[408Stang]

 

[eschaider]

Just a quick note on rod bearings...

I found out the hard way tonight while anxiously assembling my own engine that I had overlooked the smaller rod bearing journal on my Kellogg stroker crank. Therefore, the King Bearings I had ordered will not work. Here's the details:

I had ordered the King CR868SI set, but those are for factory-sized crank rod journals.

My Kellogg 3.800" stroker crank has smaller 2.000" rod journals. King does not make a "SI" series rod bearing in that size. The correct King rod bearing is the CR803XPN.

These bearings are for a 2.000" crank rod journal with a 2.1247" to 2.1252" rod bore. The bearing thickness is .0622" with a bearing width of .7874".

My Manley Pro-Billet rods measured 2.127" across the bore... If I did the math correct this leaves an oil clearance of .0026"... Which is dead on the spec in the Hyland book of .0020 to .0030.

My Manley rods have a bearing surface width of .840" so these bearings are just a hair "narrow" by .0263" on each side, but it was the closest I could find without going out of the King brand. They are the same width as the Clevite (CB745H) by the way.

For those that are dead set on the "SI" series of King Bearings there is a CR811SI which will fit a crank with a 2.000" journal, but the specs are a little too loose for my taste. The wall thickness opens up to .0619" and the width is even narrower at .7402".

For a stock replacement bearing for the 2.000" crank journal King also makes the CR4423AM. These are not for high performance applications though.

You are right on all counts Mike. For some reason I thought you had a stock stroke crank. I should have asked you which crank you were using. The AM class material is what King used before the SI inserts were available. It is a very good insert material in its own right and will perform quite close to the SI material. The 0.0263" skinnier insert will not pose a problem for you if you choose to use it. If your crank had full radius journals and you would have had to trim the bearings to clear the radii that dimension is essentially where you would have ended up.

The XPN bearings are the harder higher load bearings and will work but cost you some additional money. The CR4423AM bearing will perform quite similarly to an SI bearing and save you some money you can spend elsewhere. There is also a CR 803AM (maybe SI by now) that will also work quite nicely. If you use this bearing it is 0.841" wide so a very light "haircut" on emory paper will be in order before final assembly.

Ed

 

[eschaider]

View attachment 143193

Very nice job Mike. How much did the shop get for the mods?

Ed

 

[408Stang]

They charged me $100.

 

[eschaider]

That's a good price for both mods.


Ed

 

[jrgoffin]

IT'S ALIVE!!!

Fired it up for the first time today as planned and all went well. I primed the oil pump for about 10 seconds or so by keeping the accelerator pedal to the floor (the injectors won't fire), took about ten more minutes to get some juice back in the battery, then it fired right up. Talk about a huge relief - I sure would not have wanted to come this far only to hit a wall.

Anyway, I did make a video clip, but wasn't thinking and had my camera on a tripod right up near the monster K&N filter. The sound quality didn't come out anywhere near where I wanted, especially since the volume of air flowing in to the filter really drowns out anything else. With any luck, I can try again tomorrow and get a better clip that I'll be able to post. I let it idle for about 25 minutes and the coolant temp never came up above 180° (yes, my custom 170° thermostats work great), then decided to shut it down.

Now for the guys that have these Gibtec mod motor pistons (and this may be the first start-up of one) you will hear the piston slap. It goes away as the engine warms up, but I'm mentioning it again as a public service message. Ed did mention this and I was aware, but the reality sets in when you turn the key. I also made sure to give Ed a shout while the engine was running, so I at least have a witness that all has turned out well Thanks again, Ed - these pistons are going to be real winners!!!!

For now, here's a picture of the finished work. Just have to get going on a new tune and wait out the next few months until I can drive, but today was a big relief for sure.

 

[04DeadShort]

Congrats. Glad it fired up for ya.

 

[408Stang]

I ordered my Gibtec Pistons with an .040 offset pins to help reduce that slap sound... Not to mention I had the piston to wall clearance reduced to also help with that start up slap. That was the nice part about ordering 100% custom pistons.

 

[mvk13]

Very cool! CONGRATS!

 

[eschaider]

IT'S ALIVE!!!

Fired it up for the first time today as planned and all went well. I primed the oil pump for about 10 seconds or so by keeping the accelerator pedal to the floor (the injectors won't fire), took about ten more minutes to get some juice back in the battery, then it fired right up. Talk about a huge relief - I sure would not have wanted to come this far only to hit a wall.

Anyway, I did make a video clip, but wasn't thinking and had my camera on a tripod right up near the monster K&N filter. The sound quality didn't come out anywhere near where I wanted, especially since the volume of air flowing in to the filter really drowns out anything else. With any luck, I can try again tomorrow and get a better clip that I'll be able to post. I let it idle for about 25 minutes and the coolant temp never came up above 180° (yes, my custom 170° thermostats work great), then decided to shut it down.

Now for the guys that have these Gibtec mod motor pistons (and this may be the first start-up of one) you will hear the piston slap. It goes away as the engine warms up, but I'm mentioning it again as a public service message. Ed did mention this and I was aware, but the reality sets in when you turn the key. I also made sure to give Ed a shout while the engine was running, so I at least have a witness that all has turned out well Thanks again, Ed - these pistons are going to be real winners!!!!

For now, here's a picture of the finished work. Just have to get going on a new tune and wait out the next few months until I can drive, but today was a big relief for sure.

View attachment 143217

Congratulations Joe!

Long road and sometimes hard fought battles. Your engine sounded great, even over the phone. You did an excellent job and did it all by yourself - even more impressive. It is always nice to have an extra set of hands to help and the job is always more challenging when you don't. For the vast majority of this effort it was a one man show and a very well done show. All I provided was the occasional sounding board to bounce ideas off.

Very impressive build and very impressive results. As the already impressive 32000+ views of this thread (at this time) demonstrate, your effort and your documentation of the build process was both interesting and very helpful to a large number of other guys that were either involved in their own build or preparing for it.

Great job and even better documentation. Thank you for the extra effort you took to share it with all of us.

Ed

 

[Wes Duenkel]

Great news! I'd like to hear video of the piston slap sound, just for reference.

 

[Wicked46]

Damn, not happy to hear you have piston slap. This means I probably will too.... I'd like to hear a video of it when you get a chance.

 

[jrgoffin]

I'll try to snag another video clip later today. The slap isn't all that bad, and since these engines are "tappy" anyway, it almost blends in. It does diminish as the engine warms up, and I imagine it was more noticeable since this was the very first engine start. Ed had also mentioned that it will become a bit less distinct as miles are put on the engine as well, but that is still going to be a few months down the road.

 

[MattP]

Happy Day! Awesome when you bring one back to life! Congrats

 

[jrgoffin]

Adding an update of another engine start. To my amazement, this second start was absolutely smooth: any and all of the taps from the first time are absolutely gone (I guess all the oil is where it needs to be now). It may have helped that I had the block heater plugged in for a few hours and the coolant temp was already at about 100°, but it was just as smooth, if not smoother than the outgoing 22,000 mile engine. Very cool.

The downside is that when the computer goes in to Open-loop, the idle starts to hunt all over the place which makes it hard to keep it running (still never got up to more than about 180° though). Hopefully I can get a better start-up tune soon just so I'll be able to keep it idling and eventually get out for a test drive. I think I'll be contacting Jon Lund this time around, especially since he is a friend of a friend, and since I gather that Eric Brooks is just ridiculously busy with his new gig.

In any case, here is a 20 second video clip from my phone - should give everyone an idea as to how it sounds:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvseeju5os9uuvj/20160127_151218.MP4?dl=0

Guess it will be time to plan out the process of getting those head studs re-torqued, but I definitely have some time on my hands now.

 

[FordManic]

Congrats and thank you for the detailed updates throughout the project!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Edmisten1]

Now for the guys that have these Gibtec mod motor pistons (and this may be the first start-up of one) you will hear the piston slap. It goes away as the engine warms up, but I'm mentioning it again as a public service message. Ed did mention this and I was aware, but the reality sets in when you turn the key.

Interesting...mine did not make any noise common to what typical piston slap sounds like when we first sparked it up back in December. It was actually very smoothe sounding. Like you, I had to continue adjusting the idle but it never made piston slap noise. I don't remember if you told us earlier but what PTW clearance did you set yours up with? Also, like everyone else has said, fantastic write up. Your attention to detail in very impressive :good:

Jeff

 

[eschaider]

That is what I would expect sound-wise Joe. Basically the only thing you hear is the valvetrain noise, the alternator and the front two accessory drive belts. Proof is in the pudding as the saying goes, nice job and good looking pudding.


Ed

 

[sparky1562]

Congratulations Joe!

Long road and sometimes hard fought battles. Your engine sounded great, even over the phone. You did an excellent job and did it all by yourself - even more impressive. It is always nice to have an extra set of hands to help and the job is always more challenging when you don't. For the vast majority of this effort it was a one man show and a very well done show. All I provided was the occasional sounding board to bounce ideas off.

Very impressive build and very impressive results. As the already impressive 32000+ views of this thread (at this time) demonstrate, your effort and your documentation of the build process was both interesting and very helpful to a large number of other guys that were either involved in their own build or preparing for it.

Great job and even better documentation. Thank you for the extra effort you took to share it with all of us.

Ed

Ditto Joe!

 

[John@J&S]

What piston slap? I was halfway expecting it to sound like a diesel.