Nice job on the rebuild. . Looks good. Imo manual choke would be more reliable and controlable but yet a bit of a nuisance.

wow thanks rappy, nice workshop too

interesting when you say about the leccy choke, what kind of exhaust feed would it need? I have never seen one although my 2nd car had one about 17 years ago lol

I do have a manual choke cable in place for the su's and after the engine is broken in I will be running lpg so I am not sure if the leccy system would interfere once the gas cuts in?

One thing that worries me is that I have to break in the cam without damaging the new rings/bores on the first start up for half an hour so are there any base setting you can do on the carb to guarantee a first time start and safe run ie not too rich or lean with a good idle in case I slip off the throttle for a sec?

Thanks so much for your help mate, I really appreciate it, let me know what you need from the UK!

I guess you'll need a few guys on the job fett, one in the car to keep it running and keep revs up, one on the timing light and one on the exhaust sniffer to try to get it roughly tuned ASAP so you can run it right enough for the cam break in?!

By the way I adjusted my throttle cable for the cam break in so that we had steady speed and then pulled the throttle cable a bit every few minutes to keep the speed varied

Did you guys get cam break in additive with you cams?

I had to buy it seperate when i purchased my cam but it was not the same make as yours. It looked black and thick like cv joint grease.
I then used assembly lube on all other parts of the engine to ensure first start up was free from metal to metal contact.
I cant recall if it was you or fett asking about lubing the piston rings and piston tops.
Like James said give it a smear, but don't over oil them. Last thing you want is carbon building up in the piston lands which will cause them to not work as they should. I know people that build race engines and they put them together dry to speed up the run in process, where they are expected to run huge rpm hours after a rebuild with low power loss.

is that an offer noisy? I lined up one mate today with a timing light as I have been doing mine by ear so far.

mark, I think it will cost me an arm and leg in shipping to get the lube from the cam maker in aus but I will get a bottle from real steel along with the high volume oil pump and studs etc.

I also meant to ask you mark, when I looked at the cam bearings the machine shop put in yesterday (glanced at the front one more like) it looked like the oil hole on one side lined up with the hole in the block but the other hole in the bearing didnt seem to line up with anything, is that how yours were?

I need to send the block back over there as I noticed the deck on both sides is not 100 percent flat and there are a few spots I can just get my 0.05 feeler gauge under the straight edge I should have checked when it was there)

rappy what can I say you are star helping me out with this foreign carby and all the parts/advice I owe you several

Ah yea real steel gave me (i had to pay for it mind) an oil additive to run for a set amount of miles otherwise the cam is not guaranteed!
And regarding the bearing, from memory the front one had the hole like the other ones which I don't think was used and a longer one which lined up with the main oil gallery.
And the block.. w..t..f.. you're going to be running silly comp: soon!

yeah thats right one hole lines up with the hole in the block and the other lines up with nothing? were all of them like that mark? I guess the bearings are from a buik 215 or something like the cam (fedral mogul you got) were.

I thought there was only the cam lube you put on the cam directly, was there a seperate break in additive in the oil? thing is I would most likely change the oil after the cam break in half an hour, is that wrong?

compression will range from 9.5:1 to 10.6:1 depending on the source, I am hoping for 9.5 as I will need to run it on petrol for 500 miles to break the whole engine in and I would rather not to that on v-power with octane booster as it will cost a bomb lol

You can see the oil additive in this pic.. I dont think the bearings we're all the same but ill have to check.

but your front cam bearing was the same as I described mine?

Did you do valve springs as well mate? how come?

The front one is as you described. I did the springs as I thought it was good practice as the will probly have lost some of their strength

lol true but are the new indian ones as good as old used original ones

well its at the machine shop now getting the decks flat! £50 more lol

Im unsure why you're having to pay again? Didnt they screw it up in the 1st place?

nah I never asked them to do the decks, they looked so good. my fault for not getting the feeler gauges out before it went over the first time. :doh:

luckily my apprentice lives over there so its easy shipping lol

Ah thought you said they done em already. My bad

more my bad lol

well cam is ordered and paid for, thats another £350- pain in the wallet lol

ok boys after much re-search I now know what the deal is to get quality lifters.

we all know people have been fitting some sets some genuine , most aftermarket (****part) for example and they have not even worked from day one- at all. others have failed quickly or are noisy all the time.

It turns out there is now only one factroy making lifters in the world that is not in the third world. Regardless of brand all other lifters not from there are made in india, Pakistan, china,mexico or Taiwan etc.

The company you want is Johnson, sometimes called hylift johnson. sometimes these are boxed delphi but so are third world ones so I wouldnt use that as a method.

The factory mainly makes chevy lifters, which with our buick 215 derivatives obviously suit us.

in something reminiscent of the sopranos the company was bought out to prevent closure of it by a megacorp type merger but then the manager started selling of the machinery and parts on the qt and also selling the rejects as warranted A grade parts. He was then found out by the owner when employees complained about the newly refurbed machines being "dissapeared" and truckloads of product going missing.

All the stuff was then found in a massive warehouse 2000 miles away in florida lol.

Anyway that was a few years back and they are now sorted and the quality is right. Now sourcing these has not been easy as so many people are happy just to buy whats easiest and that includes the supplier. I have been told many times yeah they are good quality american lifters. when I ask the name- NO THEY ARE NOT!

My tactic became to ask the name and location of the supplier without telling them where I wanted them from. Only one got the correct answer and they also had the cam I wanted and that was camtech in Aus.

TBH it seems daft for them to go US-AUS-UK but they were only $96 AUS for 16 lifters so not bad but the shipping time and cost is a bitch.

If we could get hold of johnson direct and we knew the spec (or it was buik 215 spec for the rest of you? my 4.4 are more like chevy ones with oil feed for hollow pushrods) then we could actually get good lifters here that would last and support the last western factory too as it is struggling after being conned by the manager and hurt by cheap foreign labour.

Just thought I would share my hours of research and foreign phone calls