BlessedHellride

You can build a nice daily driver that is naturally aspirated and get more than enough thrills out of it, trust me. My little car puts a smile on my face every time I take it into town.

A 347 build will require a small notch in the bottom of each cylinder. I did mine myself, I had a template that came with my kit. And I have been around engines all my life from supercharged nitrous injected Volkswagons to 595cid Supercharged BBC 6 second dragsters. If you are not to sure of taken material off of your own block, get someone who knows how to, to either show you what to do or do it for you. If you build a 331, I am quite positive that there is no clearance issues.

Sippix

Thanks Joel and Blessed. That's exactly what I needed to know. If it does come down to it, I have no problems machining the block myself. I've worked in a machine shop for five years previous to my promotion to design engineer by the same company. So, most of the machining and fabrication will be accessable to me and done by me. Some stuff will have to be outsourced due to the fact that we don't have the machinery here to do such jobs (honing, balancing, etc..).

Well, now that we're good on the block, let's get to the crank, pushrods and pistons. There's a lot of buzzwords being thrown around on the internet, and everyone is out to make their product sound like it is the be-all end-all. I understand, to a degree, that forged internal are more resiliant. What type of material/manufacturing should I be taking a look into? I know this is like the block thing, and there's a part for every income bracket, but putting price aside...What material and manufacturing processes are proven winners?

BlessedHellride

You are going to want a 4340 crank and rods. You can get all makes of pistons as long as they are forged.

Sippix

Thank you, Blessed. But, now I've run into another snag. Pistons...What the crap? Flat? Convex? Concave? Dish? Dome? Is there any real application specific I should be looking for, or is this another one of those hoaxy "my daddy always said..." type of deals?

Joel5.0

Piston crown configuration will depend on a lot of things, mainly compression ratio, heads chamber config, heads chamber size, valves position, etc. If you are set on a turbo setup, you need to determine what type of cyl. heads you plan to use, and then select the correct piston config.

Sippix

Thanks, Joel. I was reading on that before I saw your post. I think a dome crown would make up for the weak compression of a small turbo and allow me to gain more combustion from less induction. Am I correct on this? Or would this risk detonating?

EDIT: I think I'm defintely going to have to find my desired cylinder heads before deciding on this, as Joel mentioned. I just learned I pretty much can't do much else until I know what the head combustion chamber volume is. This all determines the compression ratio, and with the added compression of a turbo, I might be looking at detonation with pump fuels. Oh well, here's to learning!

Anyone else have any idea, comments, input? Even if it's not about the bottom end, I'd really like to hear any stories or experiences with this type of project.

BlessedHellride

I just finished some reading up on the Boss block from Ford. To be truthful, I really didn't like what I read. There is a shop out in San Antonio with the name of Kotzur Racing. These guys do excellent work and I met the son of the shop owner at a FFW show. They do alot of head work and some engine assembly. I asked him about the Boss blocks and he said that they were pretty good blocks. So I really don't know what to say about them, but from what I just read over at www.hardcore50.com, I think I will stay away from them until I learn more about them. The biggest beef with them is that the block has really short cylinder walls. I am sure this is why they don't recommend a 3.4" stroke on this block. Ford recommends a max of 3.250" stroke I believe. But I will research it some more and see what I can come up with.

FivePointOhh

well since you are not on a set date of completion and this doesnt sound like something that will be on its way quickly. how about do this.

use what you got. starting from the ground up in my mind means. BUILD YOUR SUSPENSION!!! you can still drive your car and have fun with it. suspension is in relative terms...cheap. and you can drive the ***** of your car then. suspensioned out foxes can land themselves in deep 12 range with relatively little mods.(5 speed cars that is)

then while thats going on since you are planning a massive powerplant, buy the block and start building on the side. i dont know about you but it kills me not having a fun car to drive around. i hate down time!! its not my DD either, i hardly drive it. but just knowing its out of commission sucks! mod stuff thats quick with low downtime so you can still drive your car and still learn how to work on it cause problems will arise. a low cost weak 302 is easy in comparison to a high cost delicately planned 347, 331 turbo car...whaatever you choose




unrelated to building the car itself...

...i dont know how old you are or your experiences with fast cars...but you are talkin a HUGE jump from the mild to the wild. i went from a v6 mustang auto to a friends firebird forumla lt1 383 stroker that landed 11.20's at the track. dude that is an F'in scarey jump in range. there was too many times i came close to wreckin his car because i just didnt know how to handle it and i was just being stupid.

you are talkin about a huge investment dude. the way i plan on going about it since i plan on keeping my fox forever is to build the 302 to a certain goal...when i get sick of it i'll upgrade...like i want a low cost 11 sec fox on the juice. my next build i wanna do is a built 302 lightweight, high rev all suspension and see how fast it goes. but thats so far down the road i dont wanna think about it. its all too easy to get some wild hair up your *** and talk about all this and that stuff you wanna do. since this will be such an involved build i'd back away a second and figure out what needs to happen first.



sorry...day dream threads make me rant...

minnow81469

why dont you just buy a short block thats assembled that way clearance shouldnt be a issue and they can tell you what to put into it to reach your goals you still will have the pride that you did the work to the car because you cant do everything yourself

Sippix

FivePointOhh: I was thinking about doing the suspension and drivetrain work inline with ordering and building up the block. "Prepping" the car for the swap (whenever that may happen). It'd be ignorant of me to drop a beastly motor in the bay, then torq the crap out of the frame and snap both the stock axels. So do you have any suggestions for suspension on an SN95? I'm not so much going for linear acceleration, but more of a circuit build.

I know how it is to get a wild hair. I did that when I decided I was going to do a drivetrain swap on my Malibu to a Grand Am RWD SBC setup. After leaning I just didn't have the fabrication skills required (and spending as much on outsourcing fab as the parts) I backed down off of it. Building an engine is something I know I can do. It just takes time and money - Both of which I'm willing to deeply invest.

Minnow: I've priced a couple complete lowers. It seems like everyone's offering basically the same exact package, just throwing their own name to the block because of machining. I'm sure I could call one of these guys up and ask them to piece my specified internals together. Here's one that's local, and seems a damn decent price for a complete lower. http://www.dallasexportsales.com/331PGSB.htm Let me know what you think about the internals they used.

I'm not liking what I hear about the SCAT cranks. I've read on many forums and other places that the SCAT cranks have center balancing issues. Can anyone verify this? I pretty much know what specs I'm going to use, and they seem pretty common around the board. Also, this fits in with what Blessed was saying about the short cylinder walls.

Bore: 4.030"
Stroke: 3.250" (Maximum For A 302 Boss)
Rods: 5.400"

Let me know if y'all have any suggestions for high flow cylinder heads. I like the looks of the Twisted Wedge. Anyone have any experience with these cylinder heads? Any info and input would be awesome.