I am new here but I have been lurking here for a while. I have found this to be a great forum of interest. I mostly lurk on the BBC section cause I just got finished building a 454 for my Nordic Jet Boat project. I got the block from a person who had the motor in a Jet boat and it dropped a valve(possible water reversion).I got the motor in all apart condition. The block was in great shape. It had factory forged rods and pistons (Hi comp). The heads had battle scars from the valve flying around. They are Rect ports. I sold the parts I did not use on E-bay for a surprisingly good amount. I kept the block, factory forged crank and heads. Before I brought it to the machine shop I de-burred everything inside and outside.
I had it bored and torque plate honed for .030 over SPR pistons with the piston set at “0” in the bore. I also had it line bored/honed for ARP studs on the mains. The heads were redone utilizing Manley Severe duty larger valves and new hardened seats. I used a comp cams marine cam for Jet Boats to keep water reversion at a minimum. I also used matching comp. cams valve train throughout with roller rockers and 3/8 push rods. I also studded the heads as well (more on that later).
I assembled the complete motor after all machine work was done. This motor assembly fought me all the way. I used a cloyes chain with the Torrington bearing. I wanted to use a cam button. I had to machine the cam button to get .007 clearance. While doing this the retainer clip kept getting stretched out so I had to get new ones. Thanks to having a lathe in my garage. I also got an alum timing chain cover which I had to mill out the inside for chain clearance and re-drill the holes for the dowel pins. It is great having a Bridgeport Mill in the garage as well. I guess this is what you get when you get a timing chain cover on E-bay that was probably made in China. I then attempt to mock the Jet Boat headers and the flanges hit the lower head studs which required the flanges to be notched to clear. Setting a set of Jet Boat headers on the mill was a little scary to say the least but they came out good. After all assembled it is now time to test run and break in the cam on my home made engine run in stand. Here are some pics of the build and the run in stand. I should be ready to fire it in the next couple of days or so. Stay tuned for a video of it running. I have run small blocks on this stand and winged them up and the stand did not even move, however I am going to strap the stand down for the Big Block.

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