[steve25]

It was a long road, but I new you would resolve it because of someone with your determination.

I mean anyone who yanks his motor out to rebuild it while living overseas and while basically living in a dusty desert can handle anything.

My hats off to you!

[glhs#116]

OK. Final follow-up on this thread. I just popped out the plugs that I'd put in new after getting the heads back on and before going on my little drive (and a second short drive). For me, this is really the acid test as I've always had an oily #7 plug ever since this whole palava started.



Remember those really crusty black looking piston tops and chambers? Remember how black all the plugs were getting (look at pics earlier in this thread)?

I did a little light reading on that. It's generally a PCV system that's doing a poor job taking the oil out of the vapours pulled back into the engine along with generally poor ring seal causing a lot of excess blowby and crankcase pressure. The oily crankcase vapours are sticky and then soot and stuff sticks to it making the black mess, right?

So I'm thinking that yeah, seems like I've just got a fair amount of that sort of issue going on. But those plugs are looking pretty good now! I'm thinking that I was having all that carbon building in the engine purely on the basis of
* #7 (and earlier #2 and #6) pulling in plenty oil and...
* a reasonably lumpy cam causing enough reversion to "share the love" via the intake to all the cylinders

I'm betting a bit of driving and a few race meets and that soot is going to blast itself out of there.. Or, at least, it doesn't look like it should be adding any anymore now. Maybe I'll throw my can of GM top engine cleaner through it just before the next oil change...

Anyway, thanks tons for all the help from everyone. I declare this issue closed.

Sam

[steve25]

Indeed, closed and time to enjoy!

[GTO-relic]

hey I want to tell this fella something,
Joe Mondello used to port aluminum E-heads for Olds into the head bolt holes,
he's insert a sleeve just like a Pontiac pushrod sleeve,
you could see it plainly like a nose on a face inside the port.
and...some 5 years ago, Butler Pontiac had CNC ported E-heads,
that were ported into the bolt holes, for sale on their website.
I was interested in them, they flowed big numbers,
I asked them what about the breaks in the ports ?
he said they just seal them with permatex.
if you coat the sides of the head bolts with sealer,
then put them in and torque down.
then go in the port and put a thin layer of DEVCON EPOXY on the inside,
over the break,
it'll seal.
I'll post some pics of Mondello's heads.

[GTO-relic]

OK kid here ya go,
if Mondello can break through,
you can break through,
it's standard procedure since the first RA V, SD421, SD455's back in the old days
just put a sleeve on the bolt, just like the pushrod tube.
don't sweat the little stuff

[GTO-relic]

btw fwiw, practically all or most of the top running NHRA Super Stock engines, have devcon or a similar epoxy inside the intake ports. they have to, in order to move the port volume around and stay within rules, while straightening the port and gaining some flow. that's one of the tricks they use to get 350" SBC engines with a Qjet to make 660HP. it won't fall out if done right.

[GTO-relic]

ps- if you want a fully adjustable PCV, there's a guy in Pa. sells them, everything is billet aluminum machined on CNC from scratch. I bought the whole setup it works great. Basically you can adjust the size of the orifice going from the valley pan or valve cover vent, to the intake/carb base vacuum fitting. It will pull it ALL OUT. just make sure you have a good baffle in place in the valve cover. I preferred to run it in the valley pan because that is already heavily baffled away under the cover, to not draw in liquid oil spray. The unit also has ability to just remove the adjustment screw feature, and run it wide open, but retain the check valve in case of a backfire in the intake. You won't see any oil around the filler or breather cap, that's for sure. Google adjustable PCV. They are made in Kingston, Pa. by a ma/pa/son outfit. Nice people. Not cheap but worth it. They went so far as to flow test all the original PCV's and develop an adjustable one in the correct range. The problem is, all the replacement PCV valves do NOT have the correct calibration ! Back in the day 1960-70's a ton of defective factory replacement PCV valves were made, so to the unsuspecting public, and cars were pulling oil up like crazy, if the PCV was in an unbaffled valve cover. So an adjustable one is a great idea.

here ya go
https://mewagner.com/?p=444

https://www.classicindustries.com/pr...ce=1&gclsrc=ds

[steve25]

It's too late now, but the fact of the matter is the the head bolt pinch in is not much of a flow restriction in the E heads in out of the box form.
what is however is the height of the runner from the crown of the short turn on back to the Intake flange.

This is due to how darn deep the valve bowl is in these E heads, and yes even in the 87 CC version.

Only once the roof is raised to what's geometricly needed to match the bowl roof is the removal of the head bolt pinch in worth a good bunch of air flow above .450" lift.

Oh and by the way, I don't think Sam or anyone is going to take kindly to being called a kid as you have done!

[GTO-relic]

hey kid, get a sense of humor, lighten up
we're all kids here. that's what keeps us in this.

[glhs#116]

Heh, surely y'all are kidding... I may not be as old as some of the gentlemen on here but I'm still old enough to be tickled pink to be called "kid".

GTO-relic, thanks so much! It was surprisingly hard to find out this kind of information. I mean, before I screwed up... But I inferred it was no big deal because I definitely saw some people porting into the headbolt hole so bad it was a big window and sometimes not even sleeving it (admittedly, not Pontiacs). I reasoned the headbolt should seal it because the hole is blind and the washer has 100 ft/lbs on it (ARP head bolts). Was a long time before someone pointed out about the gasket not sealing the hole (the FelPro one I'd always used). And then when I sleeved and still had oil I had to start doubting everything. I'll just chalk it up to a sequence of unfortunate events.

Great to be talking about the actual porting again. I know you're not supposed to "port with your eyes" but I don't have a bench so I did basically just that.

My impression is that the E ports are friggin huge looking. I didn't see either the pushrod nor headbolt bulges as "pinches". And I was vaguely aware that a smooth increase in volume is beneficial. That's why I went really light on the pushrod bulge. Not trying to take off anymore than I needed to smooth the wall. Now, again, to my eye the big culprit looked to be the headbolt bulge because that whole wall is steering the charge around to swirl into the port. So I really didn't like the look of that big ol' "speed bump". I wasn't thinking restriction. I was thinking smooth flow.

I also opened up the actual entrance of the ports to the gasket where the as-cast seems to pinch in a little (especially corners) just at the last quarter inch or so.

The only other thing I tried to do was to somewhat "waterfall" the short turn area like in my Jim Hand book. Last of all I did a teensy bit of back-cutting on the valves with a grinding wheel and a hand drill in a vice. I was pretty conservative here as I didn't want to screw anything up. And so, of course, I did a little lapping when the valves were back in just in case.

I didn't try to "shine" the port walls or anything because a) that looked like a lot of work and b) I seemed to understand a slight roughness here helps fuel stay in suspension. It's smoother than the as-cast, for sure. And I got rid of any anomolies I saw.

It's kind of on my list to tidy up the intake. I did the same on the intake (open the port openings where they were offset, get off any flash, smooth the walls a bit). But I'm thinking about those bulges you pointed out, Steve, like #8. I also spent a fair amount of time this winter with a hand piece of sandpaper on the transition of the primary and secondary bore holes on the high side. I noticed that the factory does some really nice smoothing at the bottom of the deep holes on the low side but the high side holes are basically cylinders. I've been trying to smooth a radius onto these. And I'm also thinking of trimming the ends off my carb mounting ARP studs that poke through into the upper plenum about a quarter inch or so. Not sure if any of this helps. I bet the radiusing I'm doing will help the most..

Really thankful for all the help, folks!

Sam