304 355" build thread

[Immortality]

It looks good.

 

[Smitty]

Does it need to be primed before hand etc or just brush on?

I’m guessing just a degrease of any machining oils etc in the valley should be enough…..tempting

I do it after all block prep and mods are done... then good clean with a high pressure washer
and use of the of the various brushes to clean the galleries (or hot tank again) with a hot water wash after
and I then blow out out 'everything' and also run a tap into ALL threaded holes and its ready for a coat

I do 2 coats

 

[gtrboyy]

Looks like good stuff...I'd be paranoid too it might come off if block prep wasn't 110% but I've never used or seen it in person tbh.

Wonder if it would would underneath banana intake help heatsoak a little bit...used to see metal cones under intake manifold of early 308s but nothing aftermarket.

 

[someguy360]

Update on mine:

TK reached out on Wednesday, he's starting on machining on Monday so potentially I could have mine back by the end of next week all going well. It's been hot tanked ready for them to start playing with.

I ran my pistons and main studs into him on Friday, and this is why I'm happy to spend the extra using Tony rather than a lot of others I got much much cheaper quotes from. He's a perfectionist, even though he's not the one building the engine he wants it perfect.

Most would just dial in 4.030 into the honing machine and send it, but he wanted the pistons so he could make sure the fitment was 100% perfect. He also wanted the main studs so he could make sure 100% that there was no ovality in the mains.

 

[vc commodore]

Update on mine:

TK reached out on Wednesday, he's starting on machining on Monday so potentially I could have mine back by the end of next week all going well. It's been hot tanked ready for them to start playing with.

I ran my pistons and main studs into him on Friday, and this is why I'm happy to spend the extra using Tony rather than a lot of others I got much much cheaper quotes from. He's a perfectionist, even though he's not the one building the engine he wants it perfect.

Most would just dial in 4.030 into the honing machine and send it, but he wanted the pistons so he could make sure the fitment was 100% perfect. He also wanted the main studs so he could make sure 100% that there was no ovality in the mains.

Reminds me of an engine building channel I watch on youtube called Barum Engines....Has to have all the parts before machining to make sure it's perfect.....Makes sense.

Sorry for the hijack

 

[07GTS]

Update on mine:

TK reached out on Wednesday, he's starting on machining on Monday so potentially I could have mine back by the end of next week all going well. It's been hot tanked ready for them to start playing with.

I ran my pistons and main studs into him on Friday, and this is why I'm happy to spend the extra using Tony rather than a lot of others I got much much cheaper quotes from. He's a perfectionist, even though he's not the one building the engine he wants it perfect.

Most would just dial in 4.030 into the honing machine and send it, but he wanted the pistons so he could make sure the fitment was 100% perfect. He also wanted the main studs so he could make sure 100% that there was no ovality in the mains.

i thought everyone done it that way must be some dodgie shops out there, when mine was set to be done all pistons go with it and are numbered so every piston is measured and the bore is machined to suit just encase there is any small discrepancies between them, same as all main studs to clamp the main caps at proper torque and head studs to clamp the plate on at proper torque, all makes a proper sealing engine when done anything less now days just isnt right

 

[someguy360]

thi thought everyone done it that way must be some dodgie shops out there, when mine was set to be done all pistons go with it and are numbered so every piston is measured and the bore is machined to suit just encase there is any small discrepancies between them, same as all main studs to clamp the main caps at proper torque and head studs to clamp the plate on at proper torque, all makes a proper sealing engine when done anything less now days just isnt right

Theres a lot of cowboys out there these days that really don't care and just hope the rings will seal up as well as possible.

 

[losh1971]

I've only done rebores on bikes and small engines but like @07GTS I thought it was standard practice to measure the rods and caps for ovality. I know locally Duncan at Merv Gray will not assemble an engine unless the rods and caps are perfect. I've been there when he has called a customer saying he will need new rods as they are now slightly oval. Locally he is probably our best engine builder we have and as a result you have a six month wait to get in. And as for pistons I thought they had to be bored to the piston then you hone it with the piston in hand to ensure it slides in and out just right.

 

[someguy360]

I've only done rebores on bikes and small engines but like @07GTS I thought it was standard practice to measure the rods and caps for ovality. I know locally Duncan at Merv Gray will not assemble an engine unless the rods and caps are perfect. I've been there when he has called a customer saying he will need new rods as they are now slightly oval. Locally he is probably our best engine builder we have and as a result you have a six month wait to get in. And as for pistons I thought they had to be bored to the piston then you hone it with the piston in hand to ensure it slides in and out just right.

Yeah I totally agree it's the standard for anyone that takes pride in their work.

However I'm finding when I was shopping around a lot of engine machinists really didn't care if it wasn't going to be them assembling it in the end as they have no real liability over the engine so they only wanted to do the bare minimum to get the block in and out as quickly as possible to focus on customers who are having a whole build done. Then they have that deniability if anything goes wrong of just blaming the person screwing it together for not checking first etc. (I actually went to Tony last even though he was my preferred machinist as I just figured he'd have a 12 month waiting list etc with how popular he is, however I got lucky, 3-4 months wasn't too bad).

Like most trades these days in Australia I'm finding it's 1 good reputable shop for every 10 bad ones.

Hence why some quotes I got were <$1000 and what I'm paying to have it done right is.....substantially more than that.

Theres a reason why in the last 15 years i've only outsourced 2 things (tyres and machining) as I trust nobody and have been burned too many times. It's actually a really weird feeling putting my faith in someone else as it's been so long since I've had anyone do any work for me.

Paint, body, wiring, engines, exhuasts, tuning, drivelines etc I've always done myself, and if I don't know how then I learn. Machining obviously is the one thing that I can't do as I don't have $100,000 worth of equipment.

I'm one of those guys who won't even let the car grace a tyre shop, I take the wheels in loose to get tyres fit as I don't want them even starting the car let alone putting it on a hoist or doing a road test.

I could have probably just paid Tony a few hundred more in labour to just screw the bottom end together and give me a short block as most of the labour in the machining etc is already done. But I'm not about that, having someone else do something for me that I know how to do myself isn't gonna happen, even if I don't get as good of a result.

I'm the guy who will buy $500 worth of tools to do a job that I could have paid someone else to do $20 for and probably at a higher quality and warranty to be able to say I did it myself.

 

[Immortality]

I've only done rebores on bikes and small engines but like @07GTS I thought it was standard practice to measure the rods and caps for ovality. I know locally Duncan at Merv Gray will not assemble an engine unless the rods and caps are perfect. I've been there when he has called a customer saying he will need new rods as they are now slightly oval. Locally he is probably our best engine builder we have and as a result you have a six month wait to get in.

That's a bit rough, rods can be honed round/oversized or cut/shut and machined back to original size depending on cap interface design.

Although I think he was talking about the main caps/tunnel. When you fit studs or better quality bolts that are torqued to a higher load it can distort the mains caps forcing them out of round when they were perfect with the OEM bolts fitted.

And as for pistons I thought they had to be bored to the piston then you hone it with the piston in hand to ensure it slides in and out just right.

Pistons like everything else are machined to size and depending on how accurate the piston machinist is/was that they there can be some variance and you are targetting a particular piston to bore clearance. If you hone each one to the correct size for the piston you can make the piston to bore clearance on the tight side of the acceptable range, if just boring (lets say) .030" over than you'd go a bit more toward the larger size to ensure you don't end up with a tight piston. The issue doing it this way is that if you are running forged pistons or materials that expand more you need more clearance and that extra clearance can make a noisy engine (ask GM about this with the piston to bore clearances on the LS motors....)

It really comes down to how anal you want to be, just look at this pic from @Smitty where 3 pistons are fairly much identical but one is .0006" smaller (No1).