Final Assembly
When we left off last time, the bottom end had been completed with Eagle rods, Federal Mogul forged pistons, stock crank and main studs, and Clevite Bearings. As we mentioned, we had planned to run a Crane mechanical flat-tappet camshaft, but since we wiped it out, we ended up installing an old custom Crane hydraulic cam (duration = 253@0.050 lift = 0.585") Once we find out why the solid didn't break in properly, we'll most likely try the mechanical cam again.

We finished the top end with a set of Edelbrock Performer RPM heads. These are the same heads we ran on our 390. Because the heads were less than a year old, we did not worry about the valve job or guides. Victor gave the ports and bowls a quick polishing using a Dremel and sanding rolls. No significant porting was done. The heads were milled 0.060" per side to bring compression to 11.1.

We also went with the same Offenhouser Port-o-Sonic intake we had been running on the 390. The intake sides were milled .035" per side in order to line up with the milled heads.

The rest of the assembly was straight forward. We used a double roller timing chain, a Melling high-volume oil pump and heavy duty Dove oil-pump shaft. We did encounter a slight problem when trying to install our oil pan. It turns out that when you use main studs, the rear two studs interfere with the oil pan. Neither our 9 qt. deep sump Moroso pan nor the stock pan would clear. It made no sense to us why Moroso had overlooked this in their design. In any case, we use the precision of big ball peen hammer to clearance the pan.

The top end of the motor was finished off with a set of Dove shaft rockers. We put these on our 390 a while back due to problems with the stock shafts breaking at high rpms. (The stock shafts are not supported at the ends. The Dove shafts, aside from being constructed with stronger material, are also bolted to the ends of heads using special head bolts.) Expect to pay around $750 for this assembly from Dove.

Hopefully our Project FE has shown that building a potent FE motor is not anymore difficult than building any other motor. There are plenty of high-quality parts offered by companies like Crane, Dove, and many others. We will admit that it will cost you a bit more to build an FE than say a 302, but the power potential and uniqueness is definately worth the extra dollars if you have them to spare. We feel that if you plan to regulary spin the FE over 6500 rpm, you absolutely need aftermarket rods and the Dove rocker shaft assembly. This adds about $1600 to the buildup. A steel crank is an option, but not neccesary unless you intend to use power adders.

We're not quite finished with this Project. Of course we will continue to visit the strip and get the FE dialed in for lowest possible ET's. We plan to report some dyno numbers in the near future, as well as, hopefully, giving the solid camshaft another try. Also on our wish list is to try Dove's single plane intake. So stay tuned, there is plenty more FE tech to come! F/M