How NOT to build an economical or powerful 'teen

toolmanmike said
Quite a list of spendy parts. The rods are not needed and with pressed pins? The heads are overkill unless the pistons are at zero deck. A nicely done set of stock teen heads with bigger valves or a pair of #302's would be great to compare. The rockers are nice but not necessary. The big pressure oil pump isn't needed for a mild street engine as well as the mega dollar pan. It would all work but you could do better with inexpensive stock parts of the right combination. It seems to be a mix-match of pieces.

Yes the SCAT rods are just their 2-ICR40L-6125P Pro-stock rod which I didn't even know they offered. Agreed on the zero deck statement. This thing will have no trouble on the lowest octane out there. Disagree on the 302's they're crap, I tried them before and never again. The rockers while nice are so over kill and so heavy I bet a stock set of rockers would move peak power from 5500 up to 5800 and unlock about 10 more HP due to their lightweight. I have done this on a big block and even with losing ratio from a 1.6 this is what happened. The oil pump is an easy fix--install a standard volume pump and watch another 7-10 hp show up. Also I believe the customer picked up the heads on E-bag or something and did not allow the shop to check/valvejob or do anything other than bolt the heads on. This is the epitome of a mix-match of parts--hence this thread.

I'm really not trying to be negative or blow my own horn. Really just trying to share what I feel is a disaster of an engine. Reading this thread will hopefully provide others with some additional info when designing their engine.

Keep in mind this is a fresh, professionaly machined engine that really does run great and doesn't leak a drop of anything, so its not like there are other issues at play here. Its just very lacking especially when considering what it must have cost. J.Rob