cloudmaster's Journal: Stuff inside an engine

Well, I guess it's not good to have stuff inside of the cylinders on your typical small block Chevy engine. My car started making a knocking noise a week or so ago, but the valvetrain was fine. So, since I was planning to change the cylinder heads, intake, carb and cam anyway, I pulled it apart. In #1 and #4, there were some cast zinc (also known as pot metal) pieces, such as may have been on a carbueretor. Well, the carb's not missing any pieces, and nothing else is made of that material (the air cleaner's stamped steel, and the heads + intake are cast iron). My best guess is that the previous owner of the car this engine came out (80K mile '71 Chevelle) of dropped something in there, and it just recently broke free of whatever crap was holding it in place. The ports on the intake are comicly small, so this sounds reasonable to me.

Eh, nothing was damaged aside from the little chinks in the pistons (which aren't bad). The new heads (which I gasket matched and polished using Standard Abrasives' really nice kit) have bigger ports and a 58cc chamber rather than the 76cc stock combustion chamber, which should result in much more fun than the stock 8.5:1 compression ratio was giving me - this oughtta put me at about 10.5 or 10.7:1 if I'm getting the swept volume right. The small 4bbl carb works better than the stock 2bbl, the aluminum intake will be lighter and flow better than the cast-iron dualplane, and the mild cam is *way* better than the 1971 smogger engine cam. The engine was originally rated at like 170HP (307 cid / 5.1L), I'm hoping for 280-300 with a good torque curve this time, since the car's an '80 caprice "sport coupe" that still weighs a lot and has bad gears.

Anyone have a 7.5" chevy rear with something like a 3.08 ratio that they wanna get rid of? :)