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Jared's '79 5.3 244 Project: The Qwikbrik

I was gonna ask for pics of the driveshaft damage. From the looks of it, I guess it let go at speed, instead of on a dig? Bit of a shame, that's such a sharp looking car.

I'm a bit leery on mine - we never got up to really silly speeds at Mountain Meet, but on the way back I occasionally saw a straight piece of deserted empty road and let it rip a little. And noticed that at higher speeds (100 - 120) it was smooth under power, and smooth under engine braking, but if I sort of in-betweened the throttle I'd get some unsettling vibrations from something, which I assumed was axle/driveshaft related (due to it settling out under torque in either direction).

I'm thinking when I go to the Ford 8.8 I'm going to do some sort of 2 piece setup.
 
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Driveshaft was a one-piece 3". I'm told that the failure happened during decel from a pull to about 140. The description was that the driveshaft "jumproped" and then broke in half right in the middle.

The photo I saw of the failed driveshaft looked very thin-wall to me. I'll definitely be specing a thicker wall when I have mine built.
 
I told the guy 700 - 800 hp on mine, just to be safe. But I'm still thinking about a 2 pc for the 8.8. That's kind of a long shaft for high speeds (TWSS).
 
That's an impressive amount of damage, and a damn shame about the car....

But I'm ready to see the 79 back on the road. You gonna run those wheels or sell them to buy something different!
 
That's an impressive amount of damage, and a damn shame about the car....

But I'm ready to see the 79 back on the road. You gonna run those wheels or sell them to buy something different!

Unsure. I don't love em, I don't hate em. The rears are 10" and they do clear the big brakes, so they'll likely be used at least initially.

Starting to think about how I want to put the motor together.

This motor is going to spend a lot of time in the 3000-6000 RPM area, and will be a NA engine for the forseeable future. I'd like to get static compression up to about 11:1-11.5:1.

The truck L76 truck motor has 823 heads, a 4.0" bore, and a 3.622" stroke. Original compression is (supposedly) 9.7:1.

This is quite a bit lower than the car version of this motor, which was 10.4:1. There's some disagreement on combustion chamber volume for these heads. Spec is 68.4, but some references say 70cc. I'll just have to measure mine to determine what I've got to start with.

I figure I'll just use the LS9 head gaskets everyone uses. I'll probably go talk to a machine shop towards the end of this week.

I'm leaning towards a Trick Flow 30602003 cam. (https://www.summitracing.com/parts/tfs-30602003) but I'm certainly open to input.
 
give John Bewley a call at little john's motorsports, and talk to him. It's a bit more spendy, but his stuff works veeeerrryyy well, and he can offer insight to other aspects of the setup as well.

https://www.liljohnsmotorsports.com/


I imagine he'll probably recommend either the stage 2 or stage 3 NA cams.. but that stage 4 idle there will ruin people... lawd.
 
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indeed. he's a sharp dude, you can catch him on the panel of weekly participants on the real tuners podcast.
 
JD has the hookup on Holley dealer pricing, so I can save a bit there. Currently debating on whether it's worth pulling the shortblock apart to have the deck cleaned up or not. My gut says just leave it and mill the heads and not deck the block.

The flip side of that is I know if I take the block apart, I'm just gonna have a bunch of LS parts sitting on the bench for the next 5 years because that's the way I am, so the less I deal with the bottom end, the better imo.

Chatted a bit with John and he feels that a BTR Stage 3 cam would do 450-470 at the tire pretty easily even without milling the heads, so that's good. Obviously any compression bump I can get easily will be worthwhile, so I'll talk to my machinist about cam choice and what not and we'll come up with how much we'll need to mill the heads.
 
I mean is the bottom end in good shape, deck straight, etc? If so and you can get whatever compression bump you want just with head work I'd be inclined to go that way. Then you could just get head work and be done. Bonus if you wanted to throw a super charger on it and needed the deck height later for whatever reason then you're good to go.
 
IMO part of the appeal in using an LS is in not needing to do much to them. Fresh from the JY, degrease the outside, HG, valve springs, lifters, cam, hands off.

Maybe gap the rings if you're going for SOOPERMEGA HP's.
 
I mean is the bottom end in good shape, deck straight, etc? If so and you can get whatever compression bump you want just with head work I'd be inclined to go that way. Then you could just get head work and be done. Bonus if you wanted to throw a super charger on it and needed the deck height later for whatever reason then you're good to go.

Yeah that's kinda where I'm at.
 
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