It's now late Feb and I've been a bit delinquent staying up to date on blog entries. The first run up of the engine occurred in mid-January and I haven't posted since then. I'll try to bring things up to date.
We ran the engine on the dyno just long enough to break in the cam and check that all the sensors were working. We were double checking the timing when the radiator reducer hose let go giving Duane and I a bath with hot water! It was late in the afternoon so we decided to just end the project for the day. Dick repaired the hose connection before we locked up.
The next morning, Dick and I went back to the dyno room to prepare for another warm up and full load testing. For some unknown reason, I decided to check a couple items. I pulled the spark plugs and they all looked good. Then I checked the oil on the dip stick and found an appearance of foaming. That's typically a sign of water in the oil. Just to be sure we didn't have any problems, I pulled the valve cover while Dick connected the water system and opened the valves on the tank. The top of the cylinder head and inside of the valve cover were not a pleasant site. Foam was everywhere! Had to be a water leak somewhere. As we stood there talking and looking we began to see water bubbling through a crack right near one of the intake valve springs. The crack was about 2" long. Considering the small crack Dick had repaired on the deck surface of the head, I suspect this head (off the '54 engine) had been subjected to freezing temps without draining the coolant at one time. We began back tracking our work to determine how we could have missed this during the head machining and realized we forgot to have Duane finish checking for cracks after the first crack had been repaired. Guess we should have thoroughly checked the head before choosing to use it. Oh well, live and learn. Despite my preference for the 54 head's valve cover retaining bolts, we were left with no choice but to use the 53 head. We left the engine on the dyno and pulled the intake, exhaust and head. Dick and Duane did a crash recondition of the 53 head including the mild port grinding I had done on the 54. Three days later, the engine was back together and ready for another dyno test. I had chrome valve and side covers for both engines. They came with the package when I bought the engines. However, the stud type valve cover for the 53 head seemed to be a poor stamping around the corners. No sooner had we started the engine than oil began leaking around the valve cover! Bah! We finally ended up the orignal 53 painted valve cover installed to stop the leaking.
The 53 235 cu in engine is rated at 115hp from Chevrolet in stock form. I was hoping for somewhere around 175 -180 hp on the dyno with the outside chance of hitting 200hp. Dick made 4 or 5 dyno runs that day with timing checks and spark plug replacements as the only changes. The max hp we were able to achieve was 141. I felt a bit disappointed but just accepted that number as "it is what it is". I was more concerned with reliability and durabiltiy that max performance. We pulled the 235 off the dyno and put it back on the engine stand to await transport to my garage once I was ready to install it in the 41.
We had overcome the Cylinder Head Gemlins but, little did we know, other gremlins were still waiting in the engine!
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