Alright, this I can see is going to turn into a huge pissing contest. I have to call bull**** though, I am tired of reading and more tired of seeing some of you guys impressed by all this.

First off, these pictures prove absolutely nothing. You are checking the main cap/girdle assembly. It is upside down on a bench. Sliding the girdle back and forth taking measurements is about the most rediculous thing I have ever seen. Any of you that really think about it can come up with this same conclusion.

Also, that girdle is bound to move around when it is unbolted from the block. Checking it off is silly. Check what is important, the actual mains in the block. To give you all an idea how important it is when we do the machine work on ours the mains are torque to spec when it is bored and honed and we use a solid chunk of billet steel for a torque plate on the head surface. All of this pulls on the block slightly and is important for a perfect bore/hone job.

To correctly check for alignment of the mains that girdle you are sliding around on the bench needs to be installed on the block, where it goes, and torque to spec. First thing to do then is take a bore gauge and check to see if all the main journals are round and in spec. From there you will need either a perfectly round machined bar to slide through that is the exact diameter of the mains OR you can use a long machinist straight edge and lay it in the mains and check it with a feeler gauge.

Generally what we end up doing is taking a thoasanths off the main caps and then torqueing them down and running a Sunnen line hone through them. What we have found is that the Mitsubishi blocks NEVER need to have this done.

These rediculous pictures are meaningless.

As I have stated we have built more than our share of 4g63's. I actually went across the street to the machine shop, got the owner and has him look at this to verify Tym and I weren't crazy about thinking it was silly. He stood here and laughed out loud.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

Was thinking the same thing, how can you accurately measure the main girdle when it is upside down. The variances in the top of the girdle would be enough by itself to show changes in the mic. I too feel these pics show nothing but smoke and mirrors and look impressive to the untrained eye. How about posting some pics with everything torqued and prove your theory on how un square the block really is.

Not trying to start anything.. just looking for the truth.

Doug

 

You know what, youre right. This is ridiculous. You just keep knocking me for sharing what I found. It is obvious that I have done more work on this motor than you have. What I found in terms of the line hone sizing and alignment is much different than what you find. Oh but wait, you dont do your own machine work, you obviously sub it out to someone across the street from you. And if you all had a laugh, then thats great. Id get a new machinist.

I did measure the mains with the caps installed and torqued, and they deviated in size by about .0007. The alignment was off by a few thousandths. So when I had it apart to try and correct it, and just happened to have laid it back down on a surface plate and started measuring, I found it to be bent. It was crooked when it was torqued in the block, and even more so when it was off of the block. Not only was the housing off, it was cocked on some of them, which made the mains on the crank wear the bearings unevenly. And.... the area where the main caps sit on the purchase area in the block, on both the girdle and on the block itslef, where sloped since when they manufacture this motor, they come across it with a gang cutter that cuts all five mains at once, and then shoot across it with a mill to flatten it. Only problem is that when they do that, in production, being that it is so mass produced and they do it all in one pass, the caps deflect from the force of the machine and spring back during the cut, making the surface that should be flat, cocked. It is so evident, that you can actually see the shadow across the face where the high spot and the low spot sit.

So, all I did was fix all that so that I can actually have the girdle torqued, not bent into place when I tighten the main studs for line honing. I would think that if you have 100% surface area in these critical areas, instead of some lower percentage of that from the factory, that would hols the mains on more strongly. But then again, what would I know, I only so this for a living and have seen it with my own two eyes. You have built a thousand of these motors and never seen the need to do all of that.

So when you clip the mains to do a line hone, what is your machinist setting up off of? My pictures show how bent the girdle is when its off the block, and anyone who knows how line honing is done, knows that you clip material off of the main feet to give you room to get the honing bar to bring the housings back to size. SO when your machinist does this, which crooked surface is he setting his cap grinder up off of? And if all you take off the caps is .001 and that cleans up in your line hone without going oversize, then why was it that when I clipped .006 (Which is six times more off the mains then you do) and ran through with our line bar, I still had shadows on about 20% of the housing near the bearing parting line. Which meant that I had to go back and take even more off in order to get 100% honing all the way around in each bore. I have seen line hones like you describe before, you clip a hair off the caps, and stroke through a few times with a bar to put some scratches in the housings, and call it a line hone, because doing any more than that would take too much time and it would be too much setup, and when you bang motors out one after the other, you cannot afford to waste time like that, getting it right, close enough works, and hardly anyone knows the difference anyway, right? After my line hones are completed I can run a tenths gauge down my housings, can you do the same?

Again, here is a pissing contest now I suppose. Only I am not interested. THe only reason I spent the time responding is becasue you obviuosly have to tell all the readers how stupid my approach is. I am not going to bash you on your practices, but I will substantiate my own if you are going to call me out on it, and you have so theres a piece of my answer.

 

Heres is a closeup of one of the caps feet. If you notice that there is a shadow where the high spot is running diagonally across the face near the bolt hole. On one of the faces I measured a .0025 difference in height. I have shots of all 10 of these feet, but one should give you the idea. THis is not the way I like to have main caps sitting in a block, with only a small percentage of surface area holding on. But again, what I do is ridiculous.

 

Not saying you don't know what your doing. It is clearly obvious you know more than myself. I was just wondering how you could accurately measure the main bore on the girdle with it laying upside down on the table, were the underside of the girdle has casting marks that aren't completly consistent.

 

No I understand your question. I wasn't trying to measure the main bore by laying the girdle on its back, nor make any reference to that as a way of approaching taking that type of measurement. I think you and David Buschur misunderstood that. The pictures I posted of the girdle and the indicator were to show that none of its surfaces are true. SO , with that being the case , how could one expect to achieve an accurate line hone? You are right, the way it comes originally, the girdle surface on the back of it is not flat. But follow the logic here. If you took that surface and made it flat, then lay it down on the now flat surface and measured the other surfaces and found them to be off, well then now you have at least one flat surface to reference off of, so if the main cap surface can then be trued based off of the first flat surface and so on and so on. SO when all is done, the girdle has been squared to itself.

What that translates into in laymans terms is this.

Before I started the work, that girdle was not straight either when it was on the block or off it. When I first placed that girdle down on a surface plate, not just a table, a dead flat surface, it rocked by as much as .020 back and forth. It rocked whether I lay it on its back, or more importantly on the main cap feet!

So all I am trying to illustrate now is this: I can now take that same girdle, out of the block, lay it down on the main cap feet, and run an idicator around the back of it and come up with all zeros. I can then take that same girdle, flip it over and lay it on its back, and run an indicator on every major surface, purchase areas, stud bores, and saddles- and run it front to back, side to side, and across it, and come up with a deviation of no more than .0004. If I apply prussian blue to it and drag it on the surface plate, every pad gets cleaned evenly, not half here, a shodow there, as it used to be before I started.

When it gets bolted into the block, and I run a tenths gauge down the housing, the sizes come up to spec plus or minus .0002. that is not two thousandths, that is two tenths of a thousandth! And as far as line bore starightness. We dont have feeler stock that small to fit in between the straightedge, and the housing, it is light tight. I am not trying to make it seem like I am one upping anyone, I am just explaining what the pictures meant.

I have attached a picture of the finished cap so that you can scroll back to the other picture of the same thing, and see if you can see a difference. I would include one with a dial indicator running around it, but it doesnt move from zero anyway. Now you tell me if you think that getting all of these types of surfaces square to one another would make a difference.

 

Thank you for clearing that up.

 

I think this is called internet boxing . . why argue with the fact that there is room for improvement on the mains/girdle ? ? the measurements do not lie ! ! it's funny how when people post valid information, the so called "experts" have nothing positive to contribute to this ! ! I do not see any off you sharing "dick ****ing ****" that will not help sales of your buisness.. If knife edging is such a bad idea then why do you offer it ? ? this post was intended to show people the difference from doing an "ok" job to making it absolute correct ! !

 

Buschur and Darkhorse come from totally aspects of motorsports. Buschur builds for drag while dark builds for endurance road race. Both have different objectives and approaches. It's hard to draw conclusions from their opinions, escpecially with all the technicalities. I respect both opinions and appreciate Darkhouse sharing his information with us.

 

I would do all of this no matter what motor I was building , drag, endurance, etc. It is just the right way to do in my opinion. Forget what the application is, if you want to take any motor, and modify to put out more than double its power, or triple it, you had better make sure that all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. And there still is no guarantee. In this case, taking a motor, and putting more boost and nitrous on it is going to put a hell of a lot of stresses on the rest of the components, and if they are not built, machined or assembled propely, well then the weakest link will let go. None of this comes cheaply or easy. Sure, you can turn your boost up, and dump a bunch of nitrous into anything and make it do more than you imagined, but whether you need it to last for a few seconds, or 100,000 miles, the same principles apply. Stock is just what it says, stock. When you get into affordable vehicles, I dont care if its foreign or domestic, you can pick them apart and there is always room for improvement. WHy are the serious big buck professional race teams dropping $30,000 plus on just their engines that are leased, and rotated, and not just opening up a JEG'S catalog and buying a 800 HP crate motor for $7,000? There must be something being done that can justify the cost difference. We have done numerous smallblocks that all that we have done is blueprint and balance them, same block, crank, cams, heads etc. In other words just made them dimensionally correct, then put them back together and run them on a dyno and seen an increase of about 50 hp.If you want to win, or you need to win that is the avenue you take. If you just want to mess around, and do a little here and there, and not push the envelope, then you can afford to do less. If that were not the case, there wouldnt be people casting their own blocks, making their own heads, pistons, manifolds, etc.

 

I think why people are taking offense to darkhorse's postings is that it initially came across almost as a scare tactic to generate business/ i.e. the 4g63 blocks are crap and if you don't do all this stuff you will be in trouble later on if you try to make big power. I'm not saying that the intention was this, just that it came across like that to me and maybe others as well.

 

I think that a lot of posts on here get misconstrued due to internet boxing, as referred to earlier in this post.

David's track record speaks for itself, but a motor is a motor and I believe Christian has built one or two in his day, too.

Let's try to keep this civil and share valuable and interesting information without trying to outdo each other. I, for one, am digging all these pictures and tech info about ferrarokid's buildup. I'm also amazed at how much power David and the Ohio boys are getting out of the stock turbo. Let's keep the information coming, guys. Isn't that why we're all here, anyway?

Can't we all just get along?

 

I think this posting has gone way offline. My comments have been misconstrued as scare tactics. They weren't meant to be that way at all. The only reason I shared any of this was only to try and let some of you see some things that maybe you would have never gotten a chance to see. And I was right, the work I had to do on this block and the things I found, which by the way weren't me just blowing smoke up your asses, or using smoke and mirrors, was indeed documented and thats why I included pictures to show it. I never meant this to make it seem that the 4g63 is crap, all I was showing is that it can be made better. It would be like comparing fast food I suppose. Sure, you can go get a burger at Burger King, and you could survive off that kind of food, but if I were a chef and came along and said "Hey, you know there is this place called Burger King, that is mass producing tons of fast food being produced and consumed by millions of people, but I think I can make a better burger. I raise my own cows, and kill my own meat, process it the way I think is best and cook it and season it the way I think you may find refreshing and more tasty" would you all tell me to take a hike, since I dared come in and say that there could possibly be room for improvement? You could all argue that all you have ever eaten was the fast food, and you do just fine with it, hell after all your still alive.

I never came on this forum telling you to try my burger, or eat at my restaurant instead. I wasn't soliciting engine jobs. I was just a chef saying that there is another way to do this. And I thought I was pretty generous to have openly come out to all of you whom half of which I do not know and share some of the recipe. Not so you can go and copy it, but just take a look and maybe learn something, that the meat in your burger may not be all that great. Not that its terrible, but its not what I would cook with.

I hope that that comparison is taken in the right light, I know its a bit offkey, as a matter of fact now that I go back and read it I chuckle. But you all get the point.

Please, dont make it seem like I came on here and bashed any other engine builders, or their tactics, as they have obviously done to me. Like I said, all I was doing was sharing. You don't have to agree with me, I never asked you too. You don't have to give me your engines when the need to be built, I never asked for that either. So, from now on, I'll just keep any information I have between me and my customers, and you guys can keep on with your cars and postings on other topics, since some of you obviously feel threatened by someone else coming along and revealing some truth when you had never thought of taking the time or spending the energy to find it out on your own in the first place.

 

Don't be disocuraged by what I and others have said. We still appreciate the pcis and photos and want to see what else you have planned/are doing

 

I searched around for the turbo that FerraroKid is getting. It looks like he is interested in the overpriced HKS 3037S, just like everyone else. Same-old, same-old.

It will be nice when people do actually start to branch out.