So I twisted off an exhaust manifold stud, in the back, and had to pull the head to get it out. After a lot of swearing and twisting the ends off two easy-outs I got through with a carbide cutter and just cut the remains out with a tap. Stood there for a few minutes glaring at it, and it occured to me that those combustion chambers looked pretty big, so I flipped them over, leveled them, cleaned off the gasket material and measured them. 70 cc. :eek: :eek: :eek: Measured them about six more times because I couldn't believe it; even sealed the valves and spark plug with grease to be sure nothing was leaking out. So, 70 cc heads, with the stock gasket (4" bore by 0.033" thick) and the deck height of 0.100" in standard 318 bore of 3.910" gives 7.76:1 compression. :mad: At work (7200 ft) we have an atmospheric pressure (depending on the weather) around 776 mbar, so the effective compression at this altitude is only 6:1 :( What pisses me off even more is that the Fel-Pro head gaskets are thicker (0.050 new, allegedly 0.040 compressed) and larger bore - 4.18" - which adds another couple cc's to the volume. Guess I'm going to try to get some 4323302's (swirl-port, closed chamber, 56-65 cc) by telling AutoZone to order heads for an '88 truck; that'll at least get it into the 8's. Unfortunately milling on a closed-chamber head doesn't get so much volume reduction, so that's probably where it'll stay. Anyone know of any other good small-chamber heads for an LA?

I remedied this same thing by installing KB167 hypereutectic pistons. I didn't use blue Felpro's, but red headgaskets, which are only half as thick. Check Mancini (www.manciniracing.com) for those. Together with some other mods it really woke up my 318 boat anchor.

I ordered those head gaskets from Mancini on Saturday night - together with a timing chain, centrifugal advance springs for the distributor, a 445759 cam & lifters, and some other stuff. I also got the swirl-port heads for $180/ea. from AutoZone; mine have 62 cc chambers, which will get the compression to where it should have been, and much better flowing heads. A little pocket porting, mainly just cleaning up the bowl areas and gasket matching the intake ports to my old iron Mopar 360 intake manifold, will be next. I looked at those pistons; they'd bump the compression up to 9:1 but this only buys 9 hp and 7 lb/ft torque (according to Desktop Dyno) and those pistons are over $250/set. A shop in Albuquerque will cut the valve seats for stock 360 valves (1.88/1.60) for $40, and those valves are cheap; this gets 20 hp and 7 lb/ft. increase. Ideally I'd put those pistons in too, but if I throw too much money into the engine it'll start eating into the other mods.

Oh yeah, the calculated result (without the new pistons) is 325 hp at the flywheel (versus 175 stock) and 354 lb/ft torque (vs. 286 stock). Same combination, but with a cam one step larger, actually dynoed over 330 hp, so this probably isn't too far off.

Your desktop dyno results sort of match the numbers it generates with my combo. Over 300 hp above some 4000 rpm, peaking at, iirc, 4600 and 330 hp. The butt-dyno confirms this.

When mudding, it can spray innocent bystanders with a generous amount of mud in seconds now :) ;) This is with 36'' tires, 4.10 gears on a W200.

The details of what i did to my motor are on my homepage (check my sig.), in short: Hughes HE0914 cam, abovementioned pistons, Weiand stealth intake, Edelbrock 650 carb, 40 man-hours per cylinderhead, abusing a Dremel, a set of headers and home made stainless steel exhaust (dual 2 1/4 with a balance tube aft of the transfer case and homemade mufflers)

Nice writeup there. It's good to see another '77 pickup like mine. The military designation on these was M-880; they called them 1-1/4 ton trucks since rated GVW minus empty curb weight = 2500#. Really just a W-200 with a few minor changes. Mine still has the woodland-camo CARC (chemical-agent resistant coating).

I think your compression ratio is off somewhat; the ratio is total volume with the piston at BDC to the total volume with the piston at TDC. In other words, ratio of {combustion chamber volume + gasket volume + volume in block above piston @ TDC} to all this PLUS volume swept by the piston. Stock 318 pistons (from that time) have a compression height of 1.74" which with the 6.123" rods and factory deck height means that the piston is 0.100" down the bore at TDC; with a .020" over bore, this is 19.88 cc. Subtract 5 cc for those Keith Black pistons, so 14.88 cc here. Those thin Mopar gaskets are 4.060" bore by .024-.028 thick, so just over 5 cc here. You measured the head volume @ 69 cc, and the swept volume is 658.56 cc, so I think you're really at about 8.4:1 compression. Unless you've done something else not noted on your writeup. ;)

That HE0914 was pretty appealing to me also, but they wanted me to buy another set of valve springs, lifters sold separately, etc which amounted to just about $170 more than the Mopar Performance cam/lifter package. Budget constraints helped focus the choice here.

Several years ago I was in Monnikendam for a few days. I really enjoyed the place and people, and hope to make another trip at some point.

Nope, compression is 9.7 ish, the KB's are only .40mm or .020'' below deck. The valve reliefs are 5cc. A tell tale sign is that the starter has to work a lot harder to start it.

Thanks for the kind words about my hómepage. I really should add some action pics of the W200. Most of the time you can't see it's actually red :D

If you ever plan on going to this side of the world again, drop me an email, and we might set something up. Our mudding events are some every 6 to 8 weeks...

You're absolutely right, sir. I completely misread the KB page. Now I've got to reevaluate this whole thing. Maybe I'll leave those smaller valves in and opt for the pistons instead. Thanks for straightening me out there. :)

Ohmygawd, he's calling me sir now.. :D
Please realize that i didn't come up with those mods all by myself. The people at the http://www.moparts.org messageboard were a great help, as were many websites, like this one: http://www.geocities.com/alwest_83/318.html

I'm still doubting whether or not to retard the cam some 4 degrees (making the inletvalve close at 32 instead of 36 degrees ABDC. According to D2000, i'll loose some 30 hp top end, but it will deliver those 300 remaining ponies some 300 rpm sooner. Also torque will be up by some 10 lbft if i do that. At the moment i don't have time to change the setting, and i don't really know if it 'll be worth the effort, or if i'll make the pistons and valves touch oneanother.. Something to ponder a bit longer, i guess..

Don't take it personally. ;) Old habits die hard; I grew up on a Navy base. High-school wrestling coach was a Marine drill instructor; science taught by a well-decorated reserve Army Colonel (3 PH's, 2 Silver Stars, CMH, etc.) history taught by a crazy USAF Captain, etc. Of course that was 20 years ago; but even in grad. school I had one professor who had taught at Annapolis, another from the 101st Airborne (Korea vet), and my advisor flew B-17's over Germany ~60 years ago. In my current occupation (I work at Los Alamos) I interact with military personnel on a fairly regular basis (not to mention my team leader was Air Force). I've learned that's a lot less painful habit than intermittently referring to everyone as "shithead" or something of that sort - even though I still do that sometimes, too. :rolleyes:

Doctor: "You've got an awful lot of scar tissue in there. Must have been an interesting past."

"Well, I guess it was a hearing problem. When they said 'Shut up!' I always seemed to think they meant 'Stand up'..."

Not sure I'd retard the cam. It seems to hurt volumetric efficiency relative to either leaving it straight-up or just switching to a shorter duration grind. Problem is that while it closes the intake sooner, it opens the intake sooner also, and thus induces more reversion in the intake runners. With the exhaust opening sooner, it loses more PdV work from combustion - and you still have exactly the same amount of overlap. I've yet to see a case where altered cam timing is, overall, beneficial.

Navy ?!?!

I myself have been a merchant-navy engineer for some 12 years, most of the time on dredgers (imagine huge diesel powered floating vacuum cleaners) and in my current job my boss is an ex submarine chief engineer (navy...) On other occasions i have worked with ex minesweeper engineers.

In the Dutch navy sub and sweeper people are considered the craziest (sp?). Let's say my craziness matches that of my boss. iow i'm a pretty lucky bastard...