Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

Thanks for the replies, folks! Been a few years since I put the engine in question together in question together... Don't recall what I used for base gaskets - Yamabond...? Head gaskets are Cometic MLS. Got the itch to do some racing, and went to the ECTA Spring Fling a few weeks back to see what sh...

Engine in question is 2001 Harley Sportster; air-cooled aluminum cylinders with (I believe) iron liner cast in. 4 long studs from cases clamp down the cylinder heads, and the barrels. There's a thing that I've been told, and accepted as true (because it sounded reasonable) was that engines with thru...

I like to use salad/cooking oil; gets the greasy crud off. Then, washing with soap and water doesn't dry the skin out, because the cooking oil tries to stick to the skin

To riff offa' hoodeng's (absolutely correct) post, IF the shop has ANY involvement in actually working on the project (including simply disassembling for inspection), making sure what was done - or refused by the customer - and why got documented in written form on an invoice. I believe in doing it,...

The look of those cuts made on the heads remind me of relieving adjacent to the valves on a flathead Ford V8. This was a modification that was pretty universally thought to benefit breathing on a lot of engines back in the day. Stands to reason that it might allow a little better flow out of that si...

I was gonna, talk smack about the unsuitability of the Y-block for performance endeavors, but realized I just rode my hot rodded Harley and don't have any high ground here...

All joking aside, getting popcorn and waiting for pics of the intake; love this 'outside the box' stuff!

Going back to when I did driveability work on a pretty much daily basis as an auto mechanic (which was last in 2003 - where has the time gone?), I liked NGK plugs for pretty much anything; platinum for factory FI cars and their plain old projected tip plugs for older carb'd cars. Good build quality,...

Last V8 I was involved with was a 383 Chrysler with a 4.25" Chinese crank & rods, about ten years ago. IIRC, the machine work (bore, hone w/ plates, line bore, decking, oil system mods, was a pretty good chunk of change. Like it flattened a thousand dollar bill. If I could've got a beefier ...

What is the piston weight? Lighter pistons should help the longevity of the crank and rods. I would expect a lot of moderate priced options would handle 8000 at the drag strip. Also, a gentler cam lobe can make the difference between getting runs on a set of springs vs. seasons... and the difference...

I understand that the rings move in operation, but I have a dumb question: Why is it important to orient them a certain way on the initial build if they are just going to walk around the piston anyway? Winner winner chicken dinner! I've always thought that any possible benefit was that the tiny (mi...

4 cyl Mercruiser - essentially 1/2 a 460 Ford.

If you can't make 200HP with that, then you should hang up your wrenches.

IIRC, the drive end of the block takes either a standard Ford or Chev bellhousing (can't remember which).

-WN

E85 isn't really common in Seattle, so forgive me asking what may be an obvious question... but what kind of cranking PSI and dynamic CR does it tolerate? And @ the OP, are you locked in to E85, or is race gas an option?

-WN

Yeah, the kind of radiation burn you get from arc welding is real uncomfortable; I've been told it can cause bad skin cancer, too.

I used to put on some 45 SPF sunscreen when I was going to do a small 2-5 minute job and didn't want to drag out a bunch of proper PPE...

-Wn

I recently learned that VW uses pressed on cam lobes when I had all 4 cylinder with good leak-down but had 2 with good compression and 2 with horrible compression. I just pressed The gear off of my Sportster's #2 cam and swapped it onto a .497" Buell cam I put in the bike... but that'll work o...

I have a great idea to create more work for you David. Whatever lifter type you choose for this engine, do a survey of SpeedTalkers for opinions on the best catalog cam for the application. Toss out the extremes, average the rest and select a cam that closely matches same to use as a baseline Vs. y...