How to build a high horsepower street V8 engine | fullBOOST

[Music] 1974 xb yeah falcon 500. [Music] [Applause] [Music] seven years ago we published a simple video about building a high horsepower street based ford v8 engine today this video has millions of views on youtube and thousands of comments while overall it received a strong response many of these comments simply sum up how pessimistic the internet has become putting the uninformed aside we have consistently been asked by you guys for a more in-depth look inside what really goes on into building a high output street v8 engine so when frank marquis of dandy engines informed us of a project they had become involved in we were more than happy to jump on board dandy engines has been in operation since the mid-90s and features complete in-house machining services and dyno tuning facilities servicing customers from restoration work to supplying race teams dandy engines also holds numerous australian drag racing records as well as winning street machines prestigious drag challenge event on their first attempt to say they have the runs on the board is an understatement dandy engines has built a stable of naturally aspirated high output big cubes small block v8 street engines so this one isn't that much different for this particular engine and the owner klim the goal was quite clear make as much power as possible on pump fuel whilst maintaining good street manners and to fit under the factory bonnet of this ford xb coupe let's take a look at an inside view starting with an iron block by dart over to bob who is taking a closer preliminary look i've measured the crankshaft journal with a micrometer and then i've set this to the micrometer so i know exactly this is set at the shaft source so when i put it in there it's giving me the exact clearance between the shaft and the bearing there there's one two three nearly three and a half thou vertical clearance oil clearance between the crankshaft and the and the bearing and they're all pretty much the same within a couple of tenths because the impressive bearings that are machined eccentric you'll always get an extra flow across across that way in that way okay [Music] moving across to the boring machine where michael has picked up a set of ceramic coated diamond forged pistons these are essentially bigger than the bore of the block they are measured so michael knows what the current clearance is of the piston to bore [Music] back over to bob who has moved on to checking the alignment of the cali steel crankshaft this is a critical step in order to minimise premature bearing wear michael is now setting up to hone the block this process helps lubricate the piston rings as they travel up and down the cylinder bores this is achieved by creating very fine imperfections on the surface of the bore itself dandy engines bossman lu is now performing lifter boring this is a multi-step process as the engine is being fitted with solid roller lifters for less friction [Music] in order to achieve a perfectly straight tunnel the block is also line board on top of being prepared for a torrington thrust crankshaft bearing [Music] while lou continues to work on the block peter is weighing and balancing the pistons and rods why would you do this you may ask well the rotating weight of these items will essentially affect the harmonics of the engine a small imbalance could become quite problematic in an engine like this that will rev beyond 8000 rpm [Music] peter sets up the bob weight which basically represents the conrod piston rings and wrist pin for balancing purposes the crankshaft is spun up to 500 rpm which is the recommended speed of the crankshaft for balancing with the bob weight attached in order to determine where the imbalance might lie turning his attention back to the block peter is now honing the cam tunnels due to the larger oversized camshaft core [Music] moving back to the top of the engine michael is checking that the valves are seating correctly we're building a 468 windsor based with a cleveland head engine for a street car that wants a lot of power we are enlarging the ring end gap to suit the application of the engine it's a high compression unleaded engine so therefore the cylinder pressures and temperatures will be high yeah i want to just make sure the oil ring gap is sufficient we are removing the sharp edges from the grinder enlarging the ring gap and we're using a diamond file not just a normal file and now we need maximum loop frank on this cam this will have plenty of lubrication because last time we made the video he didn't put anything i got i got cane for not putting enough lube so there you go guys everything's lubricated we won't skimp on lube this time not that we had a problem with the last one but for for the viewers that thought we didn't put enough lube on it we've got enough now [Music] okay we've numbered these bearings as they've all been pre-measured and the crankshafts had the clearance ground into it so we did check all our clearances first for those viewers that will question that i like to lubricate the seal so it doesn't go on dry this is a cali's magnum these are the caps that hold the crankshaft down known as the main bearing caps [Music] two or three stages yeah these ones we're going to torque the first slot at 60 in the next slot at 100 foot pounds now i'm using foot pounds because i'm old school i'm not using newton meters we're checking the end float on the crankshaft allowing the crankshaft to just have a little bit of movement without binding so we'll push it one way and find the end of the float and then push it the opposite way and it has six thousandths of an inch perfect okay here we're checking the cam float it's the end float in the camshaft so the camshaft doesn't bind up for instance if that's too tight and it pushes on the camshaft it can't turn so we're just making sure that there's enough clearance on the thrust bearing so it doesn't bind up 12 foul i'm happy with that so you've already assembled this engine correct what what is the purpose of doing that just to make sure that all the clearances between the piston and the valve is correct making sure that the crankshaft rotation has clearance nothing comes out of the box perfect the in flight that we were checking is for the crankshaft to have something to stop against without trying to grind into metal so like the last engine we've found this one's running a belt drive instead of a timer correct we just find it easier to maneuver on the dyno for changing cam timing and finding the sweet spot this one has an external distributor so it allows us to do more things just installing a cam seal plate if you don't remove that key it damages the seal [Music] the fact that the engine's internally balanced it makes it nicer when you've got a good dampener on there it doesn't cause any vibrations or harmonics through the engine makes the parts last longer just a retainer plate to hold the gear on we may have to remove it from the tooth out torqued up to a very small specification very light what we're going to do now is put the pistons on the rods all the bolts and put the bearings in the con rods and compression static compression is one thing it's dynamic compression is what it's about so it's when you shut the valve and the piston's going to travel if it's 90 of the ball or or the last 30 of the ball that's what's going to create your dynamic and the dynamic is what can make a car pin if you've got too much dynamic like a lot of compression with a small cam is a big no-no because it you create a lot of solar pressure but the bigger the can and then you add the compression statically that allows the dynamic to be correct for the camshaft we like generally like to use an oliver rod in an engine like this that's going to make 800 horsepower plus um the oliver rods have proven themselves to be strong and and last the distance the piston is a a diamond custom piston we like the the coatings on them just makes them last longer that the tops are heat coating the sides of molly it just helps the skirts be protected over over time it does rub off so don't think it stays like that the whole time but it takes a fair while for it to rub off and the gold well it discolorates pretty much instantly but the protection of the ceramic coating allows it to withstand it won't stop it from melting a piston but it will withstand heat excessive heat if you do miss the tune up a bit an oliver rod is is a highly priced rod but they do have a good reputation we run them in turbo cars that make two 2000 plus so you know they're going to survive all day long in a 18 100 horsepower engine in this combination with this camshaft we like to run around 12 and a half to one we know it works well with 98 we've had cars run 970s in a 3 500 pound card over the quarter mile so we deem it to be good enough there we've tried 13 to 1 but it just doesn't work as good as 12 and a half do the pins come with the pistons or are they you basically got the order what you want the thickness of the pin the size of the length of the pin so they are an extra when ordering custom pistons okay these are the spiral locks that hold the gauging pin or the wrist pin in place australians say gudgeon pin but i know the americans will be like what's that it's a wrist pin it's two per side so each piston has four of them not many people like fitting these but over the years i've learned to just deal with it because the cameras on me they're called gas ports and the purpose of them is to trap well the compression goes into the hole and presses against the ring harder against the ball so it gets better sealing you you can just see in the top there of the top ring we're putting the uh the oil ring spacers they hold the actual there's three bits to an oil ring and you can if you include the rail at the bottom there's four pieces and we fit in the second ring [Music] [Music] [Music] plumbing [Music] [Music] [Music] we're making sure the taper ends up on that taper because if we were to put it that way the square edge would bind up in that corner radius so what are you doing there just checking the f in float making sure the rods have got enough clearance if they were tight that means they were going to bind up so frank just dialing in the cam shaft yeah correct we are making sure that the valve events and the cylinder head occur at the the right time relation to the piston and by changing that valve event it can alter the power band of the engine like many high-powered small block cords that dandy engines build this engine will be using cylinder heads by higgins race heads these are australian manufactured cnc ported flowing over 400 cfm and come in street and race variants [Music] we are setting this the spring install height which is when the spring sits with the valve shut it will pretty much give us a pressure so this is the installation of the valve stem seals correct this just stops the oil from going into the cylinders what valves are these fourier 6000 series all right here we go what's that telling us frank okay the spring rate of the spring basically and then the installed height is where the spring is mounted in the cylinder head with the valve shut has 257 pounds of seat pressure and then when the valve is fully open it will show here around 840. [Music] so you use these ceiling ring zone quite a few high horsepower engines now yep we find that they seal a hundred percent mainly in our um boosted application we find that um they're almost more worthy to run but if we can trap everything in an aspirated engine we'll make more power [Music] [Music] mm-hmm i did last time worked they're probably going to tell me that i'm pulling on the torque wrench too hard using this head top of head gasket is our choice it's doesn't mean that you can't get away with the other one it's just something we prefer [Music] machining these blocks down to clear the studs just making things fit in the motor sure everything comes out of the pack at 100 percent why are you dumb i like them to soak and fill the rollers up with oil yeah this is extreme extreme an extreme lube for high pressure use tablet clearance is important unless you've got an ls with a hydraulic cam just going to take some of the clearance up so the push doesn't pop out we're sitting the lash so that we'll set the clearance between the valve and the rocker tip in this case it's 18 thou which is this thing is one mil so 40 hours such a bit okay so it's about half a mil yeah half a mil [Music] what sort of oil capacity does this sump hole these hold generally about six liters six to six and a half liters we we put seven and a half so by the time the engine starts it fills the oil filter and probably all the oil galleries [Music] with the engine complete it's ready for the dyno as frank finishes off the final touches [Music] the reason for not putting the water pump on the dyno is so we can get to the cam gear and adjust the cam timing the crank trigger tells the ecu when the crankshaft will wet which position the crankshaft is in so we can determine when to fire the ejectors in the spell and the spark which is that which is that unit there [Music] [Music] so frank we've finally got the engine uh on the dyno it's been a long time coming a lot of work yeah it doesn't happen overnight the engine's been running which it's a roller cam so pretty much all we do is bend the rings in we've made a few pulls established what we want to establish from the fuel map and ignition map and then we remove the intake manifold and lower it down so we're hoping to make all this fit under a bonnet of the next big coup so we've we've dropped the manifold as far as we can yeah yeah because it wasn't going to clear was it that way he didn't want yeah it was too high for what we were doing so we wanted to look as a sleeper as much as we can yeah all right why don't we start it up and we'll get back into tuning [Music] [Music] so [Music] so there you go guys we've finished up with an 866 uh horsepower 640 foot pound we're pretty happy considering the manifold has been chopped down to fit under a bonnet of the next beam time will tell when we go for a spin in the car how good it is this has been built to suit the application of what we're doing yeah which is building a street car with as much power on pump fuel keeping it all restricted to under the bonnet and we've installed an ft 500 fuel tech something we like because it's basic comes with a pre-made harness plug-and-play and we can ride a map consistent consisting of pounds per hour so same as the carbohydrate which made it very quick to ride the fuel map one point i wanted to touch on a lot of our videos people i see they say the engine's laggy and they don't understand the dyno is controlling the engine they just see the throttle cable and say it's laggy can you maybe in simple terms explain why that is it's very simple as as we open the throttle on the controller here it's a wide open throttle the butterflies go to 100 i set my low rpm which is no different to setting your store speed on converter and then we've released the button no different to releasing a trans brake and therefore it will reach it will climb at 300 rpm per second allowing the engine to reach its maximum rpm of 7700 so it's no different to releasing the trans brake and then duplicating or simulating what the car does in top gear yeah so it's simulating what it's doing in the back end of the track correct it's no different it's almost like seeing the gear change on first to second and then you're you're recording the data from when the engine drops to its lowest rpm point which is what the store speed controls to its highest rpm point so at the moment we're still working our way through putting the motor in the car and setting up all the fine details where we're just mocking up how our we're going to get our power steering system to sort of work with the mechanical oil pump with the fuel pump cable running off the back behind it got the alternator on the left hand side mounted low because we're trying to keep everything neat so that we have you know the majority of the cylinder heads exposed and we can sort of see the beauty of the motor um still got a fair bit to go just mocking up the fuel tech loom at the moment making sure we've got a place to put all of the sensors and then we're about to put you know things like the fuel lines coming up into the back of the motor making sure we have clearance from the exhaust everywhere we need to so it's a cable driven mechanical fuel pump a waterman one so we run a it's like a thick speedo cable that runs down off the back of the mechanical oil pump so we run that underneath the car clear of everything into the fuel pump and it drives it mechanically we find that's a lot more reliable and gives us more consistent fuel pressures and then we have a small little primer pump which just will come on for a couple seconds on startup just to make sure that the mechanical mechanical pump's primed and that it's going to fire straight away and he's just going to be able to lean in hit the key and it starts every time we still got a hole that we've got to patch up in the boot floor that was there when we got the car so we'll go through once everything's sort of mocked up and we know all where the lines are going to be we'll just be able to tidy everything up and get the finished result we want so wilwood's front and back with i think they're all four part 355 mil rotors on the front and rears with a set of extractors we've got from competition engines they supply them for us and then we've got the moroso sump and then we go to we do a mechanical oil pump which is our normal deal on a motor like this uh these are just mocking up lines at the moment so we'll remake them once we sort of know everything is going to fit and exactly what angle fittings we need everywhere we've got a two-speed power glide behind it with a tce converter twin three and a half inch exhaust which we've just tacked together at the moment so we'll buff and clean it all before we and then tig weld the whole system before we finish it off so we're running on this particular one we're going three and a half inch over the nine inch diff so it's a pretty tight squeeze but you know we're working through that and making sure we have clearance so that it's not going to interfere anywhere we've got four hooker aero chamber mufflers which for a car making this much power it's going to be fairly loud and we find these you know give it a good note and keep it pretty quiet yeah this is what we normally want run the weld on fuel pressure reg because he's got a bit going on in his engine bay we'll probably put this in the return line in the boot and look nice there and we'll move the sensor up into the fuel rail or something like that got a systems one remote oil filter which will tuck up under the passenger guard and run you know through bulkheads through the inner guard into a nice little serviceable item there try not to have anything underneath it so that when you open it you don't spill oil over everything underneath and you can check it regularly because it's a really good way to figure out if something's hurting the motor or not so we've basically just been setting up the loom inside the car a little bit we started off with a fuel tank terminated loom so it's pretty easy it already has all the plugs on it so in consultation with klim we sort of figured out he'd want to keep all of his own factory um dash cluster and to not ruin that we're able to bring the fuel tech harness through the dash and just have a simple mount here and we'll mount it you know put the block off plate behind it and make a nice little mount for it so on that he'll be he'll have all of his fuel pressure you know oil pressure water temp stuff like that rpm will all be displayed he can make on-the-go changes to the tune-up or anything like that if he has various different tunes for different things like that and that's the whole ecu so that'll control the entire engine system um and it's a nice clean look just being able to mount one little simple thing and keep the you know classic original interior intact i've just spoken to frank at dandy engines and he tells me that xb is up and running so we're just gonna head down there now and check that out get it up and runner frank yes it's finally all come together i'm gonna pop the uh bonnet and give us a look awesome just got the uh overflows for the one of the overflows i breathe the tanks coming last two things to plumb up and good to go [Music] so two years in the making you must be pretty hanging here give this a bit of a spin i can't wait mate i'm excited let's go inside and have a look at it let's go [Music] so clint tell us a bit about the car what year is it it's a 1974 xb yep falcon 500 gs uh original um black car with the w2 trim and you've had it you said it earlier about seven seven seven years now yeah and you had a sort of a bit of a mild engine in it before this yeah just the mould um well actually i work 351 and um it was time for an upgrade yep you know i have the feel i need to need the power there it's a fair upgrade yeah why not go all the way so the wheels were on it yeah the wheels were on it when i bought the car actually bought her off a friend so i've upgraded you know running gear and brakes and all the suspensions new and all the interiors redone yeah the factory specs so she's got the uh injection on this one too yeah injection yeah fuel tech it's got higgins new ford heads on it i like the fact you've got it all under the bonnet yeah that's what i love mate yeah i don't like that you know why i ruin a i know an expensive bonnet you can't replace it yeah exactly that often all right what do you say we uh go take it for a drive let's go and then there's the 850. [Music] [Music] how's the first drive beautiful mate loving it looks pretty smooth super smooth doing about 100k at about 3100 up here it's a shame when you get to the destination because you just want to keep driving it's better than i expected yeah awesome it was pleasant it was just too pleasant [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Fullboost

Views: 462,595

Rating: 4.9096899 out of 5

Keywords: fullboost, ford falcon, ford falcon xb, mad max, engine building, V8 engine, windsor, cleveland, clevor, performance, horsepower, aussie, dandy engines, fueltech, all motor, natural, naturally aspirated, aspirated, higgins, higgins race heads, callies, crank, rods, pistons, how to build and engine

Id: HvHi2QFGxUQ

Length: 32min 40sec (1960 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/408mach1]

The 351 Cleveland (or Clevor in this case) is so bad ass!

[u/mrk240]

cast iron block + boost = win!?

The Fullboost boys are always enjoyable to watch.