A
Anonymous
Guest
The steel ones I've been referring to are just a steel stamping, a lot like those BrandX ones you mentioned...you have to put your own sealant in all the little grooves, so you gotta be quick like Superman upon assembly 
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If the Aussie engines don't use these steely ones, I'm interested in knowing the deck height measurements that those engines have. I've seen in the American Mustangs' 200 engines some heights up to almost .100", which seems outrageous. Mostly they seem to run around .045" on the 3.3L version (1978 and later). Some other guys have told me numbers like .050" (early 60s Falcon) and even a variance of .010" from one cylinder to the next. I suspect that last one must have had some really loose rods or something.
CZLN6's brother actually cut one into a negative deck height of .005" in his Ranchero, I've heard. If I wasn't afraid of running into water, I'd try that right off the bat, since the quench then would be .005 LESS than the gasket thickness. That's a nice, tight squish for real high speed mixing in the chamber. If one took the time to smooth the chamber and de-ridge the sparkplug boss, this would give a real even flamefront, even at CR up to 11:1 . Then, using lower-octane fuel because of lack of ping, you could get more power the old-fashioned way: earning it..
Lest I start a war here - the lower octane you can run without ping, the more power you will make, all else being equal (CR, charge size, burn rate, etc.). That's just physics. The problem in most engines is introduced in cylinder-to-cylinder differences that cause slight imbalance in the rotational speed of the crank. This causes the next cylinder to be 'out of rhythm', if you will, just slightly, which creates a need to detune it slightly to live with the problem or else raise the octane to make it burn a little slower to buffer the differences. This nature of multi-cylinder engines becomes very nasty at high RPM (like 10,000 and above), twisting cranks clean in two if the cylinder-to-cylinder differences exceeds 0.5%, especially when running alcohol or nitro, since they burn so fast.
When I went into my 200 for the first time, I remember going slack-jawed when I looked at the castings in the combustion chambers. They are so bad that I can easily understand why high RPM is not an easy option for these sixes. If someone were to take the time to match them up for flow and volume, there would be a serious jump in power and economy together. But, if mine is typical, it would add about 2.5cc to 4cc to each chamber to clean up the show. Then you'd have to figure out how to lose this volume somewhere else, like flat-top pistons, or something.. :roll:
Maybe if we get lots of snow this winter and I can find a head to play with, I'll dig into this more. I work in a machine shop with every imagineable CNC machine at hand, software, and almost half the crew are racers. I'd hate to tell y'all what they think of me playing with these sixes...
.If the Aussie engines don't use these steely ones, I'm interested in knowing the deck height measurements that those engines have. I've seen in the American Mustangs' 200 engines some heights up to almost .100", which seems outrageous. Mostly they seem to run around .045" on the 3.3L version (1978 and later). Some other guys have told me numbers like .050" (early 60s Falcon) and even a variance of .010" from one cylinder to the next. I suspect that last one must have had some really loose rods or something.
CZLN6's brother actually cut one into a negative deck height of .005" in his Ranchero, I've heard. If I wasn't afraid of running into water, I'd try that right off the bat, since the quench then would be .005 LESS than the gasket thickness. That's a nice, tight squish for real high speed mixing in the chamber. If one took the time to smooth the chamber and de-ridge the sparkplug boss, this would give a real even flamefront, even at CR up to 11:1 . Then, using lower-octane fuel because of lack of ping, you could get more power the old-fashioned way: earning it..
Lest I start a war here - the lower octane you can run without ping, the more power you will make, all else being equal (CR, charge size, burn rate, etc.). That's just physics. The problem in most engines is introduced in cylinder-to-cylinder differences that cause slight imbalance in the rotational speed of the crank. This causes the next cylinder to be 'out of rhythm', if you will, just slightly, which creates a need to detune it slightly to live with the problem or else raise the octane to make it burn a little slower to buffer the differences. This nature of multi-cylinder engines becomes very nasty at high RPM (like 10,000 and above), twisting cranks clean in two if the cylinder-to-cylinder differences exceeds 0.5%, especially when running alcohol or nitro, since they burn so fast.
When I went into my 200 for the first time, I remember going slack-jawed when I looked at the castings in the combustion chambers. They are so bad that I can easily understand why high RPM is not an easy option for these sixes. If someone were to take the time to match them up for flow and volume, there would be a serious jump in power and economy together. But, if mine is typical, it would add about 2.5cc to 4cc to each chamber to clean up the show. Then you'd have to figure out how to lose this volume somewhere else, like flat-top pistons, or something.. :roll:
Maybe if we get lots of snow this winter and I can find a head to play with, I'll dig into this more. I work in a machine shop with every imagineable CNC machine at hand, software, and almost half the crew are racers. I'd hate to tell y'all what they think of me playing with these sixes...
) the deck height on a 221 is about 15-20 thou, tops. Chamber 58-60cc, CR static is 9.3:1. I guess that means I should be able to work out the dish... The 200 was similar in deck, but smaller chambers (48.5-50.5). I can double check in a few days if you must know. 
