As previously mentioned my free car time has been wrapped up with Dad's L78. All I can say is what a lousy build that WAS. I'm not sure who previously built this engine but upon tear down it was evident the job was very amateur. The crank was cut but not chamfered. The line bore was left alone but someone resized the rear main.... Needless to say the line bore was all out of wack and all the rods were out of round. Since we were this far, we wanted to make sure the heads were good too.... so we decided to send out the block and heads to Heath Hiebert (local Grand National boat racer) of Advanced Racing Engines in Riverside, CA. Great work. Great price. Most of the springs needed shimming from prior machine work to the seats. He corrected the line bore, replaced the cam bearings, honed the cylinders, did a valve job, and put new valve guide seals in the heads.
This car was strictly a show car, so I'm guessing the previous owner had on idea since he never really drove the car.
The 6223 crank was wasted after I spun the #8 bearing. The machine shop sold me one for dirt cheap and we had it cut .020" under on the mains and rod journals and polished it. The entire rotating assembly was balanced by Revco in Long Beach, CA. This guy, Gary, is amazing and very reasonable. He was able to resize the original dimpled rods too.
My friend and I reassembled it. New rings, new COMP 143 replica cam, new lifters, had the intake and water neck vapor honed (amazing process if you're unfamiliar), new Melling high volume oil pump etc... We broke in the cam, changed the oil and took it for a drive...
WOW!!! Amazing!! Engine is so smooth. Valvetrain nice and quiet. Great linear power, we installed the cam straight up. 16* initial timing, 38* total. Running it on Sunoco 110 leaded.... As I previously mentioned, we did see the motor had NOS TRW pistons.
Now... back to the Prospector
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