Engine Building
...Is the very best Bench Work as it's easy and fun too

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Beware of : ' race ' cams ! I always had great luck with stock 3/4 Ton Camper Special cams , I flat refuse to use re-ground cams as they never last no matter how carefully you break them in .
New cam : new lifters ! .
Used cam :,used lifters are O.K. but _ONLY_ if you took the time to mark
exactly which lifter went against which lobe ~ failure to do this means it'll run flat in 10,000 miles or less

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Re-ground lifters are crap too , a TOTAL wa$te of $$ !.
Do you know what heads you're using ? some SBC heads have nice , BIG valves and they tend to get stolen , or " lost " (yeah , right !) at most Machine shops unless you're very observant . they tried this B.S. on some fuelie heads I sent in from the Police Dept. last year , the Mechanic was hopping mad when they returned tiny valve SMOG heads.... I called them up and said " Monday or I call in the Force ..." oddly ,they suddenly "found" there had been a " mixup" and our big valve heads appeared...
Anyways , to do the job right , you need
Hospital cleanliness ~ when you're about to assemble the pistons & cylinders , wipe the bores with a clean white paper towel and if it comes out with _any_ traces on it , clean the cylinder with new white paper towels and Windex until they come out clean ~ no joke . how you clean it has everything to do with how it breaks in and lasts , power and so on .
HAVE FUN ! .