Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

What is the reason that in port & direct fuel injection apps, that we don't see fuel injection into the plenum for reduced IATs? Because you can get too much of a good thing, particularly on a humid day. It can get cold enough to ice up the intake tract. Then you'll have a very slow race car. I...

From the pictures, I'd weigh in with "rod bolt failure." With that stroke and piston weight, unless he was turning some crazy RPM, I don't see that the bolts would be particularly stressed. I can present two scenarios: A) the bolts were unlubricated, poorly lubricated, or otherwise galled ...

FYI, If you can't have a linear ratio, you want a progressive ratio, where the ratio increases as the lift increases. 2.0 and 2.3 Pinto engines for the win! And most other SOHC crossflow heads, for that matter. With the finger followers, they're rising rate on one side, falling rate on the other, w...

Slant Six and small block Mopar rods often had the tang slots positioned so the shells were substantially out of alignment with each other, top and bottom... The first-generation Ford flathead V8s didn't have tangs. The bearings were babbitted on both sides, and floated between the crank and rod. Br...

"Enquiring minds want to know!"

double tap...

What do you have for tools? Okay, I'll assume the worst. Take your cam, put a bit of oil on the end bearing journals, and cut pieces of sandwich or trash bag to wrap around the oiled journals. Then use rubber bands to attach it to another cam. Call it the "master" cam. It can be bent like ...

That's easy enough; I used a lot of Chrysler rods and Chevy pistons to make 351W strokers. Tip: it's a lot less work if you start with Chrysler 3.9 V6 rods instead of small block V8 rods... I also used Slant Six rods and 400 Chevy pistons in some FE strokers, 2.3 Pinto rods and Chevy pistons in 302 ...

So the guage says everything is cool but the stove is actually hot. (My ford does same) Many Fords in the 1980s, the "temperature sender" functioned more or less as a switch, and the needle on the gauge would stay in the same place unless the engine was cold or boiling over. Ford did that...

There have been several proposals to put a pair of Lotus DOHC four cylinder heads on the Rover V8. The bore spacing is almost the same. A couple of people bought heads and announced they were beginning the conversion, but as far as I know they never finished.

The rod itself is almost always heavier than the piston and pin... and, for the same weight, I-beam rods are stronger than H-beam rods. H-beam rods were a product of the hot rod aftermarket; the H shape was easier to whittle out of bar stock with manual milling machines than an I beam. Back in the 1...

I will have to hit the library if confirmation is reqd. NACA did quite a bit of "blow it up on the dyno" basic research on that sort of thing. NASA scanned most of the old technical papers, but they changed their search interface a few years back, and I find it hard to navigate now. Her M...

I remember seeing mention of that in one of the hot rod magazines right after they came out. I never found one either.

It has been decades since I've seen a 350 Diesel block, but the sonic checker would tell if there's enough meat to bore one of those out to 403 size.

then let the block sit for atleast 3 days with room temps above 60. I once filled a block (well, one bank) with Moroso's grout near the end of the workday. I turned the heat off when I left. In the morning I turned the heat back on, turned the block to stand up the other bank, and filled my shoes w...

I think the original issue is with drivers and those that don't wrench on their cars This became an issue with the street rod crowd back in the late '80s. You'd pick up a magazine, and it would have a feature article on some car that, if you read the article, the owner never had anything to do with...