XXO/BVGC '38 Chevy Coupe Build

[38flattie]

Also, the bottom of the heads are done!

[38flattie]

One obstacle overcome, so on to the next one!

[Milwaukee Midget]

Jewels - just gorgeous.

[Seldom Seen Slim]

Ask M Midget about having us engrave something for you on the top of that tasty-looking bit of metal.  Maybe your signature -- so you'd have the same basic idea the Seth Hammond has on his rocker arm covers.  Yours, of course would be far classier -- 'cause - unh, mmm, because Kudos Laser Engraving would do them for you. 

Nice-looking work.  Congratulations on having such a good time in your build.

[Milwaukee Midget]

Kudos to Kudos -



They were able to duplicate the "Austin/Morris" logotype, make a nice little faux factory style plate, and a couple of brass rivets later -



Which reminds me - Slim - are you engraving Moon Discs yet?  An MG Octagon would look smashing etched into the middle of my moonies . . .

[maguromic]

Buddy, It looks like you guys are having to much fun! It can be very addicting.  Tony

[Drewfus]

Been watching your progress with those heads in particular, awesome, I take it that the smaller (I guess they're 1/4") bolts you've got are just to hold the 2 heads halves together when you've removed all the nuts from the studs (so that you're not always having to reseal the join?

Enjoying your build, great to see the enthusiasm and passion

Cheers,

Drewfus

[38flattie]

Chris, Thanks for the kind words!

Jon, had I known about Kudos Laser Engraving sooner, I would have went that route. The brass tags will be water jetted, so the aluminum background will contrast with the brass for the logo.

Tony, it has been fun! Nothing along the lines of your build, Treit's Liner, or others, but we are feeling pretty good about it!

Drewfus, thank you, Sir!

[Seldom Seen Slim]

I hadn't thought about engraving Moon discs -- but I think I could make it work.  I can fit items up to 24" x 18" in the machine.  The curvature of the disc might pose a problem, though.  The focus of the laser is pretty critical.  The head of the machine moves in two dimensions - but not three.  I can get away with about a 1/4" variation before the focus is too far out and the laser beam doesn't have enough ooomph to do anything.  Before you send your discs to me -- measure the "height" difference from the center to the extreme outside of the art you want on the disc.  It might end up that you could have engraving that's a total of 4" from centerpoint, might be 8", etc.  By the way, the art/logo/name/whatever does not (repeat NOT) have to be symmetrical like your MG octagon -- it could be, for instance, "Milwaukee Midget".  When your sponsor sees the wording he might catch it when things are upside down, of course.  Heck, even the "MG" in the octagon will only be right side up once every 360 degrees.  My point is that I can engrave straight line art as well as symmetrical stuff.

Next item that needs to be mentioned:  The laser engraver will not "burn" away a bit of the metal as it engraves.  I don't have that kind of power available.  Instead -- I'll use a compound that is painted onto the metal.  When the laser beam hits that stuff the heat bonds it to the metal leaving a pretty durable marking.  The compound is available in black or white.

Yeah, I know -- it's cornfusing to read the above paragraph.  If you've got an idea of what you want on a moon disc -- get in touch directly with me.  Good rates for racers, that's a promise.  

Now that I've said all this -- I think I'll take one of the discs that I haven't put on Nancy's car yet this spring - and give it a try today.  Pictures at 4PM or earlier.  

Thanks for the suggestion, Chris.  And - I now return the topic to 38F's build.

[38flattie]

BoredandStroked spent the weekend porting. Here is the progress report in his words:

 Well, I can't say that I enjoyed the weekend - spent the last three days porting the FlatCAD block. It is just about the crappiest job that I know - takes days, seems to go on forever and bores that shit out of me. I told my wife, if I ever mention that I'm going to port ANYTHING other than my own engines again - hand me a pair of rusty bolt cutters, I'm going to cut my gonads off

Anyway - wanted to complete it this holiday weekend, but these FlatCADs are big bastards compared to Flathead Fords . . . a TON more work and of course I was optimistic and thought I could do it in 30 - 40 hours . . . NOT! Not only are the ports much bigger, but some of them are long bastards - with funny shapes and bends. All this makes it about 2 - 3 times harder/longer than I imagined. I figure somewhere around 60 hours or so -- that is a LOT of time with a damn air grinder . . .

I've got about 36 hours into it so far - probably 16 - 24 or so more to go @#%#$@#. I'm going to work nights this week - really need to get this to the machine shop by the end of the week.

Here is where I'm at:

1) All of the bowl side work is done - extensive amount of material removed (especially in the floors).

a) Hogged the heck out of all the bowl areas and the transitions into the ports. Used the sonic tester to validate thickness and get some clue as to where I was at. The thinnest section is about .110 -- which is as thin as I want to go. Most of the stock ports are fairly consistent in thickness (.200 - .300) - though I found two that had some core shift and I had to be very careful. My average final thickness is around .150 or so.

2) Cut out a big chunk of cast iron that was in the center two exhaust ports. (see the picture - compare the two sides). It separates the manifold from the heat riser. I cut it out with a saber saw and then ground all of the rest of it away. This will allow me to get into the center exhaust ports and clean them up. There is plenty of room in there - will probably run ONE big tube for the center two ports.

3) Die-Chemed the top intake ports and set their sizes to 1.5" x 2" -- scribed them as such.

4) Ground the living heck out of the intake runners to blend everything in, take as much material out as I felt safe, etc.. I'm hoping to get as much flow as possible in the bottom of the ports. They're pretty damn big now - I believe that with a blower, we'll have plenty of flow. This thing should flow much more than a heavily ported flathead Ford - due to the amount of port volume I now have, size of the valves, etc.. Wish I had a flow bench to measure it . . . maybe some day.

The sonic tester has really helped, but porting this thing still makes me nervous as I've never done one of these beasts before and I really don't want to hit water. I know I'm pretty close in some areas - hoping there are no porosity issues that I can't see.

I'm going to bolt some heads on it and pressure test it BEFORE it goes back to the machine shop. You can bet my sphincter will be a bit tight during the test . . . hope to hell it passes, or I'm going to commit suicide

If it passes a pressure test, this block should make some horsepower -- hopefully we can get everything done and make it to the salt.

It is going to be a thrash my friends . . . lets keep at it!

Well, I tried to figure out how to post pics in the text, instead of as attachments. No luck! Could someone send me a PM explaining how to do this?

[jdincau]

If you do find porosity's I have had good luck with this stuff

http://www.impco-inc.com/page190.html

[38flattie]

Jdincau, that's good to know-Thanks


Ok, BoredandStroked is just finishing the relieving and porting, so the block can go to Fowler's engines to get worked over. Here are Dale's words:


 here are some photos of the completed reliefs. The style is a 'full relief' - about .170 deep. I'm being a bit conservative on depth - as we just don't know the strength of the block in this area and I really don't want a crack at Bonneville. With that said, I'm happy with the results and I know we have a lot of flow in the transfer area of the head as well . . . so we should be cool.

My main objective was to use the relief to unshroud the valve and enable as much flow as possible at low-lift. The FlatCAD has valves at a 7 degree angle and there is a deep pocket on the cylinder side . . . this is bad for flow as the gas has to come up/over the pocket to get to the cylinder.

Here are some pictures - Here is before I started - notice the deep pocket the valve is in . . .(1st pic)


So, we continue to move along....

[Buickguy3]

My main objective was to use the relief to unshroud the valve and enable as much flow as possible at low-lift. The FlatCAD has valves at a 7 degree angle and there is a deep pocket on the cylinder side . . . this is bad for flow as the gas has to come up/over the pocket to get to the cylinder.

Here are some pictures - Here is before I started - notice the deep pocket the valve is in . . .(1st pic)
   38Flattie,
    That's what the blower is for. 
  Doug

[38flattie]

Haha! You're right Doug, but a flathead breathes so poorly, that even a blower needs some help!

[Milwaukee Midget]

That's some kick azz machining on that antiquated pig iron lump. 

You're closing in on August - how's the prognosis?