Ford Small-Block Building - Pump Up The Volume

Check out how much beefier the stroker connecting rod bearing is on the right than the stock connecting rod bearing is on the left.

The custom ground hydraulic roller Isky camshaft, as seen on the right, provides .544/.573 inches of lift and 238/248 degrees of duration at .050 inches.

Since the Smeding shop starts with brand-new Ford SVO Sportsmen II 351W blocks with non-Siamese bores for superior cooling and a one-piece rear main seal, the beefier Fel-Pro head gaskets are used (as shown on the right). In fact, the stock head gaskets don't work with the Ford Sportsmen II block.

For the 427ci Ford Smeding stroker engine, nothing less than roller lifters are good enough. Notice there are no rollers on the stock units on the left.

Stock 351Windsor intake valves are 1.780 inches in diameter (on the left), while the Edelbrock Victor Jr. aluminum cylinder heads, which are employed on the Smeding 427ci stroker engine, utilize 2.05-inch diameter stainless steel intake valves. The stainless steel exhaust valves are 1.60 inches in diameter (not shown).

Technician Tony Bagatelos can pose for the camera and let the computer-controlled Rottler boring and decking machine do its thing. Tony programmed the boring machine to bore each cylinder .026 inches over. The base of each cylinder has already undergone minor grinding. This is done to clear the connecting rod bolts as they go by since a stroker crankshaft makes the throws swing wider.

After swapping the cylinder boring apparatus for the decking component, Tony programmed the Rottler boring and decking machine to take .007 of an inch off the engine block's deck height. Three passes were made for each deck. The first two took off .003 of an inch, and the final pass removed .001 of an inch to yield a 9.5-inch deck height.

Once the boring and decking machine has done its work, the block was moved to the Rottler honing machine. Tony programmed the machine to hone out the final .004-inch from each cylinder to yield a bore of 4.030 inches. The Rottler honing machine utilizes industrial (man-made) diamonds to do the honing and special water-soluble (eco-friendly) cutting fluid. By using the race-team used/proven Rottler machines, fully blueprinted engine blocks are produced.

To balance the engine's bottom end within 1 gram, technician Dan Moody weighed each component of the rotating assembly. Both the big-end and small-end of each component were weighed and recorded, and then all were overall-weight-matched to the lightest one in the group of eight.

Simulating each rod/ring/piston assembly, Dan bolted bob-weights to the crankshaft. Dan was about to spin the rotating assembly at speed. The computer revealed if there was any imbalance and how much.

After spinning the rotating assembly at speed, the computer screen revealed that it was 150 grams out of balance (upper lefthand corner of screen). The green dot on the screen showed where weight needed to be drilled out of one of the crankshaft's counterweights.

To balance the rotating assembly within 1 gram, Dan drilled 3 small holes in one of the crankshaft's counterweights. Remember, the computer screen also showed him where to remove the weight (the green dot).

Both the intake and exhaust openings on the Edelbrock Victor Jr. aluminum cylinder heads have stepped valve seats. This picture reveals the stepped intake opening.

To remove the valve seat step in each of the 8 intake and 8 exhaust openings, Ben Smeding programmed the Newen Contour Epoc elite power contouring head machine.

Notice how much smoother the radius is of the intake opening after the Newen machine has smoothed the edge. Doing this headwork to all the intake and exhaust openings will add approximately 10 horsepower.