[rpol78]

I'm getting ready to build my first LS engine and thought I'd look for any words of wisdom from the group since this forum seems to have the most experience with the LSAs. I've built several small block and big block chevys but this is my first LS. I've been reading several posts and am a little concerned about my cam choice for one and need to size the injectors. I'm thinking ID1300s for the injectors. Also I'm trying to decide between a 3" and 3.25" upper pulley for the supercharger. I'd like to be able to run on 93 pump gas but am planning on adding a flex fuel sensor to allow for E85. Also I'm hoping by going to a 3.825" stroke instead of a 4" stroke the stock piston oil squirters will work.

For starters, I looked at the Lingenfelter 900hp crank HP on 93 octane pump gas engine to get ideas and would like to get somewhere in that neighborhood. I've changed things enough that the engine will be a little unique.

-4.065 bore x 3.825 stroke (Same bore and stroke as COPO 396)
-LS9 Block and LS9 CNC Heads
-Callies Magnum 3.825 Stroke 8 CTW crank
-Callies Ultra I beam 6.125 Rods
-JE Pistons 8.9:1 with ceramic coating
-Total Seal Rings (second ring "gapless")
-BTR Stage 3 torque cam
-BTR Shaft Rockers
-Johnson 2110 Lifters
-Katech LS9 Head Studs
-Katech Timing Chain
-LS9 Head Gaskets
-Kong 2650 LSA Superchager
-ZL1 Supercharger Cover
-ATI balancer (8.66 SC Pulley)

FWIW - The rotating assembly arrived today from Callies so now I have most of the parts.

 

[rpol78]

Sounds sweet!
"FWIW - The rotating assembly arrived today from Callies so now I have most of the parts. " this is a VERY interesting option. Is there a part# for this as a set? Source?

It was custom. The crank is a custom stroke Magnum with the center counter weights . The pistons are JE 324033 which are for a 3.9 stroke but the pin loc was changed for the 3.825 stroke. I had the ceramic coating added and upgraded the pins to a thicker wall. Interestingly the Total Seal rings also say custom on the box. The rods are stock Callies. I wanted Callies to balance it so I ordered it all through them.

My son and I are planning on building the engine over the week after 4th of July. I'm still waiting on the BTR Rocker Shafts, the Johnson lifters, and the Kong 2650.

 

[rpol78]

You could run more compression- you'll have no issues running 93 pump on that and use a 3" pulley.

I'll be pulling my 3.0" off my Kong for a 2.75 / 9.55 rario and I have 10.1 - 1 CR on my motor. So if anything you're being conservative on the pulley ratio and that will make heat management easier!

The BTR cam should be fine also. Maybe not "ideal" but it will make good power for a street car. (Specs: 223/246 .610"/.600" 117+6). I think you'll be very pleased!

The ID1300s should work great for you - I run similar options with a bigger cam and have no problems after some tuning running full e85 to 7k RPM on a 400" build.

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Thanks for the response...

What size was your lower pulley and how much boost were you getting with the 3" combo? From reading various posts it looked like an 8.66/3 combo was getting around 20lbs. That had me a little concerned for the pump gas side. On the other hand by keeping the static compression ratio down and the ceramic coating on the pistons, I figured I could get by with running a little more boost.

On the cam I debated going with the Lingenfelter GT22 (Specs - 228/232 .588"/.595 118) since that is what they were running in their crate engine but it looked like most were getting good results with the BTR cams. The Lingenfelter cam has the intake closing event at 52* ABDC @.050" vs. the Stage 3 Torque cam is 42* ABDC @ .050" which raises my DCR. I'm a little concerned that the 10* difference will limit me a little on boost which will hurt top end performance but gain a little on the lower end performance due to the higher DCR. On the other hand, I was thinking my lower end performance would still be ok with the Kong 2650 and the later intake closing event. I also thought about running the BTR stage 3 (non torque) or the BTR stage 4. I have the BTR Stage 3 torque cam but I believe I could still return it. Thus the analysis paralysis.

On compression, I believe I could bump it a little by changing head gaskets. I did the calcs and it would take it to 9:1 if I used .040 gaskets. My combination should be at zero deck but with the valve reliefs in the pistons I should be ok on piston to valve clearance. I'm not sure it's worth it for such a little gain though. FWIW - I went with the lower compression because that's what the Lingenfelter engine was and in doing research, my understanding was the lower compression ratio was more tunable and would allow for higher boost on pump gas. Basically I was thinking abut the effective compression ratio - low compression/high boost vs high compression/low boost.

On the Lingenfelter engine, they're using a Kenne Bell 3.6L supercharger. Hopefully the Kong 2650 will produce similar results.

What are you going to do with the 3" Kong pulley? I haven't ordered the upper yet.

 

[rpol78]

On the heads I bought them awhile back and was originally going to use them on a takeout L99 which I was planning to modify and run a Maggie TVS2300. I'm a little concerned about the guides with the DelWest titanium valves. I'm hoping the heads are late enough production that GM had the additional polishing done on the intake valves. Rumors were that GM was esending valves they had back to DelWest for t polishing. I don't know if there's a way to tell.

If I had it to do over I'd probably would have gotten FED 310s or some Trick Flows. At some point I have to quit making changes and just build the engine.

 

[rpol78]

What size throttle body should I run?

 

[rpol78]

It looks like I'll have to bend my oil squirters to clear the JE piston pin webbing so I'm looking for a little advice from those that have done this. Just eyeballing, it looks like they'll be pretty close to the center of the pin webbing. I'm thinking I'd like to move them toward the rod side but won't know for sure if this causes a different problem until I get further along. The stroke is 3.825" so I don't believe the piston skirt will extend much if any beyond the bottom of the cylinder.

Are they easy enough to bend that you just bend them by hand?
How much can you bend them side to side?
How much clearance do they need from the webbing and/or rod?

 

[rpol78]

I've read where other's have bent the squirter nozzles and it doesn't look like I'll have to move them alot so hopefully that will work out. The nozzle tubes are pretty small so hopefully they'll bend fairly easily. I may use some needle nose pliers to be a little more precise on the bend.

On another topic, I'm thinking of using oil restricting pushrods. I have a Melling 10355HV oil pump that I'm planning on using. I got that pump because the radiator has an oil cooler in it and I figured between the oil squirters and the cooler extra flow wouldn't hurt. Also I've read that the Johnson 2110 lifter lowered idle oil pressure and some on the corvette forums ran the 10355HV to keep the oil pressure up. Given this I figured that oil restricting pushrods would help to ensure the lower end gets proper oiling. Is there any reason I shouldn't run oil restricting pushrods?

 

[rpol78]

I did a mock up of the engine but didn't like the way the Katech studs were working out so I bought some ARP 2000 head bolts. The Katech studs didn't take advantage of the thread depth available in the block and they stuck up far enough that they interfered with the header flanges.

 

[rpol78]

We took the squirters out and straightened out the first bend from the mounting bolt with a screw driver to give them a little more length and then straightened the nozzle bend a little to give a little more clearance using a piece of stainless brake line I had. I trial fitted a piston with each one to make sure we had at least .080 clearance. I'm going to check them again during final assembly. I assume the LT4 is the same as the LT5 squirters. I know they carry a different part number and seem to be less expensive than the LSA squirters. There's a set of 8 on ebay for $89.95 vs a single LSA squirter is $25 from Pace Performance.

 

[rpol78]

My son and I didn't make it as far as we wanted to during the July 4th week. We went to put the ARP main studs in and the kit had 2 nuts that were too big for the studs. Summit Racing worked with me and sent the the replacement nuts 1 day air. We started measuring everything and there was very little variance in the bores, pistons, mains, etc. I measured with and without a torque plate and there was up to .002 difference in the cylinder bore with the torque plate vs without. The torque plate brought the bores very close to dead on the bore spec.

I struggled getting a valid measurement on the main clearances with the groove in the block half of the bearing so I ended up using some plastigage. All of the mains are between .001 and .0015 which is within spec. Also the bearing that came with the rotating assembly are Calico which have a "dry film lubricant" coating. I believe this make the bearings a little tighter also. It looks like 0w-20w or 5w-20w is in my future.

Gapped the rings at a tight .028 since Total Seal call for .007 per bore inch for 15-30 lbs of boost when running a gapless 2nd ring. They call for .0055 per bore inch for up to 15 lbs of boost. Since I figure I'll target the 15 - 20 lbs of boost .028 should work. I ended up using a vernier caliper to square the ring in the bore.

File fitting the gapless 2nd ring was a bit of a pain. The gapless rail took a bit to figure out how to do it. I ended up filing the main ring first and then fit the rail in the main ring and then filed the rail to match the main ring.

The ring filer sure helped out on this. You can pretty much measure the initial gap and then take off what you need. Usually I'd run about .0005 less than what I needed. If initial measurement was .0018, I'd take .0095 off the ring to get to a tight .0028.

 

[rpol78]

I am using the LS9 specs which are .0008 - .0021 for production and .0008 - .0025 for service. My understanding is the tight bearing clearance spreads the bearing load better than a looser clearance and the aluminum block expands more at operating temperature which again increases the clearance. Also the Calico bearings are coated bearings which result in tighter clearances and some of the coating will wear during break in resulting in more clearance. Either way the key is to run the correct oil viscosity for the clearance.

FWIW - the rod spec is .0009 - .0025 for production and .0009 - .003 for service.

I'm not a professional engine builder so maybe one of the experts will chime in.

 

[rpol78]

On the crank flex, the LS9 block does have the pinned billet main caps which should help also. My original goal was 900 crank hp on 93 octane. We'll see if I get there.

 

[rpol78]

I ordered a set of .001 undersized main bearings. Oddly the crank has a tight spot that begins to show up at around 45 ft lbs of torque. At 60 ft lbs on the inner studs it feels about the same as it does at 45 ft lbs. If I have momentum it moves right past the spot but if I stop there you can definitely tell something is not right. I would think if the mains were out of round or the crank was slightly bent I'd get two tight spots 180* apart but that's not the case. Looking at the main bearings they aren't showing any wear but they do have the Calico coating on them.

Anyone seen this before?

 

[rpol78]

To have one tight spot in the bearings you’d have to have an out of round crank journal and and a some thicknesses variation in the bearings on the same journal. Both are possible but unlikely together especially on a good us made billet crank.

What about a counterweight hitting somewhere on the block? I assume this crank is center counterweighted, look around them.

Yes on the center counter weight crank. I'll look at it closer but the counter weights look like they're clearing. I'm a little concerned about the reluctor wheel. It looks pretty tight.

Assuming just the bare
crank installed?
Check the thrust faces.

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Yes just the bare crank. In checking the thrust I'm measuring .005 which is consistent until I get to about 45 ft lbs. Then in the one spot the crank won't move forward or back since it's tight. That leads me to believe that maybe it is contacting the block some where. The reluctor wheel seems suspect. I checked the runout on it and it's about .012 which is within the spec (i.e. spec.028).

 

[rpol78]

I can't see any where that the crank is touching the block. In working with it I was able to rotate the crank a few times slowly with really no resistance and then it would seem to hit the tight spot. The tight spot is always in the same place in the rotation.

It seems like the crank has to be touching block somewhere when it's all of the way forward or back.

 

[rpol78]

I’m sure you done it over and again, but I would probably pull the crank and each bearing shell and make certain there is nothing between the shells and the block or the caps, not even a bunch of oil or assembly lube.
We’re clearly grabbing at straws, here.

At first I thought it was the Driven Assembly Gel building up so I took the crank out and cleaned the saddles, caps, crank journals, and both sides of the bearings. I then put it back together with 10-40 oil on the crank side of the bearing surfaces. I'll keep looking today to see if's touching somewhere.

The challenge is if it is touching it's so lightly that so far I'm not seeing any witness marks. Maybe I'll try putting a light coat of ARP assembly lube on areas that are suspect for touching to see if something shows up.

Take it to a machine shop, a higher level of inspection is needed.

.
I'm not sure who I'd take it to in Kansas City. I do have micrometers, a bore gauge, vernier calipers, etc to measure with. It take a little thinking with everything being aluminum to find a place to mount the magnetic base for the dial indicator. I've built several small blocks and big blocks and never had an issue like this. Admittedly the bearing clearances were greater than the LS9 spec calls for.[/QUOTE]

 

[rpol78]

That is the first thing that came to mind for me. We had to send my LSX block back to the machine shop (next door to the builder) because we forgot to specify line honing after installing the main studs. The crank definitely didnt spin smoothly until that was done.

When you say it didn't spin smoothly what exactly was it doing?

This one is odd because it will spin freely for 3-5 rotations and then it will get tight in the same spot each time. I'm picking up a little noise toward the rear of the block so I think I'll pull the crank to see if I see anything.

I have the main bolts and could reinstall them to see if it makes a difference.

 

[rpol78]

I know the bearing clearances are a lot tighter on this (i.e. .001 - .0015) than I've used on small blocks and big block chevys in the past. I've got the .001 undersized bearing set ordered so I'm thinking of either going up .0005 or .001. Maybe targeting .002 clearance would be a good thing. That's at the upper end of the GM LS9 spec (.0008 - .0021)

I may have another go at checking the main bearing saddles to check for an out of round condition. My challenge is my bore dial gauge is only good for .0005, which was fine for SBC and BBC, so I may need to invest in a more accurate one.

 

[rpol78]

I pulled the crank an measured the saddles and it does look like they're out of round. Now I need to find a good machine shop. I'm in Kansas City, any recommendations

 

[rpol78]

The mains were out up to about .0015 so I ended up taking the engine to Driskell's Racing Engines to have the block align honed. After speaking with Matt he recommended a minimum of .0025 clearance on the mains so he's going to target .0027 on the mains. Also we were discussing going .003 on the rods.

I've never used them before but just looking around his shop it was very professional with good equipment and there were some nice higher end engine builds in process.