Almost time for the machinist!

nm9stheham said
OK, I see the viewpoint. Kevin has already come up a long ladder already.... from just re-ringing a 318 to this more complete rebuild of a 360. IIRC, the cam plans are not for peak HP but for mid range and wide torque etc. So RPM's and balance is not as critical as in a lot of other apps. And then there is the budget.... which has already been busted a few times I do believe.....

340's from the factory romped and revved and rowdied around all over the place with the level of balance that this should achieve without any further attention. So IMHO it is quite adequate. I missed the torque plates part.... raced my rally engines hard for many, many thousands of miles without ever using one. Could have been better no doubt but when racing on a schedule, you gotta put it together sometimes and go. Each and every HP is not the be-all and end-all in many cases, nor do I consider not-using torque plate to be sloppy work.

This is exactly what happened lol nms knows the story Haha.
As far as the latter yes I am trying to get every bit of horsepower I can within reason within my budget. My budget started at like 150 bucks and now I'm 1500 in and don't even have a engine yet Haha. I am trying to do the little things that don't cost no more or not much more to squeeze everything I can out within reason. At the end of the day yes it is a street car and I want to drive it without overheating or race fuel, for many many years to come.
That is why I decided to invest the extra money into the crank and bearings. I had originally planned on just replacing the bearings which is like 70 bucks but the the crank had some scoring and I was advised to turn it after talking to the machinist he was gonna charge 100-150 plus 70 for the bearings so the 180 remain crank just made more sense to me!
I will talk to him about balance and see what he thinks I was hoping to get around it for the budget reason. I plan on doing all the reassembling stuff myself to save money. If he was to balance it I'd have to pay for that and the balance itself. I can only guess but probably close to 500 more?
If the balance Is an issue its gonna wear out my engine in 1000 miles then yes I will save up longer and spend the money. But if I can have a safe reliable dependable engine for years down the road without then I'd like to save that money. Haha