Which springs, the duals or the beehive? I meant beehive when I said barrel.

I'm not going to argue theory when I have performance and economy results to go by. Some cams like being clicky all around. Some like clicky intakes and quiet exhausts. Some like quiet all around. These are demonstrable facts.

I think you are trying to seperate the cam from the rest of the engine, but it's an intergal part & closely tied to compression. What you are doing when altering the lash away from what it is designed to be is correcting something that is fundamentally not quite right elsewhere. Example: If you find that your engine runs better when you tighten the intake lash, you are more then likely masking a problem elswhere such as too much compression, too much ignition advance or insufficent fuel. What it points to is that you should probably install a cam with more duration or lower the static compression. If tightening the exhaust is helpful, you should increase the duration of the exhaust lobe or possibly lower the compression.

We disagree on the affect reciprocating weight does or does not have on horsepower. There are a lot of turbo B21s and B23s out there (including some that make outrageous power) that have no problems with the same rods, pistons and crank I'm using.

Just because lots of people get away with it doesn’t automatically make it the best. The B21 rods would take higher compressive loads that are a feature of forced induction motors better than the early B20 rods, but it’s not the best for a high reving NA engine where tensile strength is far more important that compressive. Finally, why do you think that the very best engines use Titanium for conrods?


.032" if the gasket crushed to its advertised value.

That should be fine, although you don’t have anything up your sleeve in case you need to skim more from the block later.

Volvo lifters. Stock B30 pushrods to correct the geometry for the decked block and shaved head -- they're a little shorter than B20 pushrods.

I have no problem with Volvo lifters although they are rudely expensive compared to running altered Chevy lifters, at about 10x the price. Stock pushrods are not all that great against any sort of decent spring, depending on what springs pressures you are running you could find more horsepower with stiffer pushrods.

Agreed that it would be less picky, but I think I've pretty much beaten it into submission by now. This was my first experience with side draft Webers (I now have quite a bit more), but the choke selection was insisted on by someone who has a very great deal of experience with them.

I know it’s irksome to go to smaller chokes, but 38mm Chokes in a 48mm carburettor still flow a big bunch more air than anything you could get out of 45’s. The other thing with Webers is that the larger choke size reduces output for the entire rev range below what they are best suited to, ie, using 42mm chokes might make more power in your 2200cc from 6000 up, but 38’s would be much better from 2000 to 6000 & essentially quicker overall, although it might lower you top speed. I expect you P1800 would do 135MPH if the gearing was right, but the smaller chokes would make it struggle to get to 130. I would think you’d be looking at low 14seconds at the drag strip, maybe even a high 13.

Is that all there is to blueprinting? And -- without any experience with this particular cam and no detailed specs for it -- why wouldn't I put it in without any offset and see what it did just like that? What have I lost by not measuring it at the time?

Blueprinting is degreeing in the cam, indexing the crank, conrod resizing with C to C length adjustment rather than just resizing the big end, align bore & honing mains, adjusting the deck height from side to side, front to rear & doing same to the head, perfecting flywheel runout, perfecting crank & cam endplay, perfecting the oil pumps endfoat, etc. Now the one the makes the biggest difference is cam timing. It is as important as ignition timing, you don’t set the the timing statically do you? You at least use a timing light? Cam timing is the next most important thing after ignition timing. As for where you should initially set cam timing, the precedent set by 99% of 2 valve motors is 4-5 degrees advanced from straight up, especially on your engine with it’s wide lobe centres, I’d set it to around 106 on the intake +/-1 degree as a good starting point.

(Think about this one, it makes no sense to have the chokes larger than the smallest part of the head.)

Another blanket statement I'm not willing to accept as fact, sorry.

No one has ever managed to produce an intake port that has out flowed the same sized venturi. For the entire time that the venturis are too big it results in poor fuel atomization & weak signals to the auxiliary venturi. It does make one of the rare good blanket statements IMHO.

Yes, no argument with that. Torque and power peak RPM’s are lower than expected (although the peak power value is what we thought it would be and peak torque actually exceeds expectations), so I think it's too advanced. By how much, only experimentation will tell

Peak torque & power RPM’s is largely determined by the size of the ports relative to the size of the cylinder. If you want it higher you would enlarge the ports, increase the rod ratio or reduce the size of the cylinder. Your peaks fit in with what I get & what the Lindquist motor does. Adjust cam timing to maximize torque, same thing for ignition timing.

Maybe nothing. John Parker had an idea that it could be tuned differently to cancel the midrange bog, but I now doubt that I'd get much out of it. There are other changes to make first, and the bog is much reduced already. It's not noticeable at all by seat of the pants -- I was surprised to see it on the dyno. I may revisit this later.

Dumping 2” secondaries into a 3” pipe would make them peaky. Ideally you need a good merge collector down to 2&1/2” which than transitions up to 3” with a megaphone. I think you might be better off overall with a 2&1/2” inch pipe from your headers for the length of the car floor finishing off with a megaphone just before your muffler. Do you have an oxy-acetylene torch?