Assembled my 408 stroker shortblock
Thursday, March 22, 2007

Hey guys, been a few days. I have been working here and there waiting on parts to finally get close to buttoning up the bottom end on my 408 stroker. Here are some pictures of the assembly along the way. Things like installing the probe pistons, checking rod side clearances and so forth. I also got the DSS main girdle and there pro windage tray bolted on. I noticed right away that you need some spacers when boltng on the windage tray or the rod bolts hit the tray.

I didnt have any spacers laying around so I used some aluminum rod I had laying around and put it into my lathe and made four .450 tall spacers, worked like a charm.



Shown above is the Probe forged piston being installed.



Above is a shot of the Permatex Assembly Lube I use on all my bearings, it's like molasses and resists gravity well, I like it since I know the engine will be sitting for about 1-2 months at most before it gets ready to fire. It also helps greatly when I am constantly turning the engine over by hand during the build.



Shown above is checking connecting rod clearance between each other.



Here we are checking the connecting rod side clearance against the crankshaft.

I will be posting pictures of the nearly completed bottom end of my 408 stroker shortblock tommorrow. Stay tuned.

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posted by SteveO @ 8:57 PM, , links to this post  




Filing piston rings
Sunday, March 18, 2007

Like I was saying in an earlier post of mine, filing piston rings is usually a long drawn out and very tedious operation, BUT can be very rewarding in the form of more HP. The more I read and learn, it seems there is alot of free HP in ring design and ring gaps. I chose file fit rings for this engine, some of my earlier near stock or slightly modified engines always used a pre-fit ring. Here's a few pictures of how I set my ring gaps.

I first put the top ring in the bore then use a piston upside down to square it into the bore about a quarter of the way down. As shown here



Then I use my feeler gauges which in this case was .018 which was too tight for me, I was shooting for .022 top ring gap. As shown here.



I then went on to doing all top and second ring gaps for all the holes, it is quite tedious but a rewarding task when building your engine. Here is the ring filer I used.



Now I know there is alot more to piston rings than I can even begin to comprehend, but I know from my little bit of research and talking with friends that my method will be just fine. Oh also, I set the second ring gap wider at .026 for the second ring.

After about 2 hours of filing rings, I set out on final assembly of my 408 stroker rotating assembly. Till next time.

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posted by SteveO @ 8:34 AM, , links to this post