400 Small Block Build. 500+ HP

[72MC]

One other question, is there any slop or play in the carrier as it sits in the main caps?

 

I don't see a need to change the caps unless they are damaged but I would get a cover with the carrier cap preload bolts. Those covers usually run about 150-175 but are well worth the price. - dave

[Winston Wolf]

did you keep your burnout going until it hooked?

 

looks like a "shock-load" failure

 

As soon as I started to do a burnout, it must have failed. I fumbled with the trans, thinking that was the issue. It must have rolled back enough to catch a tooth and move the wheels. Then momentum kept it rolling/moving over the bad teeth.

[Winston Wolf]

Are you running "pro" gears or street gears

 

I guess they are/were the Street Gears.

[Winston Wolf]

One other question, is there any slop or play in the carrier as it sits in the main caps?

 

I don't see a need to change the caps unless they are damaged but I would get a cover with the carrier cap preload bolts. Those covers usually run about 150-175 but are well worth the price. - dave

 

There is no noticable slop in the carrier as it sits. The marks that you see on the carrier in the pictures are from a few years ago when I had a pinion nut come loose. Those were with a different gearset altogether, they are not from this insident. The current pinion gear is still correctly preloaded in the bearings, so I don't believe that to be a cause of failure in this one.

 

With the adjustable pinion preload shim kit, how tight is the pinion nut torqued then? Does anyone have a part number? I see Strange makes a kit that is 2 pcs and shim stock. It is b/o'd at Summit and Jegs though. (Strange pn R5125)

 

Billet caps are around 90$, where the covers are 150$ Does it pay to do the both? I'm a bit skiddish now, but perhaps just the caps would suffice. Then at least the rear end will look stock still.

[Ian]

I have the Strange on in my 12 bolt. I can't comment on the install because I had someone else set them up.

[72MC]

With the spacer, you should be able to tighten the nut pretty good as there is no give in the spacer. If you tighten the nut and the pinion load gets tight, you will need to add a shim and try again. If after tightening the nut the pinion is to loose, remove a shim. It won't take long to get the right combo. I have tighten the nut with a impact gun and still had the proper preload with the spacer.

 

I understand your explaantion on my questions. If the carrier and the pinion are not sloppy, then I will assume your gear mesh pattern was good and just say you had some bad luck on the failure. Good luck with the rebuild. Definitely try the spacer, you'll like it. - Dave

 

ps - I personally would get the cover before the caps.

[CrazyDavey]

Originally Posted By: Reds72WMonte

I just know the weakest link in a 12 bolt is the bearing caps. They will stretch and worst case break. My cover (Moroso) simply has two support bolts that are adjusted in to contact the caps and limit movement and provide additional support....

 

 

Are you using billet caps or just the stock ones?

 

stock caps with the support cover...

[Winston Wolf]

Got the rear end back together. Took it out for a test drive to heat up the gears. Seemed to work fine until I got back close to my house. Took off from a stop sign and it made the same terrible noise as at the stip after a half block. It's a loud grinding/clunking noise and the car jerks in a bad way.

 

I figured it blew out the rear end again. Stopped the car and looked at the rear end. Wasn't visible detroyed, so I put it in reverse and it did move, but lurched with a bad sound from the drivetrain. Got it backed up to my alley (I had overshot it by 25 feet) and it went down the hill of my alley just fine. Got it in the garage and took the diff cover off. Gears all seem find and nothing was broken. Could not turn it though.

 

Removed driveshaft so I could turn the rear end and see if there was anything up with the rear end. That is working as it should be, I can turn it by hand from the pinion or wheels and the backlash checked out fine.

 

So....something must be wrong with my transmission. I could not turn the driveshaft(in neutral) even with big screw driver for leverage. Not sure what's wrong at this point, but I'm assuming it will need to be replaced....again...

[TommyP]

Man, you have got to have the worst luck. Hopefully it's something minor.

[Winston Wolf]

Man, you have got to have the worst luck. Hopefully it's something minor.

 

Yeah, no kidding. Never broke a single thing until this year.

 

I did pull the trans. There were some pieces of what I think is a snap ring in the pan. I am guessing a snap ring broke and it causing me the problem. I will tear it apart and see what else it wrecked next week.

 

I am not putting that trans back in the car though. It came from Bowtie Overdrives, and I just don't think it's made to handle the kind of power I have right now. I went ahead and had a guy start to put one together for me. This time it will be with full billet internals and is rated for cars running up to 9 second 1/4 mile times. I don't want to take it apart again.

 

In the mean time I sent back my stall converter to get it cleaned and restalled up to 3800. I should be back in business in a couple weeks.

[TommyP]

You probably shouldn't add up how much you've spent on parts lately it would be more depressing than all the breakage.

[7tonemonte]

The only good thing is that we get detailed pics of all the things you have to rebuild!

[Winston Wolf]

Figured I would take advantage of my trans down time as long as it's out.

 

I made a rear sump pickup for my Hughes deep aluminum pan. There is an issue with 200-4r transmissions the way they came from GM. The stock filter has the inlet for the fluid on the top, see below. What happens is that under hard acceleration the oil can't get recirulated fast enough through the cooler and the oil that is left is pushed to the back of the pan. This causes cavitation in the pump and a loss of pressure which makes the trans work funny and starves it of vital lubrication.

 

To combat this, most people install a 700-R4 filter or like what I had, a 4L60E filter and fill the transmission with a quart extra fluid. They both have the intakes on the bottom, so there is less chance of cavitation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, they still both have only a 1x2 inlet hole into the filter which I never liked.

 

I decided to make a custom pickup tube and install a filter that I could bolt on and move to the lowest and farthest back position in the pan I am running. This filter is from a GM TH200. I'm happy with the setup now, and shouldn't have any issues ever now. Plus this filter is 8 bucks instead of the 40 for the AC Delco one I was using before...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Winston Wolf]

Well, Got the car all put back together for one last trip to the dragstrip. I was hoping to do some tuning, but the day was a bit hectic and I didn't get a chance to do much.

 

I fell 2 tenths short of my 11.50 goal for the year. Car is running consistant 11.72's right now. I didn't have a chance to do any jetting changes or play with carb spacers like I intended, so I was still running on Patrick's best guess jetting.

 

Changed to a 4000 stall, didn't improve the ET any over the 3500. But that along with lowering the rear, removing the front sway and using drag shocks in the front; got it more consistant out of the shoot. 60' times are down in the 1.65 range now, a big improvement from the 1.8's at the start of the season.

 

The shift light helped me to get the gear changes consistant at 6500 now. I used the data logger to fine tune each gear change on the light (allows 4 different shift points) and it's perfect.

 

The car had run a tiny bit faster with higher MPH a month earlier, so I'm thinking the jetting needed some work. Guess it will have to wait until spring now. The weekends efforts would have been better rewarded with an 11.50 slip, but it was at least enough to get a plastic trophy.

 

Here are some slips from the day and a video of the launches.

 

Until next time....

 

 

 

[Heckeng]

Seems like she's running pretty good Winston. Nice job.

[CrazyDavey]

Justin I think you've done a great job and should be proud of the numbers you're getting. 11.50 is just some tweaks away, just fine tuning the new combo to all work together. The car sounds great, it leaves clean and the shifts sound better than ever. When I first went up to a higher converter it didn't show immediate results but over time learning how to use it (playing with launch rpm's) did show improvement.

 

Congrats young man!!! I don't care if the trophy is made out of paper..I'll take it...Dave

[BowtieThunder]

Sounds and looks great NIce job

[TommyP]

I think that you should be really proud of you times. My brother had a mild looking ,mid 11 second, small block Chevy II.We used to get a kick out of looking at all the race cars that were at the track that were slower than his car. There are a lot of guyes out there that would love to run those times with a streetable small block car incuding me.

[dbreese]

Great job Justin! The cars suspension is really working well and the car sounds great going down the track. Congratulations on the win!! Well deserved!

 

David

[Mike 57]

Justin, the car sounds great and looks good going down the track. I went up three numbers on jets all corners on my pro systems carb, and I think Dave is about the same

[Andy's Auto]

Justin, you are definately running a number now. When I fist built my Malibus first big block it only ran 12.30 which at the time was beyond fast for a street car. nd that was a good compression 427. 11.70s for a street big block is an awesome number let alone a General built small block in a land yacht. Anyone can build a fast 3000 pound Camaro or Nova.

 

And you are an excellent plumber, Those trans mods are awesome. Amazing what you can go with without 600 lbs of torque at idle. Love the trophy. Haven't seen one of those in ten years. But I was always deep in the street game.

 

I'll bet you my 496 Monte aiint as fast as yours......

 

on engine.

[Winston Wolf]

I am going to stop at the dyno tomorrow afternoon to get an end of the year baseline.

 

Last time I was on it after the cam/head change I had a miss on the top end. I want to see the difference in HP the Holley carb, 1.6 intake rockers, Airgap intake, and all the new ignition parts made against the 800 AVS and standard RPM. Plus I want to have an honest comparison before and after when I switch to a ported Super Victor intake this winter, curious to see what it does to my power curve.

 

I will post up the sheets hopefully tomorrow night.

[Winston Wolf]

Got back to get a few pulls before the end of driving season here. Some interesting info.

 

We did 3 pulls, bang bang bang, without shutting off the car.

 

Here were the pulls from today:

 

 

Here is the before and after. I changed from a regular Performer RPM to an RPM Air-gap with a 1" open spacer. From the Edelbrock 800 AVS to a 950HP Holley, and changed the intake rockers from 1.5's to 1.6 ratio.

 

 

Here is the curve showing the engine as it was last year, 292 cam, Trick Flow heads, 750 Edelbrock carb vs as the car sits now.

 

 

And finally, here is the last year, vs head/cam swap to solid roller, vs Airgap, 1.6 rockers and Holley carb.

 

 

I was surprised at the mid range torque gains. I found it interesting how flat the HP curve is. It seems to stick right at the 400 RWHP from 5000 to 6250. I think I have been over rev'ing the engine at the track. If I would get the gear change down to 6250, I think it would have picked up. Maybe even the 2 tenths I was looking for.

 

The car still traps at 6500+ though, so I think going to a single plane and upping the RPM range a few hundred will pick up overall ET.

 

You do notice on the Airgap with the spacer does up the torque peak RPM and extend the HP a couple hundred RPMs.

 

The HP peaks at a low 5200, then drops a bit, then picks back up all the way to 6200. I'm wondering if the drop is from the spacer. I don't know.

 

From the wrenching this summer and all the stuff I changed out, we gained 59 RWTQ/38 RWHP. This thing does have some pretty good torque for a smallblock though. probably 575+ on an engine dyno.

 

Should be interesting to see the difference in intakes, but I'm still a bit on the fence whether I actually want to spend another almost $1000 on a ported Super Victor.....

[Andy's Auto]

Wolfie, you do want to spend a G on that new intake and you know it. They are impressive numbers for any car. I plan on building your build on my 400 powered 76 Camino. Maybe with enough time and money I can get those 11.50s you were looking for. Or drop in one of those 402s I got laying around and compare numbers.

 

Andy

[Winston Wolf]

Wolfie, you do want to spend a G on that new intake and you know it. They are impressive numbers for any car. I plan on building your build on my 400 powered 76 Camino. Maybe with enough time and money I can get those 11.50s you were looking for. Or drop in one of those 402s I got laying around and compare numbers.

 

Andy

 

I would actually be very curious to see what you could get out of a 396/402. I'm gladly going to let you fund that contest. Similar intake, cam, etc. And I'm sure if I hadn't broken every single piece of the drivetrain over the course of the summer, I would have gotten there. Poor thing spent more time tore apart than together.