The 230 Headerfold project

[chriscase]

Headerfold Imageevent link

I've finally put up an Imageevent site for my '53 FFPW, here's the link <http://imageevent.com/bigchriscase/exhaustheadersandintakemanifold>

You might also want to check my other albums from there, more mods done to the truck, including making it the only five window extended cab flat fender, the 5WFFPW.

[MoparNorm]

I vote spacey....= )
Post a picture when you're completed!

[chriscase]

I made it out to the Dyno Shop in Santee this week. Talked to Mark about turning my BBD around backwards. Seems there's carbs with floats on the front, on the back, and on the sides. Holley 4bbls have one in front, and one in back, and on dual quad manifolds are mounted sideways. So I guess running the BBD bardwacks ought to work OK too.

That all said, I'll be turning my BBD around backwards, just to get better linkage approach. Plus building a better plenum on my headerfold project, rather than the adapter from BBD to 1bbl flange.

I also did some metal spinning this week- just an aluminum air filter housing for my air compressor. I'm going to try it for making velocity stack sort of blend from plenum to tubes. And maybe a steel sphere from the wrought iron fence supply as a plenum chamber too. Very spacey/organic?

[Jason Mills]

Thanks Chris,

I will have to figure out how to get the two venturis to feed into the intake manifold some how.. and point the carb forward. I might use your idea of working off the right hand of the carb, to get the linkage to fit.. but that is after finding a way to mount it with out ruining the airflow..

[chriscase]

Floats are universally to the front, with jets to the rear. This keeps fuel flowing into the jets on hills and under acceleration.

Hmmm, I wonder if circle track racers mount their carbs with inlet to left?

If sideways, on a steep incline, the floats might not float. leading to more flooding?

Better to mount inlet forward.

Linkage was a PITA. I had to build a Z-bar to get the stock linkage to work on the wrong side of the carb. Then I remembered that on my '83 conversion I had welded a lever on the right end of the carb shaft, making hook-up to the stock PW linkage a breeze.

I just found a pair of BBDs that I have been sitting on since they were spares in '83. Lots to experiment with...

[Jason Mills]

Can I mount the 2BBL carter that I got from the salvage yard, on to this new intake manifold presently in construction, sideways?

That is, in sted of having the fuel inlet pointing forward, I would like to mount it so that it points to the side of the truck. will that cause problems with the float level, when going up or down hill? My reasoning is that that it might help distrubution by having the throttle bores running along the lenght of the intake manifold rather than sideways...

[Jason Mills]

The vent hole in the top of the head bottoms out at about 1.50 below the surface. the head is 1.80 thick.. so the materal at that spot is .30; I then checked other spots that I could look at. (the coolant transfer holes, spark plug, and inside the coolant outlet neck) all seem to be about the same.. I'm glad you suggested it Chris, as I was starting to get nervious about taking any more off with the grinder, yet I wanted to touch up a couple of the chambers around the intake valves..

[Jason Mills]

Chris,

Good information, thank you. I may be on my own regarding adjusting the timing/distributor.. but you gave me enough to start playing around.. and I will measure the head floor and see if I can some up with an intelligent numer, and report back.

[chriscase]

Jason, how about a head 'floor' thickness guesstimate?

There is a small plug in the middle of the head. It's basically a 3/8" bolt with a sealing washer on it. You could measure the overall thickness of a head, and then using the depth gauge on a dial caliper, the depth of that hole. The difference will be how thick the head is in that location.

That hole also acts as an air bleed when refilling the cooling system.

[chriscase]

Taking your 136 and dividing by the 14.7 ambient air pressure gives us 9.25 static compression ratio.

That's a good modern CR. You may need to lessen the centrifugal advance to prevent pinging/detonation. On the stock distributor this is done by bending the spring tangs under the breaker plate outward- more tension = less advance. Or take the dist and your 136 reading to a good tune up shop that has a distributor machine and knows what to do with it. Net result ought to be an initial of 5-10 btdc with easy starting and no pinging ever. But some pinging if initial bumped up two more degrees, so bump it back down. It's an art.

[Jason Mills]

Chris, how does one figure out the compression ratio from a PSI reading?


I got the head back from the machinist thursday, and got to play with it this afternoon. Some work with a die grinder is necessary to give the valves plenty of room, after taking .100" off the head.. But was rewarded with a 16 PSI bump in compression.. so it is up to about 136PSI.. a little short of what i was hoping for (150) but I think the headers and intake manifold actually may offer more potential anyway..



Both my heads were milled previously and had valve relief's in the .420-.435 inch range.. course the valve relief is not flat, so the farther in you measure, the deeper it gets. both heads had been milled, and were about at the same place. I believe that is about as far as you want to mill the head, unless you are willing to run a die grinder.. As the valves (on this engine) sit up about .070", and the valve lift on this cam is .374.. so that is .440 above the deck at full valve lift. Thus it is only the head gasket that is preventing interface between the valves and the head chamber.. After taking .100" off, (I had a low reading of head chamber depth of .321,) clearance is now back to about .400

[maineSS]

Carburetor icing is more a function of humidity than temp- lots of early pilots bought the farm at air temps of 40-50 deg and high humidity (clouds) before carburetor heaters became common equipment. Same thing happens on the ground, which is why OEM's went with manifold stoves for air cleaners. Before grinding on any flathead casting, it would really help to have it sonic checked- core shift was a common thing, and can really ruin your plans. A small transfer slot is not necessarily a bad thing- look at the of the Hudson car and Indian motorcycle flatheads- they were the best performers. From what I've heard, shrouding the backside of the valve, making the underside of the valve head as flat as possible, while biasing intake port flow towards the cylinder side of the valve helps quite a bit. The Hudson valves were smaller, closer and canted towards the cylinder. The Dodge has much more distance to cover, along with a wider slot that lets the mixture spread out and lose velocity, along with bigger valves. Don't know if a lot can be done about that.

[chriscase]

I tried to lengthen my center runner to that of the end runners. The loop downward is right between two exhaust runners, so ought to be hot enough to prevent droplets settling out. No heat riser, but all those header pipes ought to give off lots of heat to radiate towards the thin intake runners. I hope. It seldom gets cold enough to ice up carbs here in San Diego.

So far as condensation in the PCV system goes, an engine in good condition hardly makes any blowby. And most would be made under full throttle, when the blowby goes through the vent pipe to the aircleaner, where condensation will fall out into the air cleaner. So no condensationerator required.

I checked my compression this morning, about 117. That's about 7.8:1. So maybe my head has been milled already? Jason has 120, makes me think his has been milled too. Beware that the latest heads had the smaller temp sender port, and may need to be drilled and tapped bigger.

Anybody know how think an OE head is? Check with your machinists?

One problem with milling heads is that it cuts down on the size of the transfer port, between the valves and the cylinder. It's another built in restriction of flatheads. Perhaps, since you can mill .100 of the head in general, some die grinder work to open up that transfer area would be advantageous? Just in the 'roof' of that ramp area where the edge of the cylinder would be? I know that the highest compression heads had a port only an inch wide, and 1/4" deep. Darn archaic engine designs...

Can you CC your heads? Directions ought to be on the net somewhere.

(ETA: Here is a link <http://www.jrbranson.com/HondaRacer/honda/How-to-CC-a-head.htm>
end edit.

I think all it takes is a piece of Plexiglas big enough for one chamber, with two holes in it. Grease it to the head and fill with a syringe . The second hole allows air out. The range of dodge heads is 65 to 85 cc, erso. I calculate that mine at 7.8 would be about 80cc, but I have not had it off. I've got lots of time to find my horse syringe...

[maineSS]

Jason- If you're going to run dual carbs, make sure they are have identical internals (jet size/acc pumps, etc), or you'll have a tuning nightmare. The 1 Bbl B&B was used on a wide variety of cars & trucks, so it helps to know what your carb's history is. You have to be careful building compression (heat) in these engines because the cooling system isn't as efficient as modern designs. The system is not pressurized, it has an upflow radiator, and the 2-vane water pump impeller looks very prone to cavitation. A tractor-pull contestant in Tennessee noticed after a pull lasting 20-50 sec that every metal surface including the oil pan of the 230 was "blistering, spit frying hot", yet the coolant temp hardly changed- sounds like poor circulation to me. Chris- I was wondering why you looped the center tube down- you may have fuel droput at the bottom, as fuel will tend to separate from the air stream on the outside of a bend. It would be interesting to weld in a bung for a drain plug and see. The fuel/air stream in a flathead has a long and winding road compared to an OHV engine, so the key is to keep flow velocity up and manifold lengths short (triple sidedraft carbs would be best). Your comment about the PCV valve got me thinking about a device sold in the 80's called a "Condensator"- basically a separator in the PCV line that allowed oil mist, water vapor, and exhaust blowby to condense in a removable jar that could be removed and drained. In theory, crankcase fumes are supposed to be burned in the engine, but things like oil mist promote detonation, so a separator is likely better. Maybe the crankcase fumes in your situation were upsetting your fuel/air burning? I managed to locate one of the 1959 230 heads with the better valve pockets and 8:1 compression- should have it in sometime this week. Going on vacation to Seattle Fri for a week- hopefully I can post pics before then.

[chriscase]

First stroke is meaningless. It will depend on the pistons location- all the way down= your 80 psi. All the way up would = zero. And that variation means that it takes several strokes to get it all evened out. So ignore all readings except the final, after it has had plenty of cranks to max out. No preconceived number, just crank until the gauge stops rising. And don't get me started on wet tests, or I'll tell you what I think of them. And mechanics who charge money to do them.

I think a rule of thumb was every .005 = 1/10? so .100 could raise it from 6.7 to 8.7?

120 seems high, but that depends on your gauge. I seem to recall that my CC had 95 on a good Snap-On gauge.

What is the casting # on your head? Seven digits, plus maybe a -x. They did use 6-8 different castings, with some of the 218 heads having the smallest chambers. Apparently the latest heads had small temp sender holes for the electric gauge.