304 budget rebuild - guaranteed to make you cringe

[EYY]

A couple of weeks ago I picked up another 304. This one's a roller cam block from a VS S3, so I thought it'd be a waste not to do something with it since it's hard to find roller cam blocks cheap.

I've already started collecting parts for it. Plan is to make it a nice torquey engine suited to daily driving and a little bit of fun. I plan to do ALL work myself, including removal and replacement of pistons and cam bearings. I have access to a lathe and plan to make a tool to fit the cam bearings. I'm not an engine builder or a mechanic, but just like having a crack.

Here's what Ive already found:
Morel tie bar lifters and pushrods (secondhand but new)
JCC flat top pistons and Grant rings (secondhand but new)
Crane compucam 2030
YellaTerra Street Terra bolt on roller rockers (non adjustable)

Total cost so far including cost of the engine and all parts listed above is $950.

Planning to purchase:
Durabond .002 undersize cam bearings
King .001 undersize rod bearings
King STD main bearings
Durapro gasket set with felpro head gaskets
LT1 valve springs

With the smaller chamber of the VT heads and the flat tops, I'll be aiming for compression around 10:1, but will do measurements when I start working on it. Heads will get a general tidy up - I'll clean up the casting dags and blend the bowls. I'll be sticking with the banana manifold and giving that a tidy up with the die grinder too.

I've been quite busy lately (seem to be lucky to get one day off a week), but I'll keep this thread updated with pics as I make progress.

 

[VS 5.0]

Good luck with it. Keen to see progress.

 

[Immortality]

Be interesting to see what you do with the cam bearings, have a look on youtube as I've seen a few videos where they do the cam bearings so you will be able to see the tool they use.

Should go well with some decent comp in it

 

[Sandman]

I'm excited to see him actually use his Lathe, its like 4m long and weighs about a million tons lol.

 

[harrop.senator]

Sounds good bad cam choice for that much compression in my opinion you'll have ping in summer or bugger all advance i would have gone a 222 for street friendly drivability 226 + for high performance. I reckon you'll push 200-210 cranking psi.

 

[Immortality]

If you can make the same power with less timing that means the engine is more efficient and has less pumping losses than a lazy engine that requires more timing. Get the tune right and it'll be fine.

 

[EYY]

It'll be run on injected lpg 99.99% of the time, which is part of the reason I'm going for slightly higher compression than I would otherwise. If it needs less timing, I can put a stock Memcal in and adjust the fuelling through the lpg ecu. If I end up having a little bit too much compression, I've got some VN heads here with open chambers I can use.

I've started to get my head around tunerpro and been doing lots of digging around the pcmhacking site, and I'm keen to buy a uv eraser and eprom burner to give tuning a go. May even see if I can get an NVram for it to make things easier.

I chose that cam because it came up cheap. Not after massive performance, but being a roller cam means I won't need to worry about wiping a lobe, and it'll work well with the nana manifold

 

[harrop.senator]

Aghh almost dedicated lpg makes a difference in valve timing and compression ratios. I just ran into triuble with 230 @ .050 and 10.46:1 we had to retard it another two degrees after dialing in to bleed out some dynamic but lpg can handle higher cylinder pressures then pump.

 

[Immortality]

Are you planning on decking the block and setting the pistons up with a zero deck height?

If run a zero deck height then I think it'll work out a touch over 10:1 with the VT heads, leave the slugs a touch down the bore and it'll be a touch under 10:1

If you have a look at those cam specs again, you'll see the 2030 actually has more advertised timing that the standard 276 cam, it's only a couple degrees more but that means it will bleed of a touch more cylinder pressure.

 

[gtrboyy]

Interested to see how this turns out..these type of builds are fun.

Agree with above decking block is way to go.

Joined pcmhacking site,have understanding of basics but it still spins me out the more get into it.