Reply to "what have i got?"

I was tired last night when I posted, having traveled all day returning from Monterey (the Concorso Italiano), apologies for my abrupt answer.

The problems ...

(1) Its nice the block was decked (squared up) and the reciprocating assembly was balanced in some way (static? dynamic?) but its a downer the block was bored 40 thousandths over. My guess is this is the block's second bore job, the first one was 30 thousandths over, so the second bore job was taken another 10 thousandths. It sure would be nice to see a sonic check report for those cylinder walls.

(2) 6.125" connecting rods. Normally we use 6.00 inch rods, to give the piston more room for a standard ring set that doesn't overlap the wrist pin hole.

(3) 1/16 x 1/16 x 3/16 ring set ... thats not a ring set built for longevity, this exemplifies perfectly why a shorter rod is preferred. The Eagle/KB stroker kit is a wonky combination for the street, I guess it was intended to be a low budget race kit. The problem is kits like this are dumped on eBay to any buyer with no couseling regarding application.

(4) Assuming this stroker kit uses floating wrist pins, there's no mention of indexing the cylinders. Boring the cylinders while indexing the boring tool on the main bearing axis is referred to as "indexing the cylinders". It makes the cylinders perpendicular to the crankshaft both fore and aft and left to right. This is a necessary step before using floating wrist pins because cylinders that are canted fore and aft will cause the piston pins to hammer the locks out of the pistons and gouge the cylinder walls.

(5) Pro Comp heads. Ignoring the dismal business ethics of the company, their Chinese made parts have the worst reputation in the aftermarket industry in regards to quality. On top of all that, they don't flow well and take a lot of work to fix. It appears the heads were purchased based on lowest price, but "fixing" them would end up costing more money than a better set of heads. The iron 4V heads are great heads, replacing them with Pro Comp heads is a down-grade.

(6) A solid lifter cam in a Pantera is not for the average person, and not justifiable for a street engine. Its difficult to adjust valve lash in a Pantera.

(7) The TCI damper has a very bad reputation amongst racers. For every good report I've read or heard about the ATI damper I've read or heard an equally bad one about the TCI damper. Folks claim the ATI prevents 351C block cracking, folks claim the TCI is responsible for crankshaft failure. Since the TCI damper is an expensive part, an ATI damper could have been purchased for about the same amount of money, that was a mis-informed purchasing decision.

(8) 2V Edelbrock intake manifold mated to 3V Pro Comp heads. There is a significant port mis-alignment.

(9) Last I checked, Moroso doesn't make a race type Pantera oil pan, so at best this Moroso oil pan is just an OEM copy. A better pan would have been the factory Q code oil pan which has a built-in windage tray.

(10) No mention of any lubrication system improvements besides the oil pan and an ARP oil pump drive shaft. The inflexible ARP oil pump drive shaft is going to eventually lead to shearing the roll pin anchoring the distributor drive gear.

-G