Sounds great at idle - what camshaft ?

Oldmics

And here’s just a tad bit more info on Jim’s 318” Y.  We were rewarded with peak values of 429 horsepower and 388 ft/lbs torque and it didn’t take a whole lot to get there.  The engine is a 292 block bored +060 (3.810” bore) and a 292 crankshaft offset ground to 3.480” stroke.  The heads are unmodified Mummert aluminum units while the intake is a stock out of the box Blue Thunder.  The carburetor for the 429HP run was a 750 vacuum secondary Holley.  The static compression ratio is right at 10.0:1 while the camshaft is a custom Isky grind that has 270° advertised, 242° at 0.050”, and is ground on 107° lobe centers.  The camshaft itself is installed at 2½° advance.

Here’s another duplicate YouTube link for the dyno pull.

Jim’s 318Y on the dyno

I’ll add that even at 318 cubic inches, the 750 carb that was being used is sized just about right as the 625 cfm carb that was also tested was showing a vacuum increase in the upper rpm band.  That by itself is a very good indicator that that particular carb was undersized while the horsepower increase with the larger carb was another indicator.  There will be a full article with more details about this engine in a forthcoming issue of the Y-Block Magazine.

Jim, I do qualify to be jealous! Great job!

That’s a loaded question as much of the pricing simply depends upon what is already on hand that can be reused.  If building an engine from scratch, then it’s obviously going to be more expensive.  Jim already had a core block and crankshaft, MSD distributor, Blue Thunder aluminum intake, aluminum timing and valley covers, and some of the other miscellaneous engine parts including a carburetor and carb spacer.  Most of these parts came off of the +125 over 312 that was in the car up until recently.

The pistons are custom made to take advantage of the metric ring design while the connecting rods are aftermarket H-Beams modified to work with the offset ground crankshaft.  And Jim’s engine also has one of the very pricey ATI dampers obtained before Innovators West came on board as a Y-Block damper provider.  The big ticket items are the aluminum heads, custom piston set, connecting rods, and roller tipped rocker arms with shafts and quality pushrods and these alone account for over $4000 out of the budget.  Then add in the rings, camshaft, lifters, bearings, gaskets, offset grinding the crankshaft, oil pump, premium grade bolts, new ignition wires, spark plugs, oil & filter, machine work, balancing, assembly labor, and dyno time, it starts adding up.  Sounds pricey until you actually look through the list and realize it’s not that far out of line with any performance buildup that’s performed on any other family of engines.

Billy.  Rod journal sizes are 2.000” and the connecting rods are Eagle H-Beams (6.250” long) that have had their big end widths narrowed to work with the narrower Y block journals.  With the pistons being custom ordered, the 0.927" diameter wrist pins are simply placed in the pistons so that the block decks can be kept optimally high.  Changing the rod lengths simply means changing the wrist pin location (compression height) to compensate.

Ted always re-affirms my belief in him since the day at Texas Ford Shootout, Texas Motorplex campaining the TBolt with the 406, introducing me to this site and the Birdpalooza..