505 engine build for street.
 

Getting close to wrapping up a 505 street engine. It has a 4.35" bore by 4.25" stroke. Using a Kauffman block, and Kauffman D-port heads, ported by Dave @ SD Perf. Using an SD Ported factory H.O aluminum manifold. He brought me the SD old faithful cam. Here are some pics of the build so far. Sorry, my Photobucket account is temporarily full so I will have to post thumbnail pics.

Here is the block, and it getting cryo treated. I cryo treated the entire engine.

Getting ready to align hone it, but I see these dents in the brand new main caps! Careless handling I would say. Someone also beat on the sides of the main caps with a solid hammer to get the caps off, and dented the sides all up also.

So I used a file to file the dents off, and make them flat again.

More main cap pics.

After getting them flat again, I re-blued the steel.

Subscribed

Getting it align honed.

Got it honed to 3.1885", exactly in the middle of the spec range. All 5 housing bores measure right on this number, and round within .0001".

Time to square deck it.
As you can see[if you look close] the deck was not perfectly flat, even for a new block. This side had a little bit of twist. The other side was not at 90° to the cam/crank centerline. New blocks are not made to be placed directly into service. They need to be machined for proper heights, and dimensions for the build being done. The people making blocks do not know what pistons are going to be used, or what height it needs to be, so new blocks are just roughly machined, and need to be finished out.

Block needs to be de-burred of the sharp edges. I hate sharp edges. I use a Scotch-Brite pad on a die grinder to de-burr the edges of holes.

Here I am boring the cylinders out. I had to bore them roughly .200" over for a 4.350" final bore. I left .011" to hone out for a superior final finish. You can see the difference in the size of the bore from where it started to where it ended.

Here I have installed our big bore torque plate to hone it with. Then I rough hone it down to about .004" to go, with a roughing stone with T-plate installed. This makes for a nice, round cylinder. Then I hone it down to around .001" to go, with a medium grit stone. Then I use a finer grit stone to finish it to size, and for Moly or steel rings. Both types of rings use the same grit stone. Chrome rings use a slightly rougher stone[the stone I use to get within .001" of final size.

The gauge reading show the size at the top of the bore, the middle, and the bottom of the bore, respectively before final hone. I let the block sit for a little bit for the cylinders to cool off, and shrink up a few tenths. Each individual line on this gauge represents .0001", or about 1/30'th the thickness of a human hair.

Now I go to the finish stone and hone the block to my zero point, which is the final bore size of 4.350".

Here it is .0002" small at the top, .00005" big in the middle, and right on size at the bottom. I will leave it here for now, and let the cylinders completely cool down before I finish it to my zero point. They will shrink up a few tenths.

After completely cooling down, I finished it to size. Here it shows the size at the top, middle, and bottom again.

You can see the size doesn't even vary .00005"! Actually doesn't even vary from zero anything measurable with our gauges.

Time to balance it. Here is a pic of the balance card I filled out. You can see this new, un-balanced crank was off by 205.4 grams in the front, and 63.2 grams in the rear. The reason the rear is not as far off as the front is because the rear counterweight is not as wide as the front, in order for it to fit in the block without hitting. This is why Pontiacs are externally balanced in the rear, normally. I will neutral balance this crank.

This bobweight was 2262 grams. This is why I could neutral balance it. The stock bobweights range from 2400-2500 grams. Here is pics of the crank in the balancer with the bobweights hooked up.

After the first drilling, I managed to nail it, and get the front within .1 gram of the rear. I always do the heaviest counterweight first, as it will change the rear, as you can see by the 3 gram change from the first spinning to the second.

All said and done, I had to drill 3 holes in the front, and 1 in the rear. Went a tad too far in the rear, and had to remove a slight amount from the rod journal area, and a little from the corner of the counterweight, since it wanted weight removed in between the two, where there is nowhere to remove from, so I had to take a little from both sides.

Ended up .4 grams in the front, and .2 grams in the rear. It will be a nice, smooth running engine.

Then I ground a groove in the lifter bore to lower the oil hole for hydraulic roller lifters. You can see the line I scribed 1/4" below the oil hole. This is where I grind down to.

Engine is now on an engine stand, waiting for me to build it. More pics to come when I get them.

Looking good Paul. Those main caps would really bum the average guy out. My fuel cell looked like it had a fairly ruff trip too.

What carb? I'm guessing a Q-Jet, using a HO intake, I'd like that!
Dyno?
Comp ratio?
Cool!

:D I'm starting to think you Q-Jet people are attempting to take the world over.

This is not a criticism...... I'm trying to learn stuff. Won't an engine of that size swallow that cam up like it's nothing, meaning it will be very docile for it's size? Would a larger cam such as the next largest Dave has be a better fit for a 500+ ci engine. Or is the cam choice because of the D-port KRE heads? With my admittedly limited knowledge I would think that the SD Edelbrock 325 cfm Street/Strip Heads http://www.sdperformance.com/viewPro...p?productID=38 with the Road Paver grind http://www.sdperformance.com/viewPro...productID=1817 would be very streetable?
Or was just as simple as giving the customer what he wants?

It all depends on how much power you want to make. The OF cam in that motor with 505 CI will make 580-590 Hp with a mild 13-14" of vacuum. You put the next size up HR cam and you are making over 600 Hp, pick how much you want.

It will be one smooth torque monster..What is the compression ratio?

No, you're right about the cam. I think it's too small also, but it's not for my car. And it's not how I would have cammed it. The customer wants a nice idle, and lots of torque, so he bought this cam. I didn't pick this out. He brought me these parts as part of his plan for what he wants.

We will be dyno testing this also when it's finished.

I would need to re-run the numbers because I can't remember exactly, but I think it will be 10.25:1.

Yes, I believe he will be running a Q-jet. :D

Me, personally am a Holley guy more so, but have seen how good Q-jets can be for everyday driving.

A very nice build. Great detail and work again Paul.

Subscribing...always a pleasure to watch you work Paul!

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Paul, why do these aftermarket blocks need so much machine work when they show up? for 3-4K are you just getting a semi machined block? Or are they just that far off on the work trying to pump them out?

Wasn't this a well used block or am I thinking of the aluminum one?

Can't wait to see it on the dyno Paul. Needs more cam though :)

Nick, when my father went with a new Kaufmann MR1 block done by BES it only needed the bores opened to the size we wanted. Of course it's decked anyway regardless. Everything else checked out perfectly and the 4.750 crank fell right in with no clearance issues.

They come semi-finished since they have no idea what combo is going to be used. They come align bored, but I align hone them to an exact size, and roundness. This came roughly 4.150" bore, and I had to bore it out to 4.350".

That was the aluminum block. This one is brand new.

I found these pics of the oil drain holes in the rear main cap. They are full of nasty burrs that had to be ground away with a small burr.

What brand crank is that again?

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Oh okay that's right Paul, I remember seeing that one when I was down there. I suspect you already wrapped that one up then...

Now that is an interesting detail you brought up and something that deserves attention. When my father built his 571 with this same block, it was a real bitch to get the rear main to seal. After trying both versions of the rubber rear main seal made by 2 different people (both of them tried about 2 times a piece) No kidding it was on and off the dyno 5 or 6 times. Tony determined there was way too much oil trapped around the rear main and no seal would fix it. His cure was to relieve it by drilling holes and give the oil someplace to go rather than pack too much around the seal. That cured the oil leak for good.
I think he was talking to Kauffman about this issue when dealing with this on my fathers engine almost 2 years ago. Now I see there are holes already drilled in the rear main for your new block. Interesting. I'm thinking you have Tony Bischoff to thank for that. It will save you a lot of grief later.

Yes, the cap definitely needs oil drain back holes. The factory had them, and aftermarket blocks need them also.

It's a Star Galaxy.

Some are starting to use more of the SGI cranks, and some compare them to Eagles. Any opinion on that one (or others) you have seen?

Think AllPontiac uses SGI cranks, but it's been a long time since I've looked at them.

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Which is why we were surprised someone like Kauffman was designing these things without it.

We use a lot of SGI cranks. Aside from journals sometimes being a little big, they are nice pieces.

We built a full race 505 back when the Star Galaxy forged cranks first came out. We actually got one of the very first ones for that engine. It makes 750hp and has lived fine now for many years.

We had it apart once as it started to slow down some (9.90 car). Ended up that most of the Scorpion roller rockers were cracked and failing.

We rolled some rod bearings in it, Crower Enduro rockers and new springs, and right back in service. The Star Galaxy crank was in perfect shape, so I suspect it will be fine for this level of build for sure.

In a 505 at 10.25 to 1 compression the Old Faithful cam will be fine, IMHO. It will probably favor 109-110ICL vs 106-108, just going by the builds we've done here with that cam. Any more compression than that would mandate more camshaft for sure, or it would be a bit octane sensitive with pump gas, even with aluminum heads on it......IMHO.....Cliff

Tony went with an Ohio crank, as I believe it was the only Pontiac crank at the time with a 4.750 stroke. Very nice piece.

Hmmm..... I had a Pontiac engine brought to the shop last Spring and it had several cracked Scorpion rockers. I called Scorpion to see if they could tell me why and if they'd warranty them. The gentleman seemed shocked that their rocker bodies could fail. He had never seen one fail. He explained they have a lifetime warranty on the rocker bodies but they'd have to be returned through the shop that originally installed them. He wasn't helpful at all.

If they have a Lifetime Warranty......does it matter what shop installed them? What if you bought them and installed them yourself? I guess if you bought them from Summit or whoever, they would handle it? They build them 3 miles from me, I thought about getting a set, maybe not. Lifetime Warranty to me means LIFETIME, if it breaks, you get a new one, like Snap-on Wrenches. ; )

I've never had much luck with their customer service. The rockers were sold and installed by the shop that built the engine. That shop bought the rockers from an engine builders warehouse. I asked if they (Scorpion )would do anything to simplify the process for the customer (owner of the broken rocker arms that were less than a year old, and we had the receipt for)and even offered to pay for a discounted set of rocker arms, they would not play ball. Scorpion insisted that I should return the rockers to the original shop that installed/sold them, so they could return them to the warehouse they purchased them from and that warehouse would return them to Scorpion who would reverse the procedure. All that seemed ridiculous to me, so instead I gave the customer a good price on a set of quality rocker arms and urged him to go through the procedure of warranting the rockers through the shop who originally sold them (and that shop was happy to help) and resell the warranted set to recoup some of his money.

OK, where to start. It's been a while since I updated this thread, so here goes. We dynoed it today, but I'll get back to that later.

Here, I got the crank, and cam in the block and getting ready to install the #1 piston, and degree the cam.

Pictured in the last picture are the rod bearings, prepped, and ready to install, and a piston ring expander. Rings should never be curled around the piston to install.

What does the block weigh in at -VS- production block?
Looks heavy...but strong!