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12/31/23 starts the 2024 racing season. A lot of work to do before the Gators.

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The lathe is finished. Microscope is doing its job. New vee blocks and UK is playing well. All is going in the best direction.

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You can look at it this way Larry. We are all tied for first in the World, and Division points race. LOL

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Spent a lot of the day working on tooling to make a few valve train parts. As the old machinist often say “big holes big problems, little holes bigger problems. I’ve made some stuff that almost works, but it’s not like it needs to be. It’s not as bad as the fixture we made to drill a .031 hole in a .021 ring land without hitting the ring land.
We will get’er done.

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Tail stock off by . 040” shame on me for not checking it in the beginning. As it stands no harm no foul.

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Larry works as hard as anyone in the game.

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Using a microscope and a drill index I can figure out what is the size of some of the small radius. If my modification to the parts cause them to break, I at least observed the radius.

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I’m really happy with the lathe. Once I got a few items of tooling done we knocked out the 18 parts in first operation quickly.

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Talk about no knowing that you need a tool until you get the tool, a microscope is a good example. Modifying the oh so popular Gen 3 Hemi valve train to get it to “fit”. I wanted to observe all of the radii of the parts that needed some trimming. So I find the radius gage set from our crankshaft grinding days and find a few popular Chevy size missing. I must have left them close to the grinding wheel radius dresser when we sold the crank grinder. I figured out what we need to observe and unwrap new tool bits that supposedly have the correct radius, not. The radius was not full it had a point in the middle. It may have been ok to use but if there is very little parts support it’s not good enough.
As i think Dennis Miller would sign off with “ And so it goes”

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The loner test fit head got here Friday but being a grandparent was way more important than working on the elephant this past weekend.

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Sometimes you stumble upon a deal. Case in point is the PRI show a few years ago. Pac had a show special on the spring height micrometers I bought all four they had and today I used the real small ones and they are very accurate. It was a case of nothing else would work besides snap gages. And I hate snap gages. Thank you PA C

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I have to make an adapter to keep the mic centered on the valve stem. Plus I have the added fun of checking with top locks, standard locks, -.050 locks, and +.050 locks to get the best setup for the head. Man I love this game!! It’s all worth it when the light come on in our lane in a heads -up race, and when it doesn’t I have a new roadmap to follow and guide me.

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I finally got the stuff made and was able to figure installed height. The kool part is I was instructed to get several different sets of valve locks. The standard, the +.050, the -.050, and the top lock. It moves the installed height around and with the help of shims I will be able to get to my coil bind target number on each spring. I’m hoping to get to size to plus .005” on installation height.

A tip of the Hat to all of the cylinder head folks, it’s not easy just to get the installed height correct, past Tech, and run hard all the way to the Finnish line. The real good cylinder head people are a bargain.

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I’m getting to use my Christmas present from Patsy. It’s a plastic tray from Summit that holds all of the valve train parts in each cylinder’s location.

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Larry, you are talking CYLINDER head people right?

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Thanks Billy. I think a little quicker than I type. I will change it.

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Once I got the heads mocked up now waiting on parts. We had to withdraw from Florida.

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Hope Dumbo is coming along well

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We have been working on some secret squirrel stuff. More latter but not to much.

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Not much advancement on the secret squirrel stuff but today I get back in the saddle. I’m not sure how life got in the way so much but it did. I did have Bob Toy fix an electrical gremlin that almost bit us last year. So now I have to double up and catch up. Indy is just around the corner.

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Wow did it feel good to be working on Dumbo. After a season and a half under the hood is just very dirty and dusty. Removing the engine is a must to get clean.

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I may have found an occasional miss fire, engine coolant in the spark plug well. I think Dumbo will be quicker hitting on all 16 plugs.

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All plugs a little bit oily but not real bad. It so much easier to check valve lash with the engine out

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FYI, avoid +.050 locks if you can, if not use 10° locks & retainers.
Reason is locks only clamp on the valve stem below the groove, the ID of the lock is larger above the groove.

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Thanks I will check that.
Spoke with someone that had some thoughts on why the head leaked coolant in to the spark plug bore. Coolant casting core flotation. I wonder why it took two seasons of racing to appear on this head an only one season to cause a problem on the odd cylinder head. One of life’s little mysteries.

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The down side of doing it yourself, forgetting where I placed a tool because, “I don’t use it that often”. After some time I found it. Just another stupid old man trick.

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Larry, look at the bright side! Soon you'll be able to hide your own Easter eggs!

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Oh that's nothing, wait until you forget how to do the simplest thing...on a video for everyone to see! LOL!!

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Dropped the head off at Jeff Taylor Performance. Jeff said that I’m not the first to have the problem. It’s the same end on the same casting number. He made some other recommendations that should help us get a little closer in the HP race.

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Today and this weekend we haven’t any granddaughter functions to attend. I should get a lot of things re-verified and cleaned.

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Started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but you guessed it, it’s the train.
The outer main stud felt funny so upon removal it had a almost perfect aluminum spring stuck in all the threads. Not sure what caused the damage but my guess would be a “click” type torque wrench that was slow to click.
So it’s back to my dial type wrench.

I wonder if a stretch gage is available for studs?

Anyone have success stories using thread repair in an aluminum block?

Thanks

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Larry look into timeserts they work great on aluminum..Dealerships have been using them for years. We just used them on a BBC cast block they work great.

https://www.timesert.com/

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I went to the website and everything made sense. Thanks
On another note I pulled two pistons and rods and the rod bearings looked absolutely perfect. Just like I took them out of the box. The rings on one piston the top and the second ring end gaps we lined up over each other. The other piston had both oil rails lined up over each other.

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Just got some real nice parts from Blackbird Performance and very good customer service. Ordered Monday arrived Tuesday.

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Hey Larry, I just finished your build thread. How are you doing personally after not quite 3/4's of a year with the Holley Software Tuning so far? And I will assume you only started w/ version 4, is that correct?

It makes a difference if you do not have any V1-V3 files or folders. I too am about to make the leap to Holley tuning, am also older, but have 26 years of computer building, and repairing, troubleshooting, debugging, and tutoring experience in my pocket. Am a die hard will not quit kind of guy, no giving up on any problems even after decades w/an issue, I will eventually solve the issue, someday w/ enough research and with the internet we can find a solution to anything. Am not the smartest man on the planet, am sort of lazy in 1 way, I want to find, seek out, or invent the simplest and most simplistic
Way to do everything there is, since that just helps me to work easier, and get onto the next chore or task at hand, but do not mind checking something 3 times (as I have also learned you also do, to get it just right through your writings and attention to detail).

My motto in my years in my computer business printed on my cards is/was, since the avail. of covid cash to the general public, mainly most of my customers pretty much retired me, and allowed me to get back to racing after 2.5 decades away from it! "No night too long, no coffee to strong, to get to the bottom of exactly what is wrong!" It was more than a motto, it was simply that no stupid dumb electronic box, no matter what, was going to beat my researching skills. There are very few issues that someone else in the world has not conquered, and thanks to Bill Gates (and his cool friends like The Woz, and others), everyone has computers and pads, laptops, and smart phones, and to the US Military, (and my own oldest son Nate, who once worked for Global Crossing, and sent him all over the planet to help install the backbone of the internet switches, long ago, not just once, but again years later, when all those clunky big switches needed to be replaced w/ smaller packaged switches), and due to all of them being linked together worldwide, we can share info, find info in a flash if we just Go look for it!

Who needs a guy that has worked on their computers maintaining and repaing them for decades, when they can all go out and buy the latest best units all at once with Government supplied taxpayer covid cash!

Anyway, their loss, my gain,, but heading the Holley route now myself, I already have had the software since V2, never actually used it yet, just looked around within it a lot, and then watched that video on page 84 of your build thread if you never used it except V4, you like I are both lucky men, since Holley has followed Microflop and changed the folders and file system and locations just because they can, or to simpliy it for the rest of us, so we need to learn with each new version released how to handle the global file process for each version.

Anyway, I watched their video, and there are a ton of shortcuts I learned over the years to simplify any set of file tables. file and folder naming shortcuts so you know instantly what is contained in a folder, how to name a file (every different file by using only dates and times, events, etc., and saving absolutely everything, throw nothing away, both the good and the bad, save it ALL, files are tiny...you may not need it this week, but 3 years from now, it may save your life!!

At one point during the last 2.5 decades I had 1,000 plus customers strewn all over the country sending me their stupid boxes/laptops to setup, reformat, debug or repair, or dropping them off at my door by the dozens. And this guy, has never had a formal hour of electronic technical in class education in his 66 plus yrs. on the planet.

I was out racing a very rudimentary computer controlled 84 model car single point TBI EFI Mopar in 1995, luckily at the time travelling w/Bernie Cunningham an electronic wiz who was formally educated in electronics), and he knew more than a little something about that which I lacked completely at the time), a completely locked by EPA rules ECM/PW, yup...the same one I am driving now, that still has that same hardware in it, but is finally running right, just not yet going fast everywhere (I was an old carb guy, a Wizard if you want a Holley/ Carter single to 4 bbl rebuilt or tuned), but I knew zero about ECU's or ECM's /Power Modules.

To his credit (he and I both had zero idea at the time, that it was not an electronic issue, that was causing all my problems). But eventually I found out it was a design issue, and a mechanical vacuum line issue that worked together to create a very large vacuum leak every 2 seconds at full throttle only, to purge the sealed California Car gas tank of fuel fumes, just triggered by the ECM, and a simple selenoid.

His knowledge imparted in a very short amount of time sparked something in me 5 yrs. later, to go into the diagnostic computer repair industry and become a self taught IT Tech. And here I am, a lot of years later, a ton of determination to solve the issues, and I did.

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Ok, long story not so short. Holley building of global files can be shortened to a simple batch file to instantly add all those switches together with 1 click (so you cannot forget anything). I can teach you in a few hours, the easiest file naming systems, folder naming systems, and to save every single change and tie those files to the track, or dyno you are tuning on at the time.

Let an older, slower guy teach you some new tricks. If you brought me a computer to fix 10 yrs ago, every single page I visited on the internet to read up on the solution to repair or debug it, buy a part, the hrs logged doing the work, all the files I downloaded for it were all in a single link folder with your name on it, everything automatically logged to the single folder, amongst the millions of link folders for everything else I did! Every computer you owned that I would have touched was right there at my fingertips and I have 3 separate copies of said links folder, since every single drive ever made, eventually fails. Make it simple, back it up twice.

Have I ever HOLLEY TUNED? Not yet, but I will, soon, too, and I will have folders pre-made and labeled for every track before I ever arrive. And will write simplified batch files first to help me learn with fewer mistakes and a bit more speed than the rather confusing video presentation on page 84 of your thread, though, that is a great starting point. They have a great product. I am too old not to use my hard learned talents and I will share. We don't have a lot of time left to waste, neither of us.

First, I need to choose my ECU, buy an un-terminated cable, strip it out, and build it myself, wire it up, replace all my existing connectors, and not see smoke on that first refire, as letting the magic smoke out is bad, and that I learned over the last decade mentoring high school robotics students in FIRST Robotics. I just learned a bunch from you and your Dumbo build thread, thanks so far for the ride along.

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I’m computer illiterate! Without help from Robin, Chris, Geoff, Jeff, Cooter, Bob, Holley, and a host of others I would be very lucky if I could get it to start. I’m trying to get better.
I worry about lack of parts so I’m very protective if something is off by .003”, the thickness of a hair, I’ll work until I’m confident it will perform.

My dream vacation would be a week on the dyno answering the few simple questions I have about, fuel, spark timing, lowering the time from X to Y on acceleration, and on and on

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I get you there, I will soon be in the same position, just back every file you (or your tuner's have created (not once), but twice), on other than the device you are using in association with the car. To a pen drive, another hard drive, or other media.

All, and I mean all drives eventually fail, they are manufactured to fail, each has failure/failed sectors when sold, those are just pre marked do not use, and each has a very limited amount of spare
sectors, so as a working sector fails during a read/write process, and damaged sectors happen and are found by the operating system, the data within
(written to a damaged sector will attempt to auto recover, and write it to a new spare sector....as much as possible, including any corrupt data), then that sector is crossed off as unuseable forevermore. Once, all the spare sectirs are put into action, that is all she wrote...impending drive failure warnings will begin, the drive is eventually dying, or will have died without warning, and without expensive data recovery processes (the data may become unreachable).

With the 2 backup copies, a new drive or device, download the Holley Software, update to latest version (or Borrow someone else's device, with the latest version on it), and Plug in that pen drive w/all your backup files on it boom, back
In business in minutes.

Just treat those files you create even better than your grand kids pics on your phone or computer, precious, diamonds, pure gold. (Only we can make multiple copies for emergency use!)

I have only had my FWD car on a roller dyno once, low HP, nearly stock, on slicks in a tuners shop in Gainesville, FL (a local tuner w/a not that busy shop in 1995 walked up to me in the lanes at the Gatornat's just before Q2. Says I live your budget Stocker, and we chatted, and when I was next in the lanes for Q3 later, he said if you need anything, my shop is open to you, come on by, work on it there please while in town.

I did, and he got it up on the rollers, on slicks. Me in the seat facing a gray big tall cinder block wall just 2 feet away
from the front bumper, and had me go through the gears slowly, and put all the steam to it that lil' 99HP engine could muster and produce. No drag race in my lifetime has ever created as much fear to my psyche, as staring at that block wall as 6,700 rpm in high gear did while listening to his instructions and hearing the scream of those rollers under load.

When it finally came to a stop (after a lot of really bad scenarios flashed through my brain), as FWD is a lot different than RWD, those wheels you know are closer to your body, and you usually are not facing a wall that close...My heart was pending out of my chest. I could not imagine doing that with a high HP elephant motor.

I will dyno, and let the tuner do the driving next time. I have seen just too many youtube dyno failures at this point in time. Going om a pass is nothing, racing great competition gets the blood flowing, that dyno ride was though, not afraid to admit it, flat terrifying as I had just pulled the transaxle out. Sent the converter in to Turbo Action for a pinhole leak in a weld repair, and reinstalled it that day, and luckily checked everything over 4 times on reinstall knowing the dyno pulls would
be next. Needless to say, he did 4 more pulls, and it was more fun watching than driving.

The first 1 was like parachuting out of a planlate me without a parachute on.

Good luck w/Dumbo brother.

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I received some good news yesterday Jeff Taylor said my head was fixed!

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Cylinder head? Or, that thing between your ears???