block fillers

[philly]

coolant passage fillers, or block fillers, have been around in one form or another for over half a century, but by and large now the industry basically uses two products for this purpose, moroso engine block filler http://www.summitracing.com/parts/mor-3 ... gQodGZgAJQ

and hard blok

http://www.summitracing.com/search/bran ... ard%20Blok

http://www.hardblok.com/how-to-order/

by and large from the reviews ive read online and the testimonials on forum from guys using the stuff in street cars, apparently it works. hardblok even advertises its product as having heat dissipating properties, and weighing less than the water it displaces.

ive read that using block filler on a street car that you want to retain some of the water cooling capability you should only fill the block up to the openings of the water pump passages at a maximum. some people recommend no higher than the freeze plugs, or whichever is lower. i personally dont mind the added bullshit that comes with putting this stuff in the block if it means more structural integrity. on the other hand, i dont know at what point the structural integrity of the LS motor is compromised and if i am even going to get to that point.

grumpy i know youve mentioned having used some variation of epoxy / steel shot in the past. what was your experience like? did you wait untill you grenaded one motor to start using the coolant passage filler or did you use it right off the bat and never hurt anything?

 

[grumpyvette]

most of the engines Ive built did not use any block filler, but, there have been exceptions as I usually have blocks sonic tested BEFORE the bore is increased to verify the block can be reasonably strong after the over bore is completed. the 496 13.7:1 engine I built for my 1968 corvette race car , that I refer to in my tag line at the bottom of each thread
(IF YOU CAN,T SMOKE THE TIRES AT WILL,FROM A 60 MPH ROLLING START YOUR ENGINE NEEDS MORE WORK!!"!
IF YOU CAN , YOU NEED BETTER TIRES AND YOUR SUSPENSION NEEDS MORE WORK!!)
that engine made in the low 700 hp range had what at the time my machine shop referred to as marginal cylinder walls, as they would measure in the .170 range at a non-critical area on two cylinders, after being bored to the required size. so they suggested I fill the block to add rigidity to the cylinder walls, it was one I filled to the level of the lower edge of the freeze plugs with a slurry of steel bird shot and epoxy, which was allowed to set up for 72 hours prior to the bore being machined and deck plate honed.
I selected the epoxy/steel shot as I just could not see pouring concrete or mortar mix into the coolant passages, anyone thats ever dropped a cinder block knows how brittle those materials can be, and if you ever look at an old building where re-bar has been exposed to weather you know that rusted steel expands and cracks the surrounding concrete, so I opt for a water tight epoxy that bonded to and prevented water from penetrating, into the steel shot and bonded it in place.
pour in some epoxy, followed by several hand-fulls of shot, let the epoxy ooze up and surround the shot, then cover the shot with epoxy and repeat, in layers the result should be about 85% steel shot by volume and yes the epoxy will act like cement and hold the shot in a concrete type slurry mix, that should be kept level until it hardens (about 1 hour) per cylinder bank
remember you,ll want to insert a drain tube, before you pour the block fill to allow the block petcock drain to work, and cut the tube at the top of the block filler on both sides,
over the anticipated temp range the steel shot and epoxy filler has proven to work well, in the engine blocks filled to the lower edge of the freeze plugs,
to provide enhanced bore wall rigidity,
with ZERO ISSUES in my experience, now ,I've always done it on BBC engines, never yet on a SBC application
if you go that route be sure to remember, to place a plastic straw through the steel shot & epoxy slurry, too the drain plug in the block lower wall, to allow the coolant too drain through re-enforcing lower block fill, mix the epoxy and shot well, it must not have voids that might cause steam pockets or corrosion and you must use anti freeze in the coolant to limit potential corrosion issues, adding a couple anodes would also help

https://www.ballisticproducts.com/Steel-Shot-6-bag_10/productinfo/SH06/

before you dump a $1000 dollars or more into machine work on any block have the bore walls thickness checked and the block MAG TESTED for FLAWS & CRACKS , failure to spend the time and money required to do so can cost you a great deal of wasted time and money!

mag check for cracks in the block

http://garage.grumpysperformance.com/index.php?threads/unforgiven-project.15214/page-12

http://www.enginebuildermag.com/2014/07/cracking-block-fillers/

In earlier articles, I mentioned filling dedicated, drag racing iron blocks to keep cylinders round and keep them from cracking. Many drag racers still practice that modification.

Today, racers have the luxury of a low-cost block filler called Hard Blok, provided by Joel Bayless.


Back in my early Pro Stock days, when I was racing Cleveland small blocks, we had to use a very expensive Devcon aluminum epoxy.

It was easy to use and it poured like cake batter.

It bonded to anything, had nil shrinkage or expansion when hardened and weighed slightly less than the water it displaced. But, it was very expensive.

Today, the cost of that epoxy needed to do a small block would be about $500. On the other hand, a tub of Hard Blok is about $85 for a short fill and $92 for the larger tub.

Hard Blok is not quite as easy to use as the aluminum liquid epoxy, but the $400 saved to safely do the same thing is well worth the slight extra effort, in my opinion.

I did have a couple 427 aluminum Cleveland blocks that had 4.125 ID Ramsco steel sleeves. The sleeves might bend a bit, but never break. So I did not fill those blocks.


A big thing to consider before filling blocks to the deck or even 1.5″ below, as I did, is that block is then dedicated to short term cooling. There is no release for block fillers that I know of.

Plus, I am not sure about cooling even for some bracket racing.

At RT 66 Drag Strip in Joliet, they go “round robin” by the semis. For Pro Stock, it was OK. We towed back and had at least an hour between rounds.

Before Hard Blok, many racers and engine builders experimented filling blocks with various substances. Many had some very shocking and ill effects.

Way back about 1982, I had a customer’s block someone filled with some sort of industrial equipment, concrete type grout. Like concrete, the substance had been mixed with water.

I chased little dots of rust, not only on the outside of the block, but also on the nice cylinder bores I had torque honed. I had to wait weeks to assemble that engine before that block quit bleeding those tiny rust spots.

In the early ‘80s, another negative block filling result I experienced was when my good 427 aluminum block was hurt. In desperation I acquired a Cleveland block from some joker in Indy that had talked me into trying it in my own racecar.

He had sleeved every cylinder and filled it 3/4 of the way under the deck with fiberglass resin and hardener. The block was then bored and honed to 4.125. I put it together using new special order BRC 4.125 pistons and Brooks windage rods. For a crank I borrowed my 3.625 stroke crank from my 370″ engine. With 4.125 bore and 3.625 crank I created 388 CI. It had great rod ratio.

This was the AHRA Nitrous Small Block Pro Stock era. My next race was the AHRA Summer Nationals at Kansas City.

First run with the 388 – wow!! That combo felt as strong as my aluminum 427. Suddenly, half into the run, my Zephyr nosed over and my car filled with oil smoke. No burnt aluminum smell? Just oil. Oil was everywhere.

We switched engines to my back up, the 409″ iron, Devcon filled Cleveland, and got through the weekend with a semi-final finish.

When I got back to my shop in Lacon, IL., I pulled that hurt 388” engine apart. The sleeved bores were wacked out of round so bad the pistons were scored above the ring package from rubbing the extremely distorted cylinder walls.

Apparently that sleeved, bored to .125 over, and resin filler method was a failure. Hard Blok was not on the market till 1986, so it was back to the high dollar Devcon liquid aluminum epoxy.

When I switched to Mammoth motors in ‘84, those 4.625 bore cylinders in the A/R aluminum blocks maintained integrity pretty well, until we started using nitrous in those engines.

By ‘87, I started running as an Outlaw Pro Stock, using nitrous with my 672″ A/R Ford Boss Hemi we named the “Monolith.” The block, like my next four mammoth engines, was an aluminum Allen Root design with 11.2 deck. When using nitrous, the inboard cylinders 2 & 3 and 6 & 7 would go out of round .003” to even .005”. The problem was the thin aluminum between those center cylinders would crack. In some cases the cracks would eventually travel the radius to the main saddle bosses. Then a welding repair was in order, including reinforcement between the cylinder sleeves.

When only “freshening up” the still useable engine with out of round cylinders, I would hone with a deck plate using a course stone with light pressure so the stones would trim the high spots.

Too much pressure and too fine stone, the hone would just follow the irregularity and make matters worse. It was tricky. With patience I could get the distortion to just under .001 and still keep useable piston clearance. Once that was reached then a light as possible plateau hone.

When ordering pistons for nitrous or power adder engines, I always ordered several extra pistons in progressive sizes to counter future excessive piston to wall clearance.

Another too loose clearance fix was to knurl the pistons on my trusty Perfect Circle piston knurling machine. Knurling does work. Even on race engines.

Those sleeves used in the A/R blocks were not prone to cracking. Like the Ramsco sleeves in my earlier aluminum Cleveland blocks, they would bend, but not break.

However, somehow I managed to crack one of those sleeves. I had five A/R Boss Hemi’s since 1984. So one cracked liner in all that time is not too bad.

While starting on a routine freshen, intending to install new aluminum rods, I discovered #2 cylinder with a small crack. The cylinder with the crack, when leaked down, tested the same as the rest for cranking compression. All were 190/195. The engine had been running fine. Plugs looked perfect.


This is the Cleveland block that a customer from Indianapolis had filled with a fiberglass resin. The engine never got through the quarter-mile. The cylinders were wacked out of round so bad that the pistons grabbed the cylinder walls above the ring package. Note the tapped hole for a drain cock, two inches below deck.
Unfortunately, this poor old block just sits around and rusts. I fear to resize the cylinder or replace sleeves for fear that the resin may react again.
The perpendicular crack started just below the top lip and went about .500 down.

I had put my recently freshened 666″ engine “Damien” in the Zephyr for two USSC contracted bookings.

I wanted to take the Monolith for backup. We were running out of time.

I reasoned that engine was running ok with that crack. No telling how long it had been that way. It had not been apart for 30 runs. If we need it for a few runs it should be OK.

No time to fix it, the rods have only 30 runs, so I put the heads and intake back on and got it ready to load in the travel crate.

Another problem arose. Zeke, my racecar, was still on the stands. I had started Damien earlier. I still needed to tweak the NOS/Animal nitrous fogger system.

In doing so I warmed the engine up again, cranked the throttle enough to burst the nitrous. Whooom! After I did, smoke started pouring out the driver side header big time. Oh man! I had hurt a piston.

Later, I found when I burst the nitrous # 6 had cracked the ring land above # 2 ring groove. I found several like that with nitrous engines during my many years. The land cracks behind and away from the piston. You cannot see it. To check, use a small screw driver in the upper and lower ring grooves, and carefully apply pressure up and down. If that land is cracked behind there, it will move.

We needed to get wrapped up and on the road to Englishtown, NJ, nearly 1,000 miles away. No time to fix Damien. My regular crew help that was to go East with me, and a friend, were already here at my shop. We changed engines, putting the Monolith with the cracked sleeve liner back in, started the engine and it ran fine. (I refrained from bursting the nitrous!)

We got to Englishtown in the nick of time for the Wednesday “Night of Fire” and ran the best times and MPH ever with that old Zephyr and the Monolith with a cracked cylinder. We looked at plugs every run. They were storybook examples. All exactly perfect readings.

On Saturday night, our USSC Circuit was booked at Atco, NJ. We had time when we got there and pulled the passenger side head off.

I measured the crack with a machinist 6-inch ruler. The crack had moved about .060” further down. We had made four full hard runs. I determined the crack must have moved .015” a run. We put the Monolith back together. We ran our USSC Chicago style program and got in the finals. We ran well, but not as well as Walter Henry.

We went back home and checked the crack. It had moved down .060” more. We had made four more runs at Atco.

Cranking compression was still even at 190+.

We had a UDRA finals at Great Lakes that coming weekend and I capped the UDRA championship for the second year in a row, winning Outlaw Pro Stock with the Monolith and the cracked cylinder.

When I later removed the passenger side head at my shop, I measured the crack. You guessed it. The crack had moved down another .060”.

We had made four more great runs at Great Lakes.

For those who never witnessed Magnafluxing this is how its done. Electromagnet is located so the area you want to test is located between the posts. Then some "magic dust" (in my best Cheech impersonation) is puffed ofer the area to be checked and the dust jumps right to the crack. Even if the crack is very small (like the one on my head) it will show right up. The crack in this pic was easily seen by the naked eye but it made for a nice easy pic to display the process. The lightweight head in the pic had been sleeved for the bolt hole previously so thats why theres a circle of magic dust around it. The dust knows it as a crack. This head will be pinned to repair the crack. If the opportunity arises to get pics of "pinning" sometime I'll get some.

remember the object of partially filling the coolant passages is to significantly reduce the length of unsupported cylinder wall to add rigidity and reduce the potential for the bore walls to flex under stress thus improving ring seal and resulting power levels
watch this video, but remember , if you intend to partially fill a block to add cylinder wall rigidity, the block should be filled at least 48 hours prior to any machine work being done on the block, as the fill in the coolant passages will generally expands slightly as it sets and will change the bore dimensions slightly.
Id also point out that a DART after market blocks significantly thicker and stiffer and made from a stronger alloy than the OEM production block casting

http://www.tooltopia.com/fowler-72-646-300.aspx

I had that engine for over 7 years without a problem, while it only got seriously raced for a few seasons it did see a good deal of weekend cruising , so yes running a partially filled block with an oil cooler, large baffled oil pan and large radiator is certainly an option on the street as the reduced coolant volume is not a huge problem, for the cooling system with those mods having been used to compensate for any reduction in cooling. I eventually sold that corvette and its engine due to a financial crisis , but the last time I heard the owner was still running it with a different , carburetor intake system and that was about 4 years after I sold it!
Keep in mind easily 70% or more of the heat generated in an engine is through either valve train friction or occurs in the upper 2.5" of the bore or cylinders
now Ive used the concrete fillers in other engines "AT THE DIRECTION AND REQUEST OF THE PEOPLE I WAS BUILDING OTHER ENGINES FOR" and those engines have held up also so I can,t say the filler has issues either.
steel shot has about the same expansion characteristic as the iron block and as a filler allows you to mix a slurry thats far less expensive than pure epoxy would be in a block fill application as steel shot is easily 80%-90% plus of the volume of the steel shot & epoxy slurry you mix.
don't forget to install a plastic tube in each block drain that extends to just a tiny bit above the level of the fill so coolant can be drained from the block

here, pictured above,is a cross section of a block used strictly for drag racing with about 80% of the coolant passage filled, this is far more fill than you would want if the cars to be street driven as its sure to over heat with that much of the coolant passages filled. you can fill a block up to the lower edge of the freeze plugs and add significant support with only a minimal effect on cooling as about 90% of the heats generated in the cylinders upper 2.5" of bore[/color]
Ive also seen guys forget to install a plastic or metal tube in the lower coolant passage to allow the block to drain when they partly fill blocks to add block rigidity on thin cylinder walls, so remember to do that if your filling the block to increase cylinder wall strength up too the lower edge of the freeze plugs as forgetting thats a common new guy mistake

I only filled blocks to the lower edge of the freeze plugs ,
keep in mind the block must be held level in BOTH axises (front to back and side too side)to allow the single cylinder bank of 4 cylinders to be filled and then harden up before the other bank is leveled and filled to insure the epoxy settles and hardens where its intended to be!
Core shift is a result of a block, cylinder head, or other engine casting shifting in its mold when the molten metal is poured in. When core shift occurs the cylinder bores, lifter bores, main bearing and cam tunnels shift from their blueprinted positions. If the shift is significant, mechanical problems can occur and some cylinder walls may be critically thin. This is especially of concern if the engine is to be used for racing applications.

The only way to guarantee cylinder wall thickness is to have the block sonic-tested, but this can be difficult when you go to purchase a used engine.


Core shift example


On engines with in-block cams, you can always take a look at the cam bearing bore. If it is noticeably offset in its machined boss, you should suspect core shift.
get the
block deck perfectly level on each bank before you pour is critical
24" carpenter levels are generally priced under $9
https://www.zoro.com/stanley-level-24in-42-468/i/G2998992/

It might be a surprise to many guys but a $10, METAL CARPENTERS SQUARE can be used , to verify a block thats is significantly warped on the deck surface

http://garage.grumpysperformance.com/index.php?threads/sbc-head-gasket-choice.11070/#post-71671
a dead blow mallet ,used on the blocks oil pan rails occasionally during the fill helps the slurry settle evenly, a funnel to get the slurry in the coolant passages helps

a transmission fluid funnel helps you direct the slurry to the correct areas

STEEL SHOT
http://www.ballisticproducts.com/Steel- ... info/SH08/
EPOXY
http://www.mscdirect.com/product/detail ... 0=00261255

Sonic Checking Your Block

Author Andy Finkbeiner Photos Ron Valera

Modern technology is great for us hot rodders. A few years ago, you practically needed a top security clearance before you could get your hands on technology like this. Now you can whip out the VISA card and order yourself a sonic checker like the one shown above.

Sonic checking is a fairly common term in the engine building business but many people might not fully understand just what it is all about. When the engine builder asks if you want to spend another $75 to have the block sonic checked, some people might think he is just trying to get more money from you. Actually, the engine builder is probably trying to save you from wasting a lot of money on a block that might not be any good. After all, most of the engine blocks in our musclecars are at least 30 years old now and have been through a lot.

Sonic checking is a method for measuring material thickness when you only have access to one side of the part. For instance, if you want to know how thick a cylinder wall in an engine will be, you would have to cut a hole in the wall in order to use a pair of calipers. The sonic checker is able to measure the thickness by sending out a sound wave and then measuring the time that it takes for the sound wave to get to the other side of the wall. Modern electronics allow this complicated task to be accomplished in a hand held device.

How thick the cylinder walls need to be is a fairly difficult question to answer but we do have some clues. Most production V8 blocks have cylinder wall thicknesses that range from 0.090 to .250 thick. Ford motors tend to be the thinnest while some Chevy blocks are the thickest. The thickness of the cylinder wall becomes more important as you start to make more horsepower, so a block that works in a passenger car application might not be suited for Winston Cup duty. If you can find a production block that is at least 0.200 thick on all cylinder wall thrust surfaces you’ve found a good one. Walls that thick should be good for at least 500 or 600 horsepower. If you’re going to be making more power than that then it is probably best to step up to a factory race block. Typically the race blocks are designed to maintain a 0.250 thick cylinder wall at the maximum overbore. They might start out with a wall thickness close to 0.400 as delivered.

Here is the sonic checker from Dakota Ultrasonics. This unit sells for $990 and is designed to be used for various automotive tasks. It can measure thicknesses from 0.025 to 20 inches in a variety of materials but is especially good at measuring cast materials.

Here is where you really need a sonic checker! Nine engine blocks to choose from but which one is the best? A sonic checker allows you to examine each block for core shift and casting flaws. Obviously, what you want to do is to pick the block with the least amount of core shift. Minimum core shift will be indicated by having fairly consistent thickness measurements for each cylinder.



Contact Information:

Dakota Ultrasonics

1650B Mansfield Street

Santa Cruz, CA 95062

(831) 465-8585

http://www.dakotainst.com/
closely related info


http://garage.grumpysperformance.co...ing-to-partially-fill-coolant-passages.14545/

http://www.enginebuildermag.com/2014/07 ... k-fillers/

Cracking Down on Block Fillers

by Jim “Animal” Feurer - Jul 24, 2014


In earlier articles, I mentioned filling dedicated, drag racing iron blocks to keep cylinders round and keep them from cracking. Many drag racers still practice that modification.

Today, racers have the luxury of a low-cost block filler called Hard Blok, provided by Joel Bayless.

Back in my early Pro Stock days, when I was racing Cleveland small blocks, we had to use a very expensive Devcon aluminum epoxy.

It was easy to use and it poured like cake batter.

It bonded to anything, had nil shrinkage or expansion when hardened and weighed slightly less than the water it displaced. But, it was very expensive.

Today, the cost of that epoxy needed to do a small block would be about $500. On the other hand, a tub of Hard Blok is about $85 for a short fill and $92 for the larger tub.

Hard Blok is not quite as easy to use as the aluminum liquid epoxy, but the $400 saved to safely do the same thing is well worth the slight extra effort, in my opinion.

I did have a couple 427 aluminum Cleveland blocks that had 4.125 ID Ramsco steel sleeves. The sleeves might bend a bit, but never break. So I did not fill those blocks.

A big thing to consider before filling blocks to the deck or even 1.5″ below, as I did, is that block is then dedicated to short term cooling. There is no release for block fillers that I know of.

Plus, I am not sure about cooling even for some bracket racing.

At RT 66 Drag Strip in Joliet, they go “round robin” by the semis. For Pro Stock, it was OK. We towed back and had at least an hour between rounds.

Before Hard Blok, many racers and engine builders experimented filling blocks with various substances. Many had some very shocking and ill effects.

Way back about 1982, I had a customer’s block someone filled with some sort of industrial equipment, concrete type grout. Like concrete, the substance had been mixed with water.

I chased little dots of rust, not only on the outside of the block, but also on the nice cylinder bores I had torque honed. I had to wait weeks to assemble that engine before that block quit bleeding those tiny rust spots.

In the early ‘80s, another negative block filling result I experienced was when my good 427 aluminum block was hurt. In desperation I acquired a Cleveland block from some joker in Indy that had talked me into trying it in my own racecar.

He had sleeved every cylinder and filled it 3/4 of the way under the deck with fiberglass resin and hardener. The block was then bored and honed to 4.125. I put it together using new special order BRC 4.125 pistons and Brooks windage rods. For a crank I borrowed my 3.625 stroke crank from my 370″ engine. With 4.125 bore and 3.625 crank I created 388 CI. It had great rod ratio.

This was the AHRA Nitrous Small Block Pro Stock era. My next race was the AHRA Summer Nationals at Kansas City.

First run with the 388 – wow!! That combo felt as strong as my aluminum 427. Suddenly, half into the run, my Zephyr nosed over and my car filled with oil smoke. No burnt aluminum smell? Just oil. Oil was everywhere.

We switched engines to my back up, the 409″ iron, Devcon filled Cleveland, and got through the weekend with a semi-final finish.

When I got back to my shop in Lacon, IL., I pulled that hurt 388” engine apart. The sleeved bores were wacked out of round so bad the pistons were scored above the ring package from rubbing the extremely distorted cylinder walls.

Apparently that sleeved, bored to .125 over, and resin filler method was a failure. Hard Blok was not on the market till 1986, so it was back to the high dollar Devcon liquid aluminum epoxy.

When I switched to Mammoth motors in ‘84, those 4.625 bore cylinders in the A/R aluminum blocks maintained integrity pretty well, until we started using nitrous in those engines.

By ‘87, I started running as an Outlaw Pro Stock, using nitrous with my 672″ A/R Ford Boss Hemi we named the “Monolith.” The block, like my next four mammoth engines, was an aluminum Allen Root design with 11.2 deck. When using nitrous, the inboard cylinders 2 & 3 and 6 & 7 would go out of round .003” to even .005”. The problem was the thin aluminum between those center cylinders would crack. In some cases the cracks would eventually travel the radius to the main saddle bosses. Then a welding repair was in order, including reinforcement between the cylinder sleeves.

When only “freshening up” the still useable engine with out of round cylinders, I would hone with a deck plate using a course stone with light pressure so the stones would trim the high spots.

Too much pressure and too fine stone, the hone would just follow the irregularity and make matters worse. It was tricky. With patience I could get the distortion to just under .001 and still keep useable piston clearance. Once that was reached then a light as possible plateau hone.

When ordering pistons for nitrous or power adder engines, I always ordered several extra pistons in progressive sizes to counter future excessive piston to wall clearance.

Another too loose clearance fix was to knurl the pistons on my trusty Perfect Circle piston knurling machine. Knurling does work. Even on race engines.

Those sleeves used in the A/R blocks were not prone to cracking. Like the Ramsco sleeves in my earlier aluminum Cleveland blocks, they would bend, but not break.

However, somehow I managed to crack one of those sleeves. I had five A/R Boss Hemi’s since 1984. So one cracked liner in all that time is not too bad.

While starting on a routine freshen, intending to install new aluminum rods, I discovered #2 cylinder with a small crack. The cylinder with the crack, when leaked down, tested the same as the rest for cranking compression. All were 190/195. The engine had been running fine. Plugs looked perfect.
This is the Cleveland block that a customer from Indianapolis had filled with a fiberglass resin. The engine never got through the quarter-mile. The cylinders were wacked out of round so bad that the pistons grabbed the cylinder walls above the ring package. Note the tapped hole for a drain cock, two inches below deck. Unfortunately, this poor old block just sits around and rusts. I fear to resize the cylinder or replace sleeves for fear that the resin may react again.

This is the Cleveland block that a customer from Indianapolis had filled with a fiberglass resin. The engine never got through the quarter-mile. The cylinders were wacked out of round so bad that the pistons grabbed the cylinder walls above the ring package. Note the tapped hole for a drain cock, two inches below deck.
Unfortunately, this poor old block just sits around and rusts. I fear to resize the cylinder or replace sleeves for fear that the resin may react again.

The perpendicular crack started just below the top lip and went about .500 down.

I had put my recently freshened 666″ engine “Damien” in the Zephyr for two USSC contracted bookings.

I wanted to take the Monolith for backup. We were running out of time.

I reasoned that engine was running ok with that crack. No telling how long it had been that way. It had not been apart for 30 runs. If we need it for a few runs it should be OK.

No time to fix it, the rods have only 30 runs, so I put the heads and intake back on and got it ready to load in the travel crate.

Another problem arose. Zeke, my racecar, was still on the stands. I had started Damien earlier. I still needed to tweak the NOS/Animal nitrous fogger system.

In doing so I warmed the engine up again, cranked the throttle enough to burst the nitrous. Whooom! After I did, smoke started pouring out the driver side header big time. Oh man! I had hurt a piston.

Later, I found when I burst the nitrous # 6 had cracked the ring land above # 2 ring groove. I found several like that with nitrous engines during my many years. The land cracks behind and away from the piston. You cannot see it. To check, use a small screw driver in the upper and lower ring grooves, and carefully apply pressure up and down. If that land is cracked behind there, it will move.

We needed to get wrapped up and on the road to Englishtown, NJ, nearly 1,000 miles away. No time to fix Damien. My regular crew help that was to go East with me, and a friend, were already here at my shop. We changed engines, putting the Monolith with the cracked sleeve liner back in, started the engine and it ran fine. (I refrained from bursting the nitrous!)

We got to Englishtown in the nick of time for the Wednesday “Night of Fire” and ran the best times and MPH ever with that old Zephyr and the Monolith with a cracked cylinder. We looked at plugs every run. They were storybook examples. All exactly perfect readings.

On Saturday night, our USSC Circuit was booked at Atco, NJ. We had time when we got there and pulled the passenger side head off.

I measured the crack with a machinist 6-inch ruler. The crack had moved about .060” further down. We had made four full hard runs. I determined the crack must have moved .015” a run. We put the Monolith back together. We ran our USSC Chicago style program and got in the finals. We ran well, but not as well as Walter Henry.

We went back home and checked the crack. It had moved down .060” more. We had made four more runs at Atco.

Cranking compression was still even at 190+.

We had a UDRA finals at Great Lakes that coming weekend and I capped the UDRA championship for the second year in a row, winning Outlaw Pro Stock with the Monolith and the cracked cylinder.

When I later removed the passenger side head at my shop, I measured the crack. You guessed it. The crack had moved down another .060”.

We had made four more great runs at Great Lakes.