Mild 454 - the entire true story.

OK, to make this easier to follow and read, I wanted to start a separate thread. There was quite a bit of indecision by the owner on this build, to say the least. I tried to educate him as best I could as to the differences in size, power and cost, and after discussing 468 flat tappet, vs 496 and then roller cam options, he decided he wanted to go with the flat tappet 468. I had a nice rotating assembly with 7416 forged GM crank, GM rods and Arias forged pistons, along with some nice 990 heads. This engine is to go in an 18' jetboat, and the customer lives in Utah and runs at altitude. As it came closer to time to assemble his engine, there was talk about moving to the river, and I had 2nd thoughts about the compression ratio the domed Arias pistons would provide with the 990 iron heads, so made the decision to purchase new KB Icon forged pistons that would yield 9.6-1 compression that I deemed safe and appropriate for a pump gas iron headed engine. It was sometime later, after that assembly had come back from balance that he decided that it would be more fun to have a solid roller cam, and to dyno the engine, which meant he would like some bragging rights....hmm so now we have a mild compression engine that we were going to run a dual plane aluminum intake and single carb, might have to give that some thought.

We started with an extra nice 4 bolt 454 block,, freshly bored and honed .061" oversize (the extra .001" for the marine application)





Here is one of the new KB forged pistons:

The block gets the standard "Obnoxious" deburr treatment, which is not only cosmetically pleasing, but also helps prevent the owner getting cut while cleaning the bilge in the boat. Before and after photos of several details on the block:

A few more "detail" photos, including rear main cap for smoother oil flow, and also the oil return to the block from the oil filter:

I am not able to shoot photos during the block washing process with the degreaser and water flying all over, but I normally do a complete 3 step wash, solvent or degreaser with brushes and scrubbing,, high pressure water through all passages, then a soap and water wash, applied with a high pressure sprayer,, more brushes and scrubbing, another high pressure application of a more diluted soap and water mix,, and then finally all oil passages rinsed with a very high pressure nozzle on the hose, every direction it can be accessed from.

The cylinders get oiled down as soon as they are blown out, and the block is allowed to dry prior to masking for paint. I have dedicated oil pan, timing cover and pipe plugs so that I can do a neat job and not get overspray on gasket areas. I use masking tape and paper to cover the top, tracing the outline of the head gasket rather than just a straight line of tape.

I also prefer to install the new brass freeze plugs prior to painting, since they won't stay shiny very long. I have always had excellent luck with Aviation grade Permatex(by Loctite now) brushed into the holes in the block carefully, so there won't be a bunch on the surface I want to paint.

After the block is painted, I install the cam bearings. The box shows the positions the bearings need to go in, and to make it easy I use a felt pen to write the numbers on them near the oil hole that will need to be aligned with the oil hole from the main saddle. Durabond cam bearings are the accepted norm for most of my builds. When something works with no failures, why change?





I think the glare obscures the oil hole in the bearing, but it gets carefully aligned with the oil passage in the block, so the cam bearing won't be starved for oil.

I put a piece of white paper towel inside the installed bearing so I could get a photograph showing the entire hole of the bearing is basically centered in the oil passage.

Then valley screens are epoxied into the valley since it's a roller cam engine, just in case there is a problem with a lifter tie bar or something, to help prevent debris getting into the bottom end and beating parts up.

The crankshaft was measured, and bearing clearances determined by torquing bearings in place. I guess I didn't get photos of the mains being measured on this one, but here is one of the rods being checked with the dial bore gauge.

Some of the new parts waiting to go in the new engine, next to the notes on bearing measurement prior to adding the rod bearing clearances.



The "fitted" main bearings are set into the saddles and lubricated with a good quality assembly lube. Here I use Clevite bearing lube that gets carefully spread on the clean bearings. I also put a bit on the rear main seal after it has been "glued" to the block and rear main cap. Note also the correct direction of the lip of the rear main seal.

Here's a few shots showing the cleaned, assembled rods and pistons, and one of the rod cap showing the fresh hone marks from being resized. They also get the Clevite bearing lube. Main and rod bolts all get lubricated with oil prior to assemble, necessary to achieve proper torque specs. Note the blue rod bolt protectors, used to keep the rod bolts from nicking the crank.

The camshaft installed, the double roller timing set is installed. Make sure the oil galley plugs are put into the block first, otherwise you might forget and have a huge internal oil leak. The camshaft is "degreed" or checked with a degree wheel to make sure it's installed as it was designed. In this instance, I had to use the 4 degree retard position(after the photo was taken, since it clearly shows it straight up, or at 0 degrees), and installed the 112 LC cam at 110.5, or 1 1/2 degrees advanced, primarily to counter the affect of the timing chain stretching.

I have taken a strong liking to the Cloyes two piece timing covers, with the built in adjustable cam thrust adjustment. I think it's practically fool proof, and saves a bunch of time cutting down a thrust bumper for proper cam end play. The Cloyes cover does not include a front seal, so don't forget to buy one, and it should be carefully pressed into place. I use gasket cinch to help insure there are no leaks around the perimeter of the seal. I also care fully oil the thrust prior to bolting it onto the cover, and had previously oiled the thrust bearing behind the billet timing gear, as well as putting some oil on the chain and gears.

Then the Mellings oil pump is fitted to the block. In this case I was using a Boostpower jet oil pan, and the pickup bolts to the pump. The oil pump pickup to the bottom of the pan is a critical clearance, so is carefully checked. I use straight rulers and determine that there is about 3/8" clearance, including the thickness of the pan gasket, time to bolt it up. The pan gets washed out first, including removing the windage tray to make sure there isn't debris hiding in it. Now is a good time to set up the dipstick position. I set this one up with the "full" mark just below the tray level as seen in the photo with the red line. The removable plastic tube gets marked up by the brass nut also. The flexible dipstick tube will be fastened to the block with an adele clamp under the headers.

I like the one piece pan gaskets,, not so wild about the bright blue Fel Pro against a black engine, so I use grey ROL gaskets, which appear to be identical to the more expensive GM gaskets. I tried some red Permatex gasket adhesive on the front seal instead of my normal Gasketcinch. Other than the two ends, I use just a tiny bit of silicone at all 4 corners, both between the block and gasket, and also between gasket and pan, and a small bead on the bottom of the pan gasket ends.

After taking the 990 heads to the machine shop to be cleaned and get a freshen up valve job, it was evident they were a nice piece, polished chambers,, and ported intake and exhaust runners. The roller valve springs get checked on the Rimac spring tester to verify that they are what I thought I was buying., and then set at 1.900" installed height for about 225 lbs on the seat.















Interestingly, someone had previously plugged the heat risers in the heads. Gale Banks used to have aluminum plugs like that in the late 70's when I worked there, but I haven't seen many (any?) since then.

The heads then get a treatment similar to the block. All surfaces masked, spark plugs holes included, intake surface masked and trimmed to match the intake gaskets.

The Fel Pro 1027 head gaskets are set onto a carefully cleaned block surface, and the head surfaces are also cleaned to help insure proper sealing. Then they are bolted onto the block with a new set of ARP cylinder head bolts and torqued according to ARP instructions, using a high quality pipe thread sealer on the threads since the head bolt holes go into the water jackets in the block.

Although there is a large number of roller lifters available, I chose to use the new Comp Endure X lifter with the forced roller oiling. The rockers are a really nice set of used Comp Pro Magnum rockers, with a brand new set of ARP poly locks. Pushrods are Comp .080" wall one piece pushrods. Length was determined with adjustable pushrods set to give proper geometry. The lifters get soaked for a bit in a mix of STP and oil, so that it won't all run off right away

Once Dave decided he wanted a roller cam, I suggested changing the original dual plane intake to a single plane, figuring it would work better with higher rpm. I tried a Dart single plane intake, but it would not clear the ridge on the 990 heads, so I spent a few minutes thinking about grinding the edge of the intake,, or removing the heads and grinding them,,, wasn't excited about either. I had offered to get the Dart intake polished, but Dave declined, so while I was looking over the problem, I decided to get a polished Professional Products intake that would compliment the look of the new Quick Fuel carb, Rex stainless steel scoop, and fabricated Obnoxious Racing Engines valve covers that still had not arrived.

Ok,, still no valve covers, but had to get it on the dyno so I didn't miss my turn. I put some cast aluminum ones on for the dyno test, which was probably a fine idea anyway to keep the new fabricated ones from being scratched up. I chose the dyno at Sissell's Racing Heads, mostly because I know Mike Kirby and trusted him to take good care of the engine I spent so much time putting together, and I knew I would be allowed to be as involved as I wanted to be with it as well.

Here's Mike checking the specific gravity of the 91 octane pump gas. One of the guys asked why I wasn't running it with race gas. My reply was how would that help tune and determine how it was to be normally run? The engine got run for a bit to build some heat, and run a bit with a mild load to help seat the rings. There's also a couple of shots of the computer monitor. I tried to catch one at peak horsepower, but wasn't that quick on the shutter.

I somehow opted to set the timing at 34 degrees total for the first pull, even though I would normally think about 36 degrees. Coupled with the custom Quick Fuel 850 CFM carb that was built to match this engine's specs, right down to cam size, jet boat application, RPM range, and even my guess at horsepower, the first pull on the dyno was almost equal to the best we made for the day. A second pull so that Mike could have a better feel for the torque of the engine netted a best of 606 horsepower at 6300 rpm, and 566.9 ft/lbs torque at 4800-5000 rpm, with torque numbers over 500 ft/lbs between 4000 and 6000 rpm.

We did pulls with 36 degrees of timing,, and also jetted down a couple of sizes looking for more heat and power, but both dropped a little bit of power.

I chose to run Torco Racing Oil for the dyno runs since it was available right there, even though I normally would just recommend running something that is easy to get anywhere, such as Vavoline Racing Oil,, which many regular parts stores still sell. The dyno oil will be drained and the oil filter changed before it leaves to go into the boat.

The ratio of horsepower to cubic inches worked out at almost 1.3-1. I think we could have pulled more power with a touch more compression (remember this engine is only 9.6-1), but for what it is, it makes a lot of bang for the buck! I am pretty sure some guys with tunnel ram engines are going to be left scratching their heads when this clean little sleeper runs past them.

Bravo Barry!
Makes me wish I had gone to the dyno with mine... I'd hate to be one of those tunnel ram guys scratching my head!

Congratulations to the new owner!

That's awesome Barry! Congrats. Maybe the next time you go thru mine we'll step it up a bit and dyno it at Mikes too.

Constant840 said:

Bravo Barry!
Makes me wish I had gone to the dyno with mine... I'd hate to be one of those tunnel ram guys scratching my head!

Congratulations to the new owner!

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Jason,, yours is pretty stout. We probably would have done a roller cam on yours before spending money on dyno?

jrork said:

That's awesome Barry! Congrats. Maybe the next time you go thru mine we'll step it up a bit and dyno it at Mikes too.

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Hopefully yours won't need to come apart anytime soon John.

IN POST #6 PICTURE THREE THE GUY IS CLEARLY WEARING PANTS. WHERE WAS bARRY DURING THIS PART? oops sorry about the caps lock. great thread . shows alot about time and attention to detail. does that dyno have an a/f meter or V.E. stat? thats a damned respectable set of numbers for what it is. congrats to the new owner:thumbsup

stokerwhore said:

IN POST #6 PICTURE THREE THE GUY IS CLEARLY WEARING PANTS. WHERE WAS bARRY DURING THIS PART? oops sorry about the caps lock. great thread . shows alot about time and attention to detail. does that dyno have an a/f meter or V.E. stat? thats a damned respectable set of numbers for what it is. congrats to the new owner:thumbsup

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Good eye! That's got me confused too. The flipflops look in line with Barrys engine building attire but not the long pants. I didnt think Barry owned any.

stokerwhore said:

does that dyno have an a/f meter or V.E. stat? thats a damned respectable set of numbers for what it is. congrats to the new owner:thumbsup

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While he does have an a/f meter just like the one we tuned your boat with, it was not used with this engine. Each header tube as a temperature sensor, so individual egt (exhaust gas temperature) readings help verify tuning. In the computer monitor photos,the 8 egt readings are the horizontal bars at the top.

so, it reads 8 cyl. seperately? thats nice:thumbsup

Nice work Barry!

Nice!!!

Nice work Barry! Thanks so much for sharing! I definitely learned a few things! It won't hurt too bad if the tunnel ram boat can't keep up, I know it's pedigree! Dave's boat is coming together very nicely! Hope to get him out a few times in Utah before he heads for the River!

Ramjam said:

Nice work Barry! Thanks so much for sharing! I definitely learned a few things! It won't hurt too bad if the tunnel ram boat can't keep up, I know it's pedigree! Dave's boat is coming together very nicely! Hope to get him out a few times in Utah before he heads for the River!

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Maybe one time Rammer if I don't have to pitch a tent in a cow pasture again.

I'll be picking the motor up in a couple of weeks, and I am excited about getting the engine installed and the boat rigged.

I'll post some pics of the engine after it's installed in this thread. This is part of a major (garage) restoration. A couple of hull pics in this thread.

I'm very happy how this motor worked on the dyno. I wasn't going to test it, but it seemed like the right thing to do. It's more than enough motor for the hull.

Great Job Barry:thumbsup

Barry,

very nice write up. I'm curious to see what kind of speed your customer will see out of this build. Do you know what type of boat it's going in?

bills79southwind said:

Barry,

very nice write up. I'm curious to see what kind of speed your customer will see out of this build. Do you know what type of boat it's going in?

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As per the customer, it's a "1974 Starbuck hull. 18' kind of a bubble deck design"

Speed will depend quite a bit on the boat and pump setup, so it remains to be seen.

Great Thread Barry!!

RD

bills79southwind said:

Barry,

very nice write up. I'm curious to see what kind of speed your customer will see out of this build. Do you know what type of boat it's going in?

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Hi Bill,
It's an 18-foot modified V jet. It's a quarter stringer, and there are some build (stringer) photos on the other "mild 454" thread.

With the stock truck engine in, I reached 50 (estimated by jet skier who had GPS next to me) at 4000 RPM. 4000 RPM was all it would turn, but I was dragging a bearing.

I plan to limit the RPM's to 5000 initially to see how the pump works with the torque applied at that RPM. If it's still pulling, I'll keep increasing the revs towards max torque from the dyno numbers. At least that's the plan.

Guessing speed? I'm hoping for 70 on flat water with a light load and my tounge held just right. More than that is gravy.

So,, Dave picked up the finished product today:

Wright On Barry! Thanks for the pics and build. Simple, Clean, and according to dyno. It runs like a champ. :thumbsup Congrats to the owner and his quest for mph numbers.

obnoxious001 said:

So,, Dave picked up the finished product today.

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Here is a photo of the engine about 90% rigged in the boat. Meeting Barry in person was a real pleasure. His attention to detail is amazing. He supplied me with enough SS hardware to do most of the rigging. The hardware he used throughout was top-notch, clean, mostly SS button-head allens.

Looks great!!

Boat is completed and ready for test when the snow melts.

Nice to see another boat put together for the season. I bet you cant wait to show off your it's only a 454 guys, c'mon I dont know why you cant keep up motor.

Congrats on getting ready. You're gonna love it. Barry builds a great motor......:champagne:

jrork said:

Congrats on getting ready. You're gonna love it. Barry builds a great motor......:champagne:

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wrighton said:

Nice to see another boat put together for the season. I bet you cant wait to show off your it's only a 454 guys, c'mon I dont know why you cant keep up motor.

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Thanks! Took it out for a test last Saturday. I was going to run it on the trailer and check things out, but the ramp was so steep that I had water over the transom.

Launched it, putted out, hit the throttle, and it was a whole new boat. I have a hole-shot slip at hard accelleration, (cavitation) and max. RPM is only 5K, so now it's time to look at the pump. Even with the stock aluminum A, it hauls ass though.

The guys at the lake were pretty impressed with the fact that I didn't need to break out a single tool after a complete boat and engine rebuild.

Given the quarter-stringer hull, seating for four and my boating style, I am glad I didn't opt for more power, though getting the pump sorted is a requirement to get into the usuable power band.

I'm totally satisfied at this point. :thumbsup

what a nice build!!!!

nice work

Very cool thread thank you for sharing it with us. What are some of the factors that you use when you are determining what engine oil to run in the boat as far as weight is concerned?

HPBoats83 said:

Very cool thread thank you for sharing it with us. What are some of the factors that you use when you are determining what engine oil to run in the boat as far as weight is concerned?

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The main thing to consider is that a boat engine is basically being run like a race engine when compared to a regular street vehicle. A jet boat rarely runs under 3,000 rpm, where my Chevy truck cruises at 80 mph at 2500 rpm.

For that reason, I normally suggest running a straight weight oil, either 40 or 50 wt racing oil. The reason for running racing oil is the extra additives it contains over the regulated "street" oils. After a phone conversation with the Torco rep, where he explained that the multi grade oils have some added polymer that basically builds up in the engine, and for that reason he prefers straight weight oils, I am leaning towards not recommending multi weight oils in the engines that I build, particularly here on the west coast where temperatures usually are pretty warm.