honing a Van Normal boring bar is used to get the cylinder bores to size,
This is usually where I go work on something else, when Randal sits down to run the bar I just stay out of the way & let him do his thing, He'll bore all 8 holes first, then hone them to final size,
As mentioned, there was only about .009 to work with, & the bores from Ford must have been hogged out in pretty heavy cuts as they were not real strait,
Randal said "this block is going to take a while" And it did, he started working on it around 6:00 pm, the next morning I got up to go to work at 3:30 AM, About 20 min later I got a text "one side is done"
I'm not real sure when he got back around to working on the other side, but by the time I went back on days off the block was all bored/honed, & fit,
Even though Randal doesn't work for Steve anymore he still does enough engine work down there to stay familiar with the tools, & the quality is amazing, he might be a little slower, but the end result will be better than any other boring setup out there.
Oh, I was also told if I get another A460 block to have it machined somewhere else. 😆
Next up for the block was something we could not do ourselves, & that was line hone the crankshaft main bores, Steve has a line bore setup for doing blocks, but not a hone,
So it got hauled over to another old school small shop a couple towns away where the main bores touched up, After that the block was bagged up & set in the corner for assembly,
Prior to even buying the A460 block I had scored a set of coated Icon forged pistons with coated wrist pins, they were in an engine for a couple dyno pulls before being swapped for a lower compression set,
Also a good deal I came across was a set of 6.900 Groden aluminum rods with 25 passes on them, 6.900 is not as common as the 6.7 or 6.8 that most stroker ford combinations use, but they were perfect for the pistons I had & the crankshaft I wanted to run,
With those parts in hand, along with a set of rings & bearings I was able to calculate a bob weight, with that I reached out to Performance Crank shaft & ordered a Scat 4340 forged 4.300 stroke crank, balanced to my bob weight & double key ways cut for the blower drive hub.
So 4.5 bore, & 4.3 stroke, means I'll end up with 547 cubic inch,
For the top end I found a set of brand new old stock Blue Thunder "B" heads, un touched, bare castings, while they're not one the latest & greatest "stock configuration" heads like the Kaase P-51 or SR-71 heads, they were pretty good back in their day, & the & the strong exhaust port is probably a little better that the other two in a supercharged application,
Normally I would port the heads myself, then have Randal do the valve job, & set them up with the proper springs & hardware for the cam they'd go with, but this time I decided to send this set out to a guy that I have followed & read post after post he has made in the 460 world,
Charlie Evans out of Kentucky has had his hands on probably every style 460 ford head ever made, & maybe even some that never made it to any kind of production,
I give him a call, & went over what the plan was, then boxed the heads up & shipped them over to him, I got them back ported, a complete valve job, & sheet with the flow numbers he got, He also shipped a set of valves that I would need,
Pretty much all of the machine work I have talked about in this post was done a couple years ago, & has been sitting here, waiting for me to get to it,
