Project Knightmobile

[IronCastKnight]

I don't hate them exactly, but none of the ones I've looked at really fit the style of the Cutlass in my opinion. Plus, as I'm going to replace the wood grain trim with gbodyparts' brushed aluminum style trim, I'm going to sand the brown crap off the wheel and brush on some silver enamel paint so it'll match.

Your dad did a pretty boss job on his wheel, from the looks of it.

As for the engine, I'm mainly going COMP on the valve train. Specifically:
CCA-42-433-9 hydraulic roller lifter cam with .515/.533 lift, 290/296 adv. duration
CCA-857-16 linked roller lifters
CCA-1442-16 roller tip 1.6 ratio rockers
CCA-2113 double roller timing set - I was originally planning to go with a Milodon gear driven timing set, but that was when I was considering supercharging it. After I nixed the 'charger, I decided to save 400 dollars on the timing gears as well.

As for the rotating assembly, I'm probably either going with Eagle's SIR forged 5140 i-beams or SCAT's forged 4340 i-beams, as I'm having the crank ground to accept Chevy rods on account of having no other option when it comes to new steel rods. Piston wise, the machinist suggested getting some custom forged aluminum flat tops from Ross Racing Pistons with a .927 wrist pin hole instead of reaming out the connecting rods, as he assured me that doing so was going to be a huge pain in the *ss. As a machinist myself, if someone who is my superior by virtue of having more years of experience than I've been alive says something is way too much work, I take their word for it.

On the intake side, I'm putting in an Edlebrock Performer RPM manifold on account of it being the go-to choice for pretty much everyone intent on building a solid sh*t-ripper. I'm also deciding on if I want to rebuild the original Quadrajet to top it off, try to figure out what the hell my uncle did to the Demon he sold me then use that, or just say "**** it" and stuff on a 650-750 CFM Edlebrock.

As for the heads... I'm having the machinist deck the hell out of those 8 heads, shaving off 10 CCs and about .060 of stock, aiming at 9.5-9.6 compression with a .043 compressed thickness gasket. If it goes too high I can always drop on a fatter gasket. After that, I'm giving them a rigorous porting for better flow, though from all reports the 8 heads weren't too bad on that front with the EGR bump removed. If worse comes to worse, I'll fork out the dosh for a set of Edlebrock's Performer heads, which seem to be viewed as pretty fantastic, and just stuff the 8s on the 307 in place of the worthless 7As it currently has.

As for power expectations, I plugged what I'm going to do as accurately as I could into Desktop Dyno 5, which isn't exactly the most accurate simulator, and it gives me a guesstimate of about 339 peak flywheel horsepower and 410 peak flywheel torque. If I get anywhere near those numbers I'll be thrilled, and, at absolute worst, it'll still be better than the 307 with the added benefit of being a freshly rebuilt, reliable engine. Not a very gas friendly or smooth idling one, but hell, if I wanted a smooth, quiet, fuel efficient vehicle I would have bought a Toyota Yaris.

 

[DRIVEN]

Sorry I asked about the specs and expectations. I was going back over your thread and realized I asked about what you had listed about 3 posts before :? . Glad you expanded though. Looks like a well though out combination. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

 

[IronCastKnight]

I tend to adhere to a fairly pessimistic set of expectations, but considering that my build is fairly similar to the one shown in http://www.powerblocktv.com/episodes/HP2012-13 , I suspect I may not be disappointed at all.

If there's one thing I love about my Cutlass more than anything else, it's the roar of the engine as I step on the gas at the green light, and if there's one thing I hate about my Cutlass more than anything else, it's that, even with all the roar, it still takes me a good while to get to 35. 2.14 gears suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

 

[-83MONTESS-]

Thats a pretty cool idea with the steering wheel. Im not gonna lie I have never thought of that before

 

[IronCastKnight]

Epoxying up a cracked to hell steering wheel can yield good results, but it is a good bit of work, mainly when it comes to sanding everything down. Fortunately this is the second wheel I've worked over(the first being the wheel from a '61 Comet), so I'm a bit better prepared. The primary thing I'm doing differently is using JB Weld instead of normal epoxy, on account of it being much less gummy when cured, and, as such, easier to grind and sand.

 

[cuttin_everything82]

i have a 82 cutty wit a chevy 350 .. i c u have electric fans.. what kind of fans did u get ?? how did u install them .. im trying to install mine but ran into a brain fart

 

[IronCastKnight]

UPDATES!

Progress on steering wheel: Still waiting on the quick disconnect to come back in stock on Summit. Holy **** Grant get on that sh*t. The entire wheel is epoxied now, and I've painted the brown bits in the center piece a nice silverish color that kind of looks like brushed aluminum.

On the plus side, all my engine machining is finally done! Just got it back yesterday, and got started on the painting. Today I'm going to finish up painting the heads, and cram all the bottom end bits back in. In the end I went with Eagle's 4340 H-Beam connecting rods and a set of Ross Racing custom flat top pistons.

The block itself has been overbored .03, which wasn't really necessary considering how nice the cylinders were when I took it apart, but it has more than enough meat left for several more rebuilds when it needs them. Of course, considering how few miles I tend to drive in a day, it's going to take a good 26~ years to even hit 100k.

One plot complication is that the custom pistons are just a tiny bit thick, so I have very little deck clearance and will probably have a good bit higher compression than 9.5:1(more around 10.5:1). As such, rather than struggle with precise gasket thickness control and the overall lack of high octane gasoline in my area, I'm going to run this beast on E85, which is significantly more abundant here in Tulsa, and cheaper.

Of course, now things are going to get expensive as, while my Cutlass' front end is still in decent working order, I'm still going to completely rebuild and upgrade it when I pull the 307. I may be a sedate driver, but good handling is something that is very near and dear to my heart considering that I'm used to the quick, precise controls of the subcompact cars I grew up driving. I love my Cutlass, but the thing is a boat compared to the Chevy Aveo.

PICTURES!

Here's the block freshly painted with brushed-on Bill Hirsch Olds Metallic Blue, which glistens quite nicely in the sunlight and actually really matches the color of the car itself.

 

[IronCastKnight]

Update: All Up In My Grills

Finally, my Cutlass has the bitchin-rad '86 blade-style grills it deserves, courtesy of the exceptionally fine gentleman and gentlewomen over at GBodyParts.com. Bweavy, TobyP, and everyone else involved in that glorious store: I love you.

PICS!

Damn, damn sexy. They don't quite perfectly line up with the front clip, but I suspect there may be twenty eight years of slight heat warping and probably a few less wild animals to blame for that. Or maybe I just put them in slightly wrong? Hm.

 

[IronCastKnight]

General Update:

Everything went t*ts-up on the steering wheel project at about the time I tried to mount the wheel on my e-mill, because the e-mill doesn't have enough Y-stroke to get the drill anywhere near where it needed to be in order to properly drill the holes for my quick-disconnect. Same story for my drill press. As such, I tried hand drilling the holes and, well... there's a reason why I wanted to use the mill to do it. I'm a pretty good machinist, but when it comes to working metal with my hands, I'm a flailing clown.

As a result, I ended up buying a not-completely hideous Grant wheel and slapped that on with my QD, but I had some hilarious mishaps with that as well, mainly due to my torque wrench going "hahah **** you" and not clicking, and my being far too headachey and tired at the time to stop and think about what I was doing. As such, I now have the QD hub a slight bit too far on the column, and it's jammed on there so tight it might as well be welded on. It works, but I have to do a slight bit of filing in order to get the pin through.

 

[IronCastKnight]

Finally free of the broiling muggy *ss evils of Oklahoma summer. I would have expected summers here to be less offensive than the ones in Tucson, but they're actually worse, almost as if I were living on Guam again. I hate humidity so, so very much. Anyways, progress has begun once again on the Rocket 350!

Specifically, I got the new flat top pistons put on their rods properly, set all the ring end and side gaps(and what an unending tedious nightmare that was), installed the pistons, stuffed in the cam, and figured out about how long of pushrods I need. Now I'm working on removing the SMOG bumps from my 7 heads, which really has been just about the easiest part so far. It's glorious how quickly an electric dynafile knockoff from Harbor Freight tears through extraneous cast iron.

Next up is port matching and polishing, which should be similarly easy considering my ever-increasing experience with air tool deburring at work, and also my bigass set of cartridge rolls. After that, it's just bolting everything together and finishing up the engine, then saving up the fat wad of cash needed to rebuild the front end, the rear end, the middle end, and all the posh cabin features like carpet and stuff.