Old Race 340 Teardown

Pishta, if I'm understanding correctly the dimension across the intake manifold valley, between the two head lands, I measured as 6.848". So considerable milling, consistent with the work done on the manifold? Seems like way too much.

The rod length is a little harder to estimate with the piston still assembled. I used a straight edge to extend the rod mating surface parallel to the wrist pin and measured to my eyeballed center of the wrist pin and got a measure of ~6.075" The rod mating surface is serrated, so I assume the actual measuring surface would be at half the tooth depth. Unfortunately, the BME receipt I have doesn't have any part no. details.

I have the original receipts from Brooks Racing Components (BRC) which calls out the piston as 10-1-55-251. Google says that the current shop RaceTec (in Huntington Beach) is the second generation of BRC so I thought maybe they could decode the number and give me some piston dimensions. They're pretty close to you, do you know anybody there?

I love history. Especially automotive history. It would appear (historically anyway) that about the time that that engine was built aftermarket support for Chrysler connecting rods was pretty sorry. From my research about the only steel rods at that time were offered by DC and Carrillo. And the Carrillo’s were really expensive. One option was to use a 6 inch Chevrolet rod, and decking the block about .125 to make it all go together. As I posted earlier, the pistons are out of the deck about what I thought. When I looked at the piston in that engine I saw a pretty small compression height. That means that either the stroke is pretty long (it’s not long by today’s standard) or the rod is really long (6 inches is not a long rod) or the block has been decked to make it all work. If I had that engine, I would change the rods to steel, get the compression down to a pump gas number and change the cam. Then I would go out and beat the brakes off it like I stole it.