How to Build a 441" LS3 Short Block! - (tips & tricks)

how's it going guys in today's episode we are going to build a pretty cool 441 cubic inch LS engine [Music] every great engine needs a great Foundation so for this build we're going to use darts SHP aftermarket engine block this block has a couple really nice upgrades that make it very nice and special over a factory block my favorite one is the fact that it has a three Galley oil system Factory LS blocks only have a two Galley system which means the camshaft and the mains which oil the crankshaft have to share a galley with One Bank of the lifters the three Galley block design gives the cam and Mains its own Galley giving better oil flow through the engine the next is the fact that this block uses a six bolt cylinder head pattern for extra clamping Force now this engine is going to be naturally aspirated the six Bolt the fifth and sixth bolt probably aren't required but we've got them so let's use them another thing I really like about these blocks is they come with splayed Center Billet steel main caps by splaying the outer bolt you very greatly increase the structural rigidity of this block and the way that the crankshaft is supported and held in place by the main cap let me show you example of what I mean by splayed so this is the number one main shaft main cap excuse me on this block and this is the number two and you can see these outer bolts kick off at an angle splayed bolts very strong system the crankshaft for this build is a center counterweighted 4.125 stroke LS crank so the center counterweights really help on higher RPM combinations by Distributing the balance much more efficiently through the crankshaft at real high RPM or really high horsepower the crankshaft instead of turning straight all the way the middle of it might start to Bow like this kind of that makes sense if you like that motion and the center kind of weights help to eliminate that and give us a much straighter truer running crank moving on to the camshaft the brain of this engine we're running a hydraulic roller Comp Cam it's 247 on the intake 258 on the exhaust on a 112 lobe separation angle with three degrees of Advance built into the motor it also has a pretty stable valve ramp on it because this is going into a street driven C6 Corvette so it's going to see a lot of models we don't want a super aggressive race cam but we do want some duration under her to get some thump of course we're running our cementing h-beam 4340 forged Rod topped off with some je 2618 coated Pistons this engine with a flat top 5 CC dish piston and our 11 degree LS3 cylinder head will have 11.9 to 1 compression so right on the very edge of what I would feel comfortable running in a pump gas street car I think this customer is going to set it up on Flex Fuel so he can put 85 in it maybe sprinkle a little more timing on top and take advantage of the extra compression I have already blueprinted this whole engine because it's naturally aspirated and because we have a lot of really strong Parts going into a really strong engine block I'm running it a little tighter than you guys might expect I've got about 2-0 on the mains 1.8 to 20 on the rods and my rings are gapped 20 on top 22 on the second I've also already balanced this Center kind of weighted crankshaft so we are ready to start assembling the motor um foreign I really like these Snap-on wrenches because they actually count for you so if you're questioning yourself of whether you did all 20 bolts you've got a little counter kind of cool put a little paint mark on our fasteners that way if for whatever reason you need to walk away or something anyone who comes to the motor next knows that all these are torqued and final installed so crank fuels oh yeah super smooth no hiccups next we're going to check thrust clearance which is the crankshafts backwards and forwards clearance and the block get a little big flat head pull it back push your forward we've got five thou thrust clearance that's a great number pretty much if depending on horsepower rating uh if you've got a well let's just run through it real quick good rules of thumb if it's a naturally aspirated Street engine nothing too super crazy or radical you can run it down as tight as three to four thousands thrust five is kind of my ideal spec for a street engine even up to a potentially 700 horse combination if it's a drag race motor that's got like a big converter in it and it's leaving on a trans brake and it's smacking it with a lot of converter charge pressure you were going to want to increase that thrust clearance maybe to almost up to eight thousandths uh but for Street motor 5000 awesome cranks out a little bit of wiggle room in it and the next thing I want to show you guys is the crankshaft position sensor in relation to the reflector wheel when you run the start block okay so in here you can see our electric wheel and here's our crankshaft position sensor goes into the block a lot of people post that Dart has a lot of issues with this spacing being incorrect I kind of want to debunk that if you push this in and you push it and give it a nice solid thud it will drop right into place and have very tight clearance the size of the hole in the Dart Block around let me show you guys around this upper plastic ring is very tight so sometimes if that plastic is a little too big or has a burr on it it won't sit all the way flush against the block causing you to have a massive gap between the space the sensor and the reluctor and a lot of people will see that and think it's a block issue and they're just not pushing this in all the way something else I've done if it's really tight and I can't get it in with my hands is I come right on the back side of the sensor right in here with a tiny little flat head punch and just give it a nice love tap and you'll hear it drop into place to help support the camshaft timing set we have a Thrust bearing that goes in the back of the gear that's going to ride up against the thrust plate of the engine and we're just going to run the scam shaft straight up because it already has a few degrees of Advance built into it I personally like to run a little bit of Loctite on OS camshaft bolts as well doesn't hurt can only help and again do a little paint mark on here so we know everything is torqued and ready to go I like to grab the camshaft then do a little wiggle check you should feel it has some thrust you should feel a little bit of play in it I'm not going to put a gauge on it but just a little check to make sure it's there and now we can install our oil pump we're going to run the melling 10295 standard volume high pressure pump for this engine's application with the COPO Camaro spring installed so line it up pull it up onto the engine and I'm gonna show you guys the way that I like to install the ls pumps this is the way that we do it at our shop we've built I can't even count how many LS engines inside the pump this way and have never had a failure so a little lock tight on the bolts I thread them all in and I get them hand tight and I back it off a tiny bit just to crack it loose I'll show you why in a second you're running it up hand tight crack it loose and the pump should have a tiny little bit of wiggle room you'll be able to feel then take some regular break-in oil put a few pumps down the pump and now we're going to rotate the crankshaft over a few times and by doing that we're going to kind of line up everything inside that oil pump effectively getting it aligned so now we'll just spin it over a few times your torque wrench and torque them down right where they are I have already installed the Copo pressure spring which is going to increase the base pressure from about 65 to 85 and now that those are torqued what do we do mark them now you've got a pump that's aligned everything spins over super nice and we can carry on with our build clean assembly is obviously vastly important and I have already gone through and scrubbed the heck out of this block we just use a red shop rag with some brake clean and just really scrub the cylinders with your hands until the rag comes out clean and then come back with some compressed air blow all that lint away and your bores are clean these are Plateau honed as well so out of the home they are super clean compared to traditional Stone honing so throw on a glove grab our can of break-in oil and give all eight cylinders a generous coating of oil so that the piston rings and the Pistons can immediately start on some break-in oil pretty simple we use the driven br40 oil for this as our break-in oil for assembly foreign the short block is now complete it's assembled it spins over super smooth let's flip it over and take a look on top check out those Pistons looking so wheat here I want to get you guys off the tripod and show you this rings are in the Rings are in this motor and look how clean the cylinder walls look a lot of that's in part to the plateau home that we use with our Rottler h85ax super crazy good surface finish no Burrs anywhere the Rings are leaving no marks on the cylinders now I want to roll it over and show you guys the piston skirt how far it comes out of the hole on this Dart Block or how little I should say so let's watch cylinder number five here it's on its downstroke pokes its head out just a little bit and goes back up these Dart blocks have a much much longer sleeve extension on the bottom than the factory GM blocks so you can run a massive 4.125 stroke crankshaft in here and the Piston honestly guys has more support in here than a four inch crank does in an LS3 block the sleeves are so much longer that's why there's really nothing to be scared of when running a 4 125 stroke crank in these aftermarket Dart blocks I really don't recommend it in factory blocks because that sleeve is so short you would see basically almost half of that skirt hanging out of the board but with the aftermarket Block it's ready to go all we've got left to do now is seal off the short block put timing cover on rear cover oil pan uh we've got a windage tray for it as well so we're going to mock that up see what kind of clearancing we need and we will be on our way the last few things we got to do after that are going to be check our deck height so we can order the correct thickness head gaskets to give us 40 thousandths quench because this is an N A only engine if it was going to run a little bit of nitrous I might open that up to about 50 thou but na only deals 40 is perfect and then throw our gatorman link our lifters in so we're almost there okay back on the 441 it's actually a new day now we have these nice little Billet standoffs that adapt the Dart Block to use an oem style windage trick pretty cool so this ministry is specially made to clear the 4.125 stroke that this engine has and first before we seal up the timing cover on the oil pan we want to check the pickup tube excuse me the pickup tubes depth in relation to the pan so we're going to mock this up lightly and just lightly bolt everything into place then I'm going to install the pan and we'll measure the depth from the top of the pickup tube to the bottom of the pan so we'll just snug these two bolts up here with no washers or anything on it just to give it the deepest it can possibly be and I usually don't worry about installing the gasket for this stage you know it's about an eighth inch thick so I just kind of factor that into my thickness and the easiest way that I have found to do this is with a piece of tape just tape off the pickup tube and then I get a piece of just molding clay popper on it make a little little teepee out of her a little pyramid and then carefully set your oil pan down making sure you don't disturb that piece of clay and then we're going to squish it and seat to the block if we can all right let's take this off let's see what all we got so it looks like we're kind of perfect we've got currently we'll peel this back maybe 3 16 almost a quarter inch and then we install that eighth inch thick pan gasket we'll have pretty much exactly 3 8 which is perfect so now we're good to continue with the build take your tape off and we'll come back Loctite these two bolts final install the windage tray and we will be good to go obviously before we final install the window straight make sure that the connecting rods and the stroke clears I've already checked it so we'll carry on with this build a little bit of oil on this o-ring should have probably done this the first time around and like I said I always put a little bit of Loctite on these tiny two little bolts to help secure them into place just makes sense okay we are almost done with the 441 short block next step is going to be installing the timing cover I always put a little bit of sealant in the corners above and below the gasket lightly snug up the first couple bolts here and then we have a little alignment cut because these timing covers don't have a dowel slide that into place next that lines up the seal around the crankshaft and then I just check the Flats on the timing cover make sure they line up with the block it's a little bit of wiggle room to play with and then zip it down and then we can final torque the timing cover is installed last step oil pan same deal I like to put a little bit of RTV in the corners above the gasket Bridges a little bit of insurance keep no leak over here and we've got our nice gasket installed so now we can install our oil pan just like that um these oil fan bolts are always for any engine recommend starting all of them get them all threaded to help line up the gasket the pan on the Block before you tighten or Torque a single one like that we lined up [Music] personally I like to do a couple passes um LS fans aren't bad because they're cast and they have an O-ring aluminum shim gasket but small block engines with their big rubber gaskets and stamped steel oil pans will kind of settle and you'll have to re-torque the bolts but in this case all of these are still super tight didn't budge so probably not needed a little bit it doesn't look good now okay we are done working on the bottom of the motor flip her over and the last thing I need to do to wrap up this video for you guys is check or deck height on the motor so we can order the correct thickness head gasket to give us exactly 40 thou quench because this is going to be a natural aspirated only engine so let's put a little bit of quench in here help get a little bit more compression get that fuel atomized now this motor rotates over so smooth so it's a nice short block we'll bring her up nice and slow and we are 10 and the hole rock this in a little bit make sure there's nothing funky going on all right we're 10 in the hole so I'm gonna order a 30 000 stick head gasket we've got an iron block it's not going to change at all if it was an aluminum block the aluminum is going to expand I estimate probably four to six thou so an aluminum motor if I wanted forty thousandths and I was 10 in the hole I would try to get a 25 thick head gasket because when that block expands it's going to lift the head off the motor it's going to gain some quench iron it's not moving so we'll shoot it straight get some 30 thou head gaskets and in the next video we can finish this monster up [Music]

Channel: That Engine Guy

Views: 16,671

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Id: Agin_hGeunw

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023