Easy Upgrades for a Stock Big Block Chevy - Engine Power S8, E19

[Music] you're watching power nation today on engine power we build a hard pulling big block chevy and we brought along some friends to help [Music] [Applause] not bad at all that's not bad let's check that out hey yeah there we go pretty good hey everyone welcome to engine power usually you see us build engines that make power in the mid to upper rpm range just because they're application specific well today we're doing something a little bit different we've been getting a lot of requests and comments for doing something in the low rpm range so today is your lucky day we dug through the warehouse and found us an engine we think is a suitable candidate this is a 454 chevy out of an 80s one ton now we don't know a whole lot about it because it is a takeout so we decided to get it up on the pump and see what it's all about and see if it's worthy to work on and speaking of working on it we're gonna have some help today in the shop and they're from frankie's friends that's right i'm a graduate of the university of northwestern ohio and i still have several friends that are current students so i decided to invite a few of them down so they could help us out installing some budget-minded upgrades to increase some low end torque on our big block 454 the university of northwestern ohio located in the city of lima is highly regarded for their college of applied technologies which includes programs in automotive diesel and high performance technology the curriculum is roughly 30 textbook instruction and 70 percent hands-on experience we have our textbook side which is all you know all great and everything but the hands-on side really ties everything together allows you as a student to get the best experience out of everything you read it one day go out and work on it the next day it's also a great experience and fantastic for learning the course work along with many opportunities such as internships and industry-specific clubs lets students explore a wide variety of fields giving them the time and experience they need to discover and grow their interests and passions in the automotive world so they can bounce around try this job try that job try the next job until they find the perfect fit and when they come back and i get that email or i get that phone call i get to talk to them about how excited they are and hearing that they've built that confidence in themselves and their future it's more rewarding than anything i ever thought i would expect we're a big enough school to give a lot of amazing opportunities and that's why our graduates get to go all over the world but it's also small enough to feel like home with small class sizes students receive plenty of one-on-one interaction and they are encouraged to ask questions it's a great environment because it's not like a huge mega school it's still a small enough environment where you can connect to each other fairly easily my favorite part is definitely working with some of the instructors i'm able to ask them questions and get honest answers to create my own opinions on things joining us today are some guys that i actually went to school with my good buddies john hartman and jack rush so this guy's this thing made like 460 pound feet and around 305 horsepower so the idea is to increase some low rpm torque while still going easy on the wallet we don't want to like blow the budget out the window so and doing that we are going to retain the stock cylinder heads obviously the stock block but we need to move some more air through this engine so what's the best way to do that my thoughts is we can change the cam shaft that's a real good budget friendly i would agree with that that'll work i mean we can keep the stock heads and just waking up with a camshaft i think is a good idea flat tap it if we keep it flat tap it it's still pretty affordable so so for changing the camshaft are we gonna have to change the valve train up yeah we can go ahead and see what springs are in there maybe we'll do a spring upgrade and we can even do some roller rocker arms because that's a pretty affordable way to kind of improve the valve train so now that being said before we do any of that i want to get this engine completely apart because it is an unknown quantity it's a takeout engine so i'd like to check all the bearings make sure there's nothing wrong with it internal make sure we have something good to work with now you guys have one of these dynos so i think you know how to remove this and get it on engine stand so uh you're up yes sir let's do it all right i'm gonna stay out of the way oh jeez yeah beautiful both jack and john have earned their associate's degrees in automotive high-performance technology and they are in the process of earning their bachelor's of science degrees in business john has concentrations on automotive aftermarket and marketing and jack has a concentration on marketing engines can sometimes be full of unpleasant surprises but the oil looks great so that's a good sign so far so good yeah a little dark [Applause] as we continue the tear down we don't see any indications of heavy wear or damage that looks pretty good to me the piston tops are pretty clean and there's even a fair amount of crosshatch in the bores we'll get the oil pump out mark all the rods and then pull all the rod and piston assemblies out [Music] the rod bearings have slight wear but nothing alarming so we'll reuse them oh nice you guys found the rod boots huh yep sure did don't want to scratch up the journal when we take the rod out exactly got it so what are you guys looking for when you pull those out so on the top of the piston we will check for uh detonation and see if we have any pinging for the rings we want to make sure that they spin freely if they should get stuck we could have a larger issue and we'll also look at the skirts and see if there's any extra wear that could cause some potential issues not too bad it looks about the same as the rod bearings so coming up will our mix of existing parts and carefully calculated upgrades lead to success in the dyno cell we'll find out today pat and i are taking things a little easier because we've got jack rush and john hartman from unoh working in the shop the rebuild begins by installing the old bearings and the new victor rines rear main seal to keep costs low we'll reuse the stock main cap fasteners which get torqued to 110 pound-feet we will be reusing our stock rod and piston assemblies because quite frankly they're in fantastic shape but we do want to improve the ring seal one way we could potentially do that would be to gas port the piston gas porting is common in high performance engines for improving ring seal by drilling into the top ring land either horizontally or vertically to let combustion pressure in behind the ring and forcing it out on the cylinder but there are some distinct disadvantages to doing that one being weakening the top of the piston and that can cause all types of problems total seal has developed a better way of gas porting by integrating the port into the top of the piston ring itself this is more efficient in allowing gas pressure to travel behind the ring and force it outwards against the cylinder wall providing a tighter ring seal which leads to higher efficiency and horsepower the ring is made of 440b stainless steel utilizes total seal's proprietary ap ring process and has an aerospace grade c33 pvd face coating for a longer life span after gapping the rings for our application they are installed with the ports facing up since the original rod bearings are in great shape we'll slide them into place and get them prepped for installation we'll use total seal assembly lube on the new ring set making sure to work it into the ring lands we'll also apply a thin film to the cylinder bores this is critical to establish proper ring seal during startup [Music] with the short block wrapped up we'll reinstall the aftermarket oil pump that came with the engine torquing the stud to 65 pound-feet following john's budget-friendly advice we're installing a new comp cams hydraulic flat tappet camshaft from summit racing equipment at 50 000 slip it has 234 degrees of intake duration and 244 degrees of exhaust duration lobe separation angle is 112 degrees john's degreed plenty of cams at unh so we'll let him take the wheel on this one it comes in at 105 and a half degrees of intake center line which is six and a half degrees advanced with a new victor ryan's gasket the used timing cover is reinstalled now that we've got our timing cover on we can move on to our oil pan we're going to be sealing that up with a victor ryan's one piece oil pan gasket it's molded rubber around a steel core and has compression stops so the gasket doesn't smush out when you tighten it down victor reins is well known in the european market but they also have a wide variety of gaskets for u.s manufacturers for both old and late model vehicles for our 454 they have things like intake and exhaust manifold gaskets oil pan gaskets timing cover sets and even a complete head gasket set for any surfaces that need a little help sealing we're going to be using victor ryan's rhinestone seal this works in many different applications because it's good from negative 58 all the way up to 572 degrees fahrenheit it's also resistant to fuels oils grease water and even salt water for marine applications we'll put a little bit on the mating surfaces of our block put our gasket on and then we can get our oil pan bolted down [Music] the new lifters are chevrolet performance hydraulic flat tappets from summit racing equipment they receive installation loop and are slid into the block finally we'll reinstall the summit bracket racer harmonic damper which is sfi approved up next the big block gets a heavy duty efi system that's ready to rumble john and jack are hard at work on our big block chevy build setting true tdc on the balancer and lapping the valves what's the reason you lap valves we're looking for that seat to valve contact and seeing how it seals up that tells you what kind of concentricity you have if you have some nice even seal around the valve this one was running okay so i'm not expecting any problems so that's fine you got it now [Music] perfect with our head gaskets in place and our short block looking sharp it's time to reinstall our cast iron stock and actually very heavy peanut port cylinder heads and we'll be bolting them down with arp hardware arp goes through an extensive measurement and engineering process to ensure that the right amount of fastener is in the cylinder head and has proper thread engagement into the block so the fastener works like it's supposed to arp has several different materials to use depending on your application from 8740 chromoly stainless steel or more exotic things one thing that's important is arp includes with every kit they sell some very detailed and precise instructions on how to install their fasteners since our head bolts go into the water jacket they receive arp ultra torque loop under the bolt head and sealant on the threads perfect continue on i'll stay out of the way following arp's instructions the head bolts are torqued in three equal steps to a final value of 70 pound feet we'll reuse the stock push rods and apply some extreme pressure lube to both ends now what rockers are those jacks these are the comp cams probe magnums it's a really nice rocker it's the 1.7 ratio which happens to be the stock ratio very nice we'll install them in the firing order setting them one half turn past zero lash as we go so half turn past that all right to give our engine a clean timeless look we'll paint it gloss black since our engine is going to be used in a street or towing application we wanted to go with a nice fuel injection setup over a carburetor this is going to make cold starts fuel efficiency and drivability much much better we chose to go with phytex goport efi system and it comes with pretty much everything you need to get it running including a wiring harness with a few simple connections an o2 sensor and a handheld that can do all the setup and tuning we've already gone ahead and pre-assembled our setup including our 80 pound and hour fuel injectors which makes the system good for up to 1050 horsepower our painted fuel rails our coolant temp sensor in the front and our throttle body on top this is really nice because the module is mounted inside so you don't have to worry about mounting it in the car all we have to do now is get this system installed and then we're one step closer to the dyno some weather strip adhesive will hold the victor ryan's intake manifold gaskets in place and a bead of rinds of steel is laid down on the china wall this phytec injection kit uses an edelbrock efi intake manifold that will fit any oval port big block chevy it drops right into place and is cinched down with some arp fasteners valve train assembly spray lubricates the springs for protection during initial startup victorine's molded rubber gaskets will seal up our repainted valve covers [Music] the fuel injection system requires an o2 sensor so jack makes good use of the welding skills he learned at unoh adding a bun for the sensor and an evac port [Music] we got our moroso evac system as a kit from summit racing equipment it's a very affordable way to add a little extra power to your engine [Music] after a few simple connections our phi tech unit powers right up and the ecu can be programmed for the engine up next we give our engine spark and then we fire it up one of the last and possibly most important systems we need to install on our engine is the ignition system and that starts with a good spark plug we use e3 spark plugs all the time and we always have great results we've even done some testing to show their performance gains their plugs have some really unique features that make them stand out from a traditional j wire style plug first they have an open ground electrode which helps direct the spark and flame front into the combustion chamber faster they also have sharp edges on both electrodes which helps start the migration of electrons making it easier to initiate a spark this means that more of the air fuel mixture can be burned before the exhaust valve opens increasing efficiency and power it's also important that spark plugs have a long life span and e3 plugs have been tested and proven to maintain power better over standard plugs for up to 20 million combustion cycles we'll apply a little bit of anti-seize lubricant to the threads to keep them from galling on installation and more importantly removal after the engine has run at operating temperature [Music] now that we've got our spark plugs installed we can move on to how we're actually going to generate the spark we're going to be doing that with a pretronix ignition bundle this is for a small block or big block chevy and it all starts with one of their low resistance 45 000 volt flame thrower 2 ignition coils this is going to feed one of their ready to run billet distributors and it has a flame thrower igniter 2 module in it the best part about these is that they are ready to run distributor so there's only two wires to hook up one to an ignition and one to the negative post on the coil from there we'll be using a set of their eight millimeter universal 90 degree boot wires to distribute it to each spark plug we've already gone ahead and pre-assembled these but this whole thing comes as a complete kit so now that it's all ready all we have to do is get it on our engine after lubing the gear the distributor drops into place we'll install the coil in a temporary mount for use in the dyno cell [Music] engines have advanced in both technology and outright power at a very rapid pace in the last 10 years which is a good thing but a lot of the stresses associated with that performance fall on engine oil to keep efficiency up and the engine living a great way to fortify any oil's ability to protect your investment is to add fr3 friction reducer from hot shots secret three patented technologies combined to reduce friction lower oil operating temps and improve both shear and oxidation stability in any oil you add it to it uses carbon nanolubricant molecules that attach to microscopic irregularities of machined surfaces to increase film strength and decrease wear up to 43 percent which can also increase your engine's efficiency and free up some horsepower this is a 100 percent synthetic formula that can not only protect and reduce friction in your engine it can be used in any closed lubrication system like your transmission differentials power steering you get the idea dosage is about 1.5 ounces of fr3 per quart of oil it is safe for both gas and diesel applications and all conventional or synthetic oils the bottle has some handy increments on it so with 10 and a half ounces we're gonna run it right down just below the six ounce mark [Music] all right i think we got her [Music] what are you guys going to do make more power hopefully you guys ready i'm ready let's go all right well it needs more power oh yeah i'm not sure if it made more torque a little bit oh no yeah look at that the big block put out 380 horsepower a gain of 82 peak compared to our baseline run it made 471 pound-feet of torque a gain of 10 peak over the baseline we made several runs and made some adjustments deciding on 36 degrees of total timing and a 13-1 target air fuel ratio we also ran the engine a little higher from 2500 to 5000 rpm oh yeah that's a big difference yeah that's really bad after after 3 500 it just crushes the other one right into the earth so our final numbers are 390 horsepower and 473 pound-feet of torque compared to the peak horsepower and torque numbers the averages tell the real story the engine picked up 22 average horsepower and 25 pound-feet of torque all below 5000 rpm guys you're the ones that put this together what do you think it's amazing like you go from the hole it was on the dyno before we tear down build it back up like it's awesome experience it's great to see on the dyno making more power what do you think looks great it's running great as you see by the numbers the improvements that we tried to make they're happening so i'd say pretty good yeah well you guys had a huge part in that i mean we honestly we didn't really do too much you guys did most of it yeah this is i mean this is this is an engine that you guys built we'd like to thank john and jack for their work on this build two guys who are dedicated to their profession the only thing you can control is your attitude and your effort there's resources there's tools or people that are willing to help you you just have to put in the effort in order to do so if you liked what you saw here go to powernationtv.com for more [Music]

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 189,821

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, Chevy 454, big block, torque, horsepower, engine power, unoh, university of northwestern ohio

Id: XfZvNu940ns

Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 14 2021