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mike?? just wondering if that is who you are. you username points me to that direction. and if this is you....can you tell me if Jeff is going to publish my article? never heard anything from them.

i hear ya man....but i really got to make an effort at keeping this car as numbers matching. if the block didn't have the number on it i wouldn't care so much. but i'm passionate about it right now. thanks for the concern though!

if things go south with this block...you're right i know where there is a whole field of cars that have motors. As long as the owner is willing to part with a motor from one of them.

but at least i gave it my best shot first. i haven't given up yet, i have faith it will work out. that fix on the block has been there for years....and he showed me the current crack....nothing wrong with the fixed welds, they are holding perfect. i think it can be fixed, my dad is sending me to a place that fixed a set of exhaust manifolds on his dodge dart over 20 years ago...still on the motor, still going. that's alot of heat cycles and flogging it.

i wonder if Hayden can give me anymore history on this car. i know he said he thought he had the original keys and title, but he never found those. maybe he can fill me in on where this block was fixed the first time. its been a while since i have talked to him.

Hank

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"Do many cars still use the steel strut anymore? ... a rod of aluminum. Machine cut off a length & fed it to an automated lathe. All the machining was done in a few seconds. ... No sign of steel struts there."

No signs of any casting process either??????
I'm assuming the demonstration was for a MODERN HIGH PRODUCTION piston mfg'ering process and not a low production special or limited service application piston.

It's only a question of whether or not the steel strut is needed in a CAST piston????? THe question does not apply to Modern technology or custom made BILLET pistons or maybe not forged pistons.


As for the V8 valve guides i'm using cast iron guides in the left head and bronze in the rite head. Some 20K miles later i see no difference in terms of performance or operation or any other externally detectable difference. Have NOT taken it apart for inspection. Have no reason to at ths point.

And if in fact they are simply lathe-turned, it means they are no longer cam-ground which I find surprising. Good OEM pistons even back into the early 30s and probably earlier were cam-ground, meaning they had a larger OD across the thrust faces than across the piston pin faces. Not sure I made that clear, a larger OD perpendicular to the wrist pin than parallel to the wrist pin.

I tried to find a video of that particular show but all I find presently is the one on forged pistons. That has the step of chopping off the slug, heating it and forming it and dropping into a pile of others. A British narrator using centimeters.

The one I am thinking of had an American announcer and used inches. Just has the rod fed in, chopped off, an arm grabs it & feeds it to the lathe section which does it's thing and passes it on. While the lathe is working, the rod is re-positioned and another slug is cut and readied. The lathe cuts the ring rooves, does something on the sides and smooths the top before it passes it on. Another arm grabs and re-orients it for a milling process and a drilling process after the lathe but don't remember which was done first. In the process one of those tiny feelers comes out and checks dimensions.

anyone have a set of exhaust valves in good shape just laying around they don't really care if they are gone to a good cause? lol. i must have a screw loose asking that haha!

The cam grind ( kind of elliptical) shape of the piston could be done on a lathe by offsetting the piston in a 4-jaw chuck. However it would require reindexing the piston 180 degrees to cut the other side.

It is probably reasonable to assume that the modern video of a modern piston machineing operation also assumes a CNC lathe that mite have a compound or cross feed control to accomodate turning the cam grind shape. Such a CNC control that legend manual operation lathes would not have and thus require operator intervention for reindexing of the piston.

'55er. Those valves come up on eBay every once in a while.

Mike.....i pmed you about those blocks. but let it be known....i'm super pissed i may not get to use this numbers matching block. obviously someone else thought it was worth saving it to keep it numbers matching....otherwise it would have been scraped years ago.

i guess i could get a new one and just keep this one so it stays with the car. this car means to much to me to sell it at any point....so i suppose not having a numbers matching block in the car wont matter too much. other than me being upset about it and having to get over it over time.

and also i suppose i could keep this one an original 352...so if i do sell it the new owner could determine if they want to go .030 and keep it as close to a 352 as possible.

the white lines above and below the crack line are just paint lines marking the crack out. you can see it looks like a continuation from the original fix and/or a left over that wasn't fixed in the original weld. i'm guessing it developed over time either from sitting or from use. then there is another smaller crack below that.


Hank

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By location and appearance, looks like insufficient anti-freeze (freeze cracking). Tis a shame.

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