Zero deck

In the quest to build the most reliable and inexpensive to operate motor for my truck I figured out that I had to have a zero deck motor with the 0.043” thick headgasket acting as the quench distance for expansion. This distance will yield the most power while simultaneously cutting down on possible pinging. Long story short-after research a smaller quench yields higher compression but offsets that by majorly decreasing pinging. Google it-I’m not explaining properly.

So I went to my machinist Tuesday and we put the crank in along with a few bearings and put one piston on the longest rod and assembled it to the crank. Then we measured how far down the piston sits in the cylinder to determine how much to shave off the block. Initially my (very excellent) machinist wanted to just take 0.010 off the block but I pushed for the procedure we did on Tuesday. I am VERY glad we did it as the block turned out to need 0.055-0.057 taken off to achieve the desired zero deck!

WoW! If the block was not zeroed it would have meant a quench height of about 0.099 which would have meant not only would I have given up 40-50hp, but I would have been buying jet fuel to stop the pinging.

No pictures yet but with the tranny/transfer sitting rebuilt in the garage, and my IFSJA replacement driveshaft leaning against the wall-I am antsy to get started.