Projects Attic Anglia

Thank you so much for those measurements it will help me a lot with my next project.

 

Looking forward to the finished product of your Anglia. You do nice work. Mine was pretty crude back in 69, I was just a kid but it was fun and ran pretty good at the time. Seeing yours near completion make me really miss having mine today. Im 74 now and not up to starting one from scratch so Ill just have to enjoy yours when done. Forgot to mention that prior to the 310 Ford, I had a slant 6 225 plymouth engine in it with a 4 speed and 8 3/4 Mopar rear end

 

mtkawboy,
Your Anglia sounds like a really fine ride for a "kid".
Did the 300 Ford perform appreciably better than the /6?

Today I started to clean up engine parts for our next 300 build, going in my son's Anglia so I can have the 240 engine out of his for the Attic Anglia. I'll take it in to get the block bored .020 over and have the Sealed Power hypereutectic pistons fitted up to the rods. I'll do the head work myself and final assembly with a nice lumpy Crane hydraulic cam. Going to re-use the Holley 390 carb on his; I think I'll be using my home made tri-power pictured previously on the 240. Both cars get EFI split exhausts.

 

I dug some more engine parts out of storage. The block and pan were really gunked up with crud. I took them to a car wash and the high pressure didn't touch the crud. So back home I spent a couple of hours scraping and wire brushing the pan clean. After I finished I remembered that the widow of a friend and fellow six racer had given me two new oil pans which I had squirreled away in the attic. So time wasted.
To get a set of rods ready I pressed the old pistons off them. One had a cracked skirt - a common problem on the early 300 sixes. I have a new set of stronger hypereutectic pistons (Sealed Power #H519P - 020) and will soon be taking the block in to have it bored .020: That will give me - er, SuperDave - 303 cubic inches for his ride to replace the 240 ci motor headed for this Attic Anglia.

 

Bummer. The block I took to the machine shop had one cylinder (#1) that would not clean up at .020 over. So on to "Plan B".

I had a OEM brand new block I was saving for another race car engine build, but this build gets it I guess. I hate to take a new block that could have been good at a standard bore and bore it to .020 from the git-go. But I decided to use it and do it right using a bore plate to get the cylinders round.

 

Frenchtown Flyer,
Had no idea that you had an Anglia build going on. The narrow frame is sharp. I like your idea with the steel roof bows.I wish i had attempted that. Mine being race track only for the most part I used the stock and an aluminum insert. Still like your idea better- to far in now to change my set up ( roof bows ) but I think you are on the right track. I have built and run several chevy sixes , and have seen your engines here on the HAMB and other places. Been keeping up with your work on another site. Sharp - you guys were way ahead of your time.

 

Thank you for those kind words Mitchell. I found another advantage of the steel roof bow is it gives a convenient place to put an interior dome light, as well as routing wires from one side over to the other, like speaker wires. That is why I put indented notches on the ends - to make it easy to run wires through it.

Mitchell, do you have any pics of your Anglia you could share with us? I would not consider that a hi-jack - rather, additional data to share.

The engine block is back from the machine shop. Hypereutectic pistons are installed on the rods On a hot rod I usually like to polish the outside of the block before painting it but since I had to grab this brand new block at the last minute after my other one would not clean up at +.020 I did not get a chance to polish it smooth (like I did on my crossflow head previously pictured). So I now have all the needed parts to assemble a nice short block.

 

I/ really we are actually building a Prefect/ Willys/ and an Opel. Look under Prefect Willys Gasser build, or in the build thread listing. My front engine rails / or at least all but the last one ran a blown 250 chevy . The last one was a 417 donovan powered rail. I always admired you guys who basically put heads together out of pieces - both Chevy and Ford. You guys were always on the cutting edge. I was always afraid of getting in over my head / or financial ability. I built a manifold /bolted on a blower / and prayed that it lived. Luck was on my side. And if it blew - the short block - other than cam was dirt cheap.
We got out of the front engine rails - hard to travel, race and crew as one person. I am a good bit younger than the rest of the guys and we have several 1/8 mile tracks close that would allow them to go more often. Most of our local tracks are 1/8 mile and pretty rough - not front engine car friendly. Memphis is 125 miles away. Bowling Green is around 350 .So it just made sense.
You have a pretty deep back ground from what I pick up on. I like your sense of packaging /multi purposing/simple approach. I like your approach on this build.

 

Here is a link to Mitchell's build.

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/prefect-willys-gasser-build.958167/

 

I started on a cylinder head. I decided to use a head from a 240 ci engine.

A little CYLINDER HEAD 101 here: I chose a 240 head from a '60s or '70s era motor. It has several advantages. It has 68 cc combustion chambers vs the 76 cc chamber that the 300 head has. The 240 head has kidney bean shaped chambers and the 300 head has open D-shaped chambers. A 240 head on a 300 engine will raise the compression about half a point. That is good when using a performance camshaft. The 240 head also has pushrod guide slots vs the round clearance holes found on later heads that use stamped fulcrum rocker arms. It also has rocker arm studs vs hold-down bolts on later heads. It also has no Thermactor holes in the exhaust that would need to be plugged.

 

I thought of something else I'd like to do re: paint. I'm going to paint the rear steel wheels half white and half black, like the old drag racers did to more easily watch how much wheel spin they were getting off the line. Would half green (the body color) / half white be better? Any thoughts?

 

As long as it is a dark green I think it will look great. Just don't go apple green.

 

I was thinking a darker green for the body. With lighter green highlites for trim and maybe the roof with lace or scalloped paint over the roof. I'll have to dwell on whether to make the wheels body color or black.

Chevrolet currently has a nice medium dark green out on some of its SUVs I like.

On an unrelated matter I took the head to get baked/tanked/de-rusted and was told there is a 2-week backup so that head buildup job goes on hold now.

 

Hi FTF.Loving this build.Waiting to see more as you are able to post.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

The block is back from the machine shop w/ a new bore and hone. The pistons were installed on the rods. I took the head in to get de-greased and de-rusted. The guides were in bad shape so I installed Bronze Wall guides. Then I cleaned up the ports and the combustion chambers. I did the final clean-up with a #80 grit tootsie roll in the intakes and a #100 grit on the chambers and exhausts.



I have a die grinder setup that works well. It consists of three items:
A long snout die grinder
Long carbide fluted cutters of various shapes
and
A variable speed reducer.

The variable speed reducer makes it possible to achieve dentist-like accuracy by slowing down the cutter speed to suit. It gives the operator better cutter control with less likelyhood of having the cutter bounce across the workpiece and playing havoc on the deck surface or a valve seat. It also prolongs the life of the cutter. It also reduces metal build-up in the cutter flutes. It also reduces operator fatigue.




HOWEVER, DO NOT USE CHEAP IMPORTED ARBORS! This one suddenly bent itself up in a pretzel while I was pressing on it at 20,000 RPM! Boy howdy, I could barely hold on as I jerked the grinder plug out of the outlet before it broke my wrist!

 

REALLY enjoying the build thread!
One question about the over bore delimma. Couldn't you have taken the bores to 30 over?
Are the 300 blocks that thin or...cubic inch requirements for class purposes?
Just wonder'in!
6sally6

 

6sally6,
That is a good question. I had previously purchased the pistons at .020" over. I had checked a used block I had by measuring across the bores from thrust-side to anti-thrust-side and thought they would clean up at .020 over. But my machinist measured both across and lengthwise and found the front cylinder (by the water pump) to be needing to be bored to at least .040 to clean up. A 300 block can be bored .060" over to 4.060" usually. I try to keep the wall thickness as thick as possible so rather than order another set of bigger pistons I just took him a new block and bored it using a honing plate to get the cylinders perfectly round and sized for the .020 pistons I had. Sorry for the confusion. I was not concerned with cubes-to-weight drag rules since this is a street/strip build.
The blueprint thickness for a 4.000 cylinder wall on one of these engines is .170" at its thinnest point.

 

Today the guides got prepped. First, ream with a piloted reamer. This will make the hole round and on center. Next, since I'm a little OCD I honed the guide, to establish the final size and to get the proper surface finish on the inside of the guide with an oil-holding cross hatch. Progress is slow and tedious. If I owned a speed shop I couldn't afford to hire me.

 

The cylinder head machining is complete. Big valves installed and bowl and chamber work is done. I had to have a .010" cut taken off the deck surface to clean it up. Also, the crank is installed in the block so build-up can commence on the short block.

 

I installed the pistons and rods in the engine. Hypereutectic pistons with stock compression on stock rods. Nuttin fancy here. I discovered the keyway in the crankshaft had been repaired necessitating that I make a custom key 3/16 x .280 tall. Next the cam and lifters go in.

 

Tonight I installed the cam. It is a Crane H-272-2 - the same cam I run in my Willys . Everything came out pretty nominal - .005" axial end play (.002 - .006 is spec), .0025" - .0035" cam gear backlash (.001 - .007 is spec), 107 degrees LC on #1, 108 degrees LC on #6 - close enough (spec: 107). Next comes head install - I may still get a set of roller rockers and then the lube system and finally the ignition system.
The intake (Offy w/ 390 Holley) and exhaust (dual EFI) will be transferred over from the 240 motor.

 

I am nearing buttoning up this engine. I decided to use Harlan Sharp roller rocker arms (1.6:1 ratio). I figured they will not clear the stock valve cover so I cut apart an EFI cover to check for clearance. Then I decided to make my own design tall valve cover. Can you guess what I used to make it?

 

Looks like you capped it with a piece of aluminum doorway threshold plate.

 

BINGO!
64 DODGE 440 gets a gold star for today. I'm going to paint it all and polish the top of the fins.

 

This thread is Off the hook!!

 

In my other hobby of building cigar box guitars as well as hotrodding I have learned to look at everyday objects with a "how could I use this" edge. There are many things out there that adapt well to other uses than what they were made for.

 

Interesting. My grandson and I once built a can-jo.

 

They grow on you. I built my first (sort of a banjo thing with a cookie tin for the body) in March of 2012 and now I'm up to 26 assorted builds, 17 are cigar box and the rest vary from canjos to a Hudson hubcap build that is sort of a poor mans Dobro. It adds new meaning to being a "trash picker". Now I really need to devote some time to learning how to play better. I have built several that have gone to homes with good musicians, so I know how good they can sound when played by someone with skill.

 

Nearing completion of a pump gas bullet. To sum up it is
.020 over - 303 ci
hi comp head (240) [EDIT: Now with a 300 head for lower compression]
big valves
port work
Crane 272 hydraulic cam and springs
dual EFI exhausts
aluminum 4V intake
390 Holley carb
4K stall converter

I stuck a 2 x 4 intake on for the pics. MY Attic Anglia will have one of my home made 3 x 1 intakes.

I painted it a raspberry creamsicle. Enjoy

 

WOW nice paint.