Best small block book

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WildCat

WildCat

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I have the 340 out of my car. It likes to bend parts for now reason.

I have a guy that said he would check and repair it but he is a Ford guy. I know he will research and is very good at everything he does. What I got to thinking tonight is I need a book for info he might need that isn't in a standard repair manual.

Is there a book you can recommend and the best place to buy it?

Maybe someone here can make some recommendations on the problem

The engine was built about 4 years ago and run on the dyno. It sat for about 1 1/2 years after being built before I got it in the car and running. It is built like the 340 in Mopar Muscle that made 391 HP with 5 mods. I'm thinking it was 2000 when the article can out. Maybe it has been built longer than I 1st thought.

Anyway it has about 3,000 miles on it right now. When it was 1st installed in the car and I tried to drive it the lifters rattled. The builder and I worked on it in the car to try and figure out what was going on. It would sit and idle for 30 min or more and oil pressure would stay steady and no problems. Driving it down the road at a cruising speed it would rattle the lifters after about 1 mile. I got to were I could make it do it just about any time I was driving it. After making some changes the builder and I were out test driving the car and it rattted the lifters but I kept it running and it ended up bending the valves and pushrods in the #5 cylinder.

The owner of the machine shop is the one the tore it down and he told me it had too much clearance in the cam bearings. He reassembled with the new parts needed and when I reinstalled it just never run as I thought it should.

I was planning on having a friend help me tune it to try and get it to run better, but before I did this I was driving on the interstate at close to legal speed so I guess 2,400~2,500 RPM on a warm engine and it rattled quickly and then started to run bad. In checking I found that the #5 exhaust push rod was bent and looks like the valve too.

It is a 71 340 block bored .040, the stock 340 crank turned .010, a seat of "J" heads that had 2.02 / 1.60 valves with hardened seats and bronze guides, the bowls were opened up for the larger valves too.

The cam is a comp cam and about 480 lift 270 deg duration, hydraulic lifters and comp cams adjustable roller tip rockers.

The cam bearings are suppose to have .0025 clearance now.

The 1st guy that built it said the geometry is correct and is curious as to what happened. BUT this guy is really a chevy guy.

I had it built at the machine shop so it could be run on the dyno and I would have NO PROBLEM, was I ever wrong

It engine came out of a 71 Demon........COULD IT BE THAT IT IS POSSESSED?

What should we really be looking for. I'm thinking maybe an over or undersized lifter bore or valve guide that is causing some binding or oil loss.

I think we will install another set of cam bearings and a new cam. Thinking a soild cam or a roller.

What do you think of the Comp Cams roller for a small block?

I'm really sick of this. I could have bought a crate motor, but wanted to have a REAL 340 since I decided not to install the 440 I had. I wish now I had just went ahead and installed the 440 and auto so I could drive the wheels off it with little trouble
 
just curious, if i read correctly, you can cause the lifters to
rattle when you wished to.
what do you do to make them rattle?
if it was run on a dyno, was timing and carberation optimized and
were any changes made prior to installing in the car,
like removal of the carb or distibutor?
is their any possibility something could have gotten into the intake
during storage or installation.

a lean fuel mixture or timing problem could cause a severe rattle,
i'm baffled by the bent valve and pushrod, any possiblity of an over rev.
a motor in storage will sometimes lose spring pressure on a compressed spring.
i would have thought any serious mechanical problems would have presented during the dyno thrash.
do you have any pics of the piston top and valve damage?
just thinking out loud, i'm interested in what you figure out.
hope you get her fixed!
 
a couple of informative books that i would recommend are how to rebuild your small block mopar and building big inch small block mopars.both can be found at borders or books a million. now my opinion is that from reading your post you had problems in the #5 cylinder both times.my bet is that your lifters are not the problem and you should dig a little deeper into the engine.any time you bend push rods or valves there is mechanical contact in the engine/ pistons hitting valves etc. could be a number of things and that rattle could be a piston pin or bad rod stretched rod .like i said a number of things but since it is the same cylinder that is some of the things i would be looking at. while the cylinder head is off rotate the engine and look for excessive piston travel in that cylinder and marks on the piston top.also do you know if the can has been degreed when installed /does the engine have pop up pistons and was piston to valve clearance checked when the engine was built? hope some of this will help you out
 
I agree, you should check the deck height of each piston in the engine. I noticed that #1 in my 340 engine is about .015-.020" lower than the other 7 pistons. This is probably a result of tolerance stack ups, etc. In my case it results in a cylinder with a slightly lower compression ratio, which hasn't been a problem (car runs 12.86 @ 105 in the 1/4).

In your case: if one piston is too tall then is a problem. Also, check whether cam is degreed properly, if it off a few degrees it might be the closest valve to piston distance occurs on cylinder #5.

Bob

PS: I use the MOPAR Performance A-engine as my guide to building my engine, since I had a stock short block with MP purple shaft cam and valve train. I have an old MOTOR manual to get torque and clearance specs.
 
I have several small block books.This book sounds like the book for you.Very informitive book on re-building,removal,installation etc.Highly recommend this book.

Picture 654.jpg
 
I'm a complete rookie here but I think your problem has to do with the bronze guides. A friend of mine had a small block Chevy a while back and the same thing was happening to him with bending the push rods and valves. The motor ran great until it ran for more than a half hour or so and it got heated up. It would also run good if he didn't "hotrod" it but as soon as he got on it the thing it would fall apart.

My buddy and his motor guy chased the problem for a month or two but I want to say in the end when they finally figured it out, it was because they didn't have enough clearance in the bronze guides for the valves. I think they said the bronze expanded more when they heated up than the regular guides. I'm guessing here but I'll give the guy a call and see if I'm remembering correctly or not.

Good Luck!!
 
I think I found the book I was looking for

How to build a BIG INCH Mopar small block

It answered so many questions I have had and some of the things that are common problems and how to correct them, even thought it isn't a stroker a lot of good info
 
have you had any luck figuring out what happened to your motor?
I'm interested in what you found, all the guess's are pretty good.
 
Bronze guides are tighter... They dont cahnge shape as much as iron. But, many Edelbrocks, Indys, and some shops I know set them too tight for me confort. So I open them up to .001-.0015. I've seen some less than .00025 and they will sieze. I think it's more of a lifter bore issue. Cam bearing clearance means very little, and nothing for lifter oiling... Loose lifters will be noisey, same as mis adjusted preload, or poor upper end oiling to the rocker shafts. The holes in the cam bearings for the left side head passage may not line up well. If that's partially blocked, the rear of the shaft (5 and 7) may show galling on the rockers.
 
Johnny Dart said:
I have several small block books.This book sounds like the book for you.Very informitive book on re-building,removal,installation etc.Highly recommend this book.
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I've read it through and through and the information is clear and well structured.

I have:
How to build a BIG INCH Mopar small block
MOPAR Performance engines book (the BIG one)
How to rebuild your Magnum engine
Chrysler performance upgrades
+many others

But nothing even compares to Don Taylor's "How to rebuild Small-block Chrysler engines"

It's only 14$ from Amazon.com
 
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