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Cylinder head and cam question

Well, thanks to Oldkimmer I now have a new cam and a set of the special 1966 lifters. I ended up going with a Wolverine Blue Racer cam which is the same one Edelbrock sells as their performer plus cam. I know it is and old design with slow ramps, but it will be easy on the valve train. If Edelbrock's dyno sheet is correct, it will put the torque right where I want it for a heavy car with 2.94 gears.

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Got some more test fitting done today. I cut the old two barrel kickdown bellcrank off the throttle bracket and attached it to the new four barrel bracket. After a lot of cutting and rebending it lines up really well and works smoothly through full range of motion. You will notice that the linkage has now been flipped to the opposite side of the bellcrank.

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Finished welding and gusseting the kickdown linkage and test fitted it for the final time. All good. Now to start taking it all apart again.

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Finished test fitting all of the brackets and finally got the valley pan off. Looks cleaner in the valley than the rockers were.

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Exhaust manifolds came off today and I removed the heat riser. I have a blocked crossover valley pan for it. Other than the intake manifold it has never been apart before. Cam looks fine so the low cylinder must be a bad valve as I thought.

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I plugged the heat riser hole in mine years ago by tapping it for 3/8" I think and running a bolt right into the shoulder then cutting off both ends.
 
I already drilled the steel inserts out. Planning on tapping for 1/4 inch NPT and using pipe plugs.
 
Finished the manifold......and broke my tap handle in the process. I don't think they pipe thread taps are meant to go through 3/4 of an inch of cast iron.

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Also got the heads off today. I can see the bad exhaust valve, second from the left in second picture.

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Cylinder walls look OK but I haven't turned it over to check them all out yet.

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Went to the machine shop to have a look at my heads after they cleaned them up and before they started the valve job. The valves themselves all checked out fine. They found one exhaust seat that had a huge void below it, a bad casting we think. Hardly enough material for the seat. It also looks like someone ground the combustion chamber. As far as I know the heads were never off the engine before, so factory fix? Thank goodness I have two spare heads to work with. Bringing them over Monday to be checked, and we'll go with the best ones.

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Disassembled my spare set of heads to take to the machine shop Monday. Cleaned up all the pistons. Cylinder walls all look good with very little ridge.

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Pistons are standard bore, 4.125, and are about .045 in the hole. I'll be lucky to have 8.5:1 compression, depending on the actual head cc's

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An exhaust seat would fix that head no problem.
Which, at my shop..... since they’re already there and have been run through the cleaner....... would be less $$ than cleaning another set of castings.
But....... not much difference either way.
 
Progress today. Had to suspend the compressor and take out the grill in order to raise the condenser enough to get the cam out.

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What is the cam you are putting in?
Not much left in there seems like you could have simply pulled the whole engine.
 
It is the same as the Edelbrock performer plus cam, nothing wild. Yes it has been a bit of a pain, working around everything, but I didn't want to pull the trans or take the A/C off.
 
I would suggest at least removing the hood.
 
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