Rick, we seem to be on different sides of the playground on a couple of subjects....especially with the horsepower vs. torque thing....
I've done the 4.280" bore with the 4.375" stroke engines, that end up at around 501-503 cubic inches. This one is pretty close to that at 496, and I'd rather have the displacement with the larger bore and shorter stroke on an engine like this.
Titanium rods would be nice, but just not worth it at over $4000 a set. Aluminum rods are cheaper, but with a 4.250" stroke, I'd say they'd probably hit everything but the water pump, and honestly, I'm just not comfortable with using them on a street engine, especially a customer's street engine. I'm using Oliver rods on this build, with small block Chevy
rod journals. They are slightly lighter than the same
rod with the BBC
rod journals and the 2.100" journal keeps the bearing speed down.
As for roller cam bearings, they are unnecessary in a lot of the engines out there. The only real reason to use them is if we go to a 50 or 55mm cam journal, where there aren't a lot of cam bearing choices available. This has changed slightly over the years though, and there are lots of babbitt bearings out for the larger cores. We are looking at probably 650-660 lbs open pressure with this cam, 700 at tops. Certainly no reason to hop over to a much more expensive cam journal. I've got my eye on a set of PSI circle track valve springs, so that's probably the direction I'll head.
I do plan to put bronze lifter bore bushings in the block though as they will lend more stability to the lifter, especially at the lift we'll be using here. The owner is supplying me with some bushed Crower lifters that he bought new just several hundred miles ago, so we are going to use them. I normally would choose a .904" lifter, but the .875" lifters will suffice here.
The underlying theme here is that it's a street engine. Every component that's been chosen has been chosen with that in mind (although we are on the fringe with a lot of them), but also chosen to make sure that the engine will be reliable at high rpms.
Using custom 5/16" Ferrea valves on this one and it will be interesting to see if the flow picks up with them. They are certainly lighter than the 11/32" valves.
BTW, I also spec'd a McLeod twin disc for him, they are certainly great clutches when you're working with big hp on the street.
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