Thanks to “Outlaw”, the 555 BBC Engine has made its last pass. Early Saturday morning Kevin removed the engine to get it ready to go to the machine shop. We found the source of the water leak and we also had cylinder to cylinder leakage between all the cylinders on the right hand side of the motor. Don’t know how much compression we were losing there. This was the side with the old head.

On Tuesday afternoon, I took the engine block, crank and rods out to Remi Baker at Womack’s so he could determine how far out we can go with my block. After looking at it, he is going to bore it out to 4.600″ to get me up to 565 CID. We are going to put new L-19 ARP rod bolts in the rods and use them again. We will get new Ross or Wiseco Pistons. I prefer Ross, because that is what I have run for the past 16 years, but they may not be able to give me a 4.600″ piston without it being custom made. Wiseco has them on the shelf.

Since my block is already at Zero deck height, we will deck the block and end up with the pistons out of the block by a few thousandths. I will have to use the MLS gasket that is 0.0053″ in order to have sufficient quench area in the chamber. This should solve the blown head gasket problem.

Friday I removed all the roller lifters and roller rockers and sent them back to Comp Cams for overhaul. We are going to have a good look at the lifter bores while the block is in the machine shop.

All of my rod and main bearings look as good as the day I assembled the engine. The crank is 16 years old and is still standard on the rods and mains!

Inside the headers looked very good. Numbers 1, 2 &3 were a little dark (rich), but all the rest were light gray, indicating excellent combustion. The tops of the pistons looked excellent too. My Exhaust Gas Temp. (EGT) probe had been in #7 header tube, and it had indicated just what we saw when we opened the engine up. Different racers and engine builders have EGT numbers that they like to use to indicate good fuel mixture (Jets). I try to stay between 1375 and 1475 degrees F.

A much better way to determine correct fuel mixture is to have dual quick response O2 sensors welded into your collectors with read-out inside the car. You can always just pull a couple of plugs (at the end of a run before you drive back to your pit area) and read the plugs to determine if you are jetted correct (much cheaper).

With my new AFR CNC 357 heads, the new Victor Jr. Intake, New Holley Gen-3 Ultra 1250 carb and 10 additional cubic inches, I should be able to run a little quicker. The Cam is going to remain the same for now. I may change it later.

I did not run in the Nitro Jam this year, but the cut-off for Top Doorslammer was 5.69 sec., rather than the 5.79 sec. that we had been using as the qualifying time. With my new setup, I should be able to make that in all types of weather. With the old configuration our best time was 5.58 sec. under ideal weather conditions. In the high temps. (>85 degrees) and high humidity, we struggled to get to 5.81 in the 1/8th mile.  Filed my taxes today!