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Vintage Musclecar Parts, Union, OH (2026)

05/27/2026

Yet another internet troll/wanna--be comedian has found their way onto my wall of shame.

Meet "Eric Johnson". As he's now banned, his post has been hidden by Facebook so I took a screenshot to capture his du***ssery for posterity's sake.

I try to be nice...I really, really do--but as I've said before, I have a strict "Zero Fu*****ds" policy on this page. You stick your foot in your mouth, you'll get called on it. Do it again and you're shown the door. It's your loss, not mine.

This is from the last post re: engine project updates. He got nut-slapped once but failed to take the hint. The 2nd du***ss comment got him shown the door.

Don't be a fu****rd.

Seriously.

As far as when EDM lifters became commercially available, it was at least 2006 as I'd already built and dyno'ed the Chevelle's 496 by then (I errantly stated 2007 in the reply attached) and it had the same CRANE solid flat tappet cam and EDM lifters in it then that it does now. That's 20 trouble-free years with those parts.

Lest anyone else still doubt, I'll post a link to the build thread I posted over on the Yenko site 20 years ago in the comments below, you can read some of the car's progress there--and the posts are all dated.

05/27/2026

Engine projects update;

As I'm still waiting on machine work on the LS7 project, the Mystery 496 is temporarily on hold waiting on parts (more on that in an upcoming post) and the 505 re-test isn't on the front burner at the moment, I've decided the next engine to go on the dyno at Millet's is the 496 out of my Chevelle.

For those not up to speed on this build, there's a full write-up on my website which I'll post down in the comments section--but for now, the basics are as follows:

1970's 454 2 bolt block bored .060" and torque plate honed, Eagle 4.25" crank, S**T 6.385 H beam rods, custom AutoTec pistons that give a 10.5-1 compression ratio with the bone stock 291 rectangle port closed chamber heads. Note that these particular heads actually came off of an L78 and as such only have a 1.72" exhaust valve where these heads typically have 1.88" exhaust valves. The only work done to the heads is a 3 angle valve job.

The cam is one of my favorite CRANE solid flat tappets, #131311 which has 256°/264° @ .050", 292°/300° advertised, .618"/.638" lift and a 108° LSA. Lifters are conventional solids with an EDM hole, pushrods are COMP 3/8", and the rocker arms are CRANE nitro-carb 1.7 stamped steel.

The induction is a GM 163 that came off a 1980's crate motor, the only modification done to it is the plenum divider has been removed. No other work has been done such as blending or even port matching. The carb is a 1000HP I built from scratch myself.

The ignition system was comprised of a GM points distributor that I equipped with a CRANE xr-1 breakerless conversion kit, but that got swapped into the new 396 that's in the Chevelle now so an MSD 85551 will replace it in the 496.

The oil pan is a Milodon 31188 with a Melling M77 oil pump.

That's it. Nothing fancy, no tricks, just a pump gas 496 that after a total of almost 30 dyno runs over 3 different dyno sessions wound up making a best of 616 HP and 616 lb.ft. with a radically ported Holley Strip Dominator intake with a 1" open spacer, and 612 HP and 610 lb.ft with the stock GM 163.

In 2014 I had Chad Speier of Speier Racing Heads prep a pair of 840 heads for the build. Unfortunately "life" (and a subsequent death) had other plans for me and I've not since had the opportunity to swap the 840's to see what they'll pick up.

That changes now.

I'm working on getting Yeti over to Kevin for the 572 install, and as soon as the details on that have been worked out, the 496 will go to Millets to be ran exactly as it is now, which is exactly as it was when it made the numbers stated previously. Once we've re-established a current baseline, the heads will be swapped over and tested.

Note that the old numbers came from a Superflow 901 dyno, and Kerry's dyno uses software from "Yourdyno" (same software Steve Morris and a number of other big-name facilities also use), so it'll be interesting to see what--if any differences there will be between the old and new dyno systems.

As soon as testing is done, the 496 and TH400 trans will go into the `78 Camaro "track mule" I have waiting in the wings, and hopefully shortly afterwards I'll be able to get the Camaro up and running and ready for the track.

Fingers crossed I can pull this all off without a hitch--time's a-wastin' on my end.

More soon--I hope!

05/26/2026

Holley LIST 4346 for Jeff Losapio's 396/375 L78 pure stocker. This one had been previously restored by another vendor.

Jeff sent this one in for a rebuild and race calibration for track use. Everything turned out normally and the carb is headed back to Jeff today.

05/26/2026

Holley LIST 3806 for Bill Wente's '67 L79 Chevelle.

This one had been previously restored by another vendor a while back and Bill sent it in to be gone back over to make sure everything was correct and freshen up the restoration.

The carb did have several issues that needed to be addressed, namely an incorrect Chrysler primary float bowl, a generic later style secondary float bowl, a restamped secondary metering block and an incorrect baseplate. Details on each are in the captions with the pics.

It's all sorted out now and on its way back home.

05/25/2026

I believe this was the best overall pull yesterday, it made 620 lb.ft at roughly 3200-3300 rpm at the hit with a peak of 650 lb.ft. I *think* peak HP was 540 or 545, I'll have to check the dyno sheets when I get them tomorrow.

Note that this was with the 1050HP and a 1" open spacer, the 870 carb was down about 15-20 HP/TQ over the 1050.

Again, I think I went a little *too* conservative with the cam and top end swap as the engine basically flatlines at 5000 rpm as it's simply out of air at that point.

Fwiw, had UPS not STOLEN my Crane cam, I would've initially built the engine using the rectangle port heads and 318 intake, which I'm now pretty certain would've resulted in the best overall power curve.

At least I managed to get the cam back and was able to see this to fruition, so there's that.

05/25/2026

572 idle warmup video.

Note it's now idling at +/- 50 kPa of vacuum which converts to almost 15" at 850 rpm. That is a gigantic improvement over the +/-8" @ of vacuum it was making at 1000 rpm with the ISKY cam.

05/24/2026

Quick 572 update;

Dyno testing is complete. In all honesty, it did wind up falling just a bit short from where I thought it would be, but not by much.

That aside, the idle is MUCH more tolerable with the new CRANE cam than the previous larger ISKY cam, and idle vacuum wound up going from roughly 8" at 1000 rpm with the ISKY to 14"-15" at 850-900 rpm with the CRANE which is a HUGE improvement for this application. It's now got a very mild lope at idle which I can definitely live with.

I did learn a few things on this project: In retrospect, I think the engine might've actually made better overall power with the rectangle port heads and intake than it does now with the oval port heads and Performer RPM intake. It does seem to appear that an engine this size--even built for lower RPM use, can definitely utilize a larger runner head and intake manifold.

Testing with the 1050 4150 dyno mule carb I built for Kerry a few years ago gave the best overall numbers of roughly 540 HP and 660 lb.ft. of torque during yesterday's pulls. Today's pulls were about 5-10 HP and lb.ft. down from yesterdays.

Adding a 1" open spacer was worth about 10 lb.ft and 5 HP this time around, but the biggest tell-tale was WOT vacuum was not climbing at peak RPM which indicates the 1050 was supplying all the air the engine wanted. That means the heads and intake appear to be the restriction at this point, as swapping to my prepped 870 Holley gave up about 15-20 HP and LB.FT over the 1050 and vacuum was beginning to climb at peak RPM but the air/fuel ratios were within about .2 to .3 of a point between the 2 carbs, so mixture wasn't the variable.

With the 870 and a 1" spacer we wound up at about 530-535 HP and 645-ish on torque. Kerry did manage to get the dyno to pull the engine all the way down to around 3000 and peak torque did wind up being at around 3900 after all as it was a bit lower below that.

I'll post some video and dyno sheets either tomorrow or Tuesday.

Overall I am still not disappointed in the results, but I am a bit surprised it didn't wind up picking up the torque I thought it would've with the smaller cam, heads and intake.

I think it'll still do just fine lugging Yeti around though. I'll be talking to Kevin next week about when we can get the swap scheduled in.

05/23/2026

Quick Yeti 572 update;

(NOTE: The image below is from the OLD dyno session, NOT the current session.)

Kerry went ahead and made a few pulls on it today. It's down a fair bit on peak HP as I expected, and peaked a few hundred RPM lower (4900) that the bigger ISKY did (5200)--but I think there may be a little more to be had with some tuning and maybe a carb spacer--thankfully I have ample room for those under Yeti's hood lol. I said previously that I'd be happy if it still made 550-ish HP, and we're already pretty close to that now.

As far as torque--Kerry's dyno couldn't pull it down any lower than 3900 where it was making 660 lb.ft.. With the previous ISKY HR cam and rectangle port heads he could pull it down to 3500, and it was only making between 620-640 lb.ft. @ 3900, so there's no doubt it's making more than 660 below 3900 now, the dyno just can't tug it down far enough to get a reading on it.

Torque is a wonderful thing. 😏

Best of all is the new CRANE HR cam is idling much better than the ISKY was--the ISKY was VERY choppy at idle and only made around 8" of vacuum--definitely not ideal for this application. The new CRANE cam is idling with only "a little chop" and it's now making over 12" at 850 RPM. I'm sure I can improve on that further through tuning the vacuum advance, but the biggest thing is I did NOT want an obnoxious idle, and it appears the CRANE has resolved that issue.

Kerry's going to be in the shop tomorrow and asked me to come up, so hopefully there'll be more tomorrow or Monday depending on how things shake out.

The image is the best pull (599HP @ 5200, 659 TQ @ 4200) with the old setup on it (larger ISKY HR cam, rectangle port heads & GM/Mercury Marine 318 intake with the plenum divider removed) just for comparison's sake. It was also done using Kerry's old Superflow 901 dyno software where he's now using a state-of-the-art software system from YourDyno, so the new data will appear different.

One thing I MUST note: the old GM/Mercury Marine intake did have the plenum divider fully removed and this Edelbrock Performer RPM QJet intake still has a fully intact divider.

Past testing on my 496 revealed a 40+ HP gain on it with the plenum divider removed, and that figure alone would almost eliminate the difference in peak HP with the old ISKY cam/rectangle port heads vs. the new CRANE cam and oval port heads. It might be pretty interesting to see if a 1" open carb spacer does anything for it now.

More soon, stay tooned.

05/19/2026

The Oldsmoboogie is now 98% wrapped up. I need to grab another tube of Permatex sealer to touch up the front China rail...naturally there was a GIANT air bubble in the tube that took up a good 25% of the tube which left me short on coverage. 😒

That aside--I am beyond elated--no, ecstatic--no, euphoric to announce that the inside of this thing was absolutely beautifully clean. There was nary a spec of flotsam nor jetsam to be found. My fellow engine builders will know that of which I speak...no matter how careful one is, no matter how many times you go over the tiniest details with a fine tooth comb, eventually somethings gonn'a go kerflooie and leave you with a mess to clean up. To say I'm immensely relieved would be a huge understatement.

I'll get the China rail sealed up tomorrow and get the rest of the peripherals addressed before the owner notifies me they're ready to take delivery, which should be fairly soon.

I'm planning on bringing the mystery 496 back here this week weather permitting. There's some more work that must be done before it's ready to go to the dyno, but I'll make a separate post about that when the time comes.

No, nothing got hurt during the live test at Mike's, but yet another potential issue with those cylinder heads arose that has to be addressed before we can take this thing off its leash and let it eat.

More soon, stay tooned.

05/19/2026

Well it looks like I dodged a bullet on the Oldsmoboogie project. 😳

First thing on my to-do list this morning was to get the distributor out so I could unlock it and install the Mososo advance curve kit.

I pull the cap & wires, remove the distributor hold down clamp and attempt to remove the distributor from the block...it comes up about 1/4" and doesn't want to come up any further. A couple of deft tugs later and the distributor makes its egress from the block--with the oil pump driveshaft still attached. 🤨

Upon inspection, it's noted that the driveshaft had ALMOST twisted the corners off of the shaft where it enters the distributor gear--which to note is a BOP Engineering composite unit to suit the billet HR camshaft in the engine. Before anyone asks, I chose this gear over a bronze one so the owner wouldn't have to futz with swapping out worn gears every year or two.

To note: there was nothing in the literature that came with the gear or the new oil pump regarding anything about what oil pump driveshafts were required, so I installed the stock GM shaft.

With the shaft stuck in the gear, the steel retainer clip for the driveshaft slid off as the shaft came out, so now I have to pull the pan to retrieve it and install a new hardened oil pump driveshaft.

How quaint. 😕

To my absolute and utter amazement, the hardened Melling shaft AND a new Fel-Pro gasket set are both available today locally, so now I know how the rest of my day will be spent.

If this is the only snafu I encounter with this project at this point, I will definitely be grateful--but it sure would've been nice to know about this possibility during assembly.

Lesson learned for any future Oldsmoboogie projects...just stick an aftermarket hardened driveshaft in it to begin with and be done with it.

More later.

Vintage Musclecar Parts

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