Ask any rock 'n' roller worth his ever-growing fan base and he'll tell you how he came to fame. He pumped up the volume. What works in the world of popular music also applies in high-performance engine building. Every Ford fan has dreamed of powering their vintage Ford hauler with a side-oiler 427ci FE big-block powerplant. Getting back to reality, how many of those original side-oiler FEs do you think are available for purchase, rebuildable, and affordable? Unless you have the bank account of Bruce Springsteen, not too many. Enter master engine builder Smeding Performance in Rancho Cordova, California, to the rescue.
Owner Ben Smeding, Mr. Kim, Dan Moody, and Tony Bagatelos comprise the talented crew at Smeding Performance. They have many years of experience building engines for custom vintage trucks, street rods, muscle cars, dragsters, and their own race cars. Starting with a brand-new Chevy 350ci, Ford 302ci, or Ford 351ci Windsor small-blocks, the shop specializes in building stroker engines. By increasing the displacement of a high-revving small-block, significant gains are made in torque, along with impressive horsepower increases in thestreet-friendly rpm range. Engines that produce most of their torque at low rpms and maintain the torque and horsepower across a broad rpm range are ideal for the street. Having instant power beneath your right foot, regardless of whether you're cruising in fuel-saving Fifth-gear overdrive or automatic overdrive, is great to have in any custom classic pickup.
To create these potent powerplants, the shop inventories the best speed shop goodies in abundance. Combining that inventory with their years of experience and by using the same engine-building machines that Formula One, CART, and NASCAR teams use enables Smeding Performance to build fully balanced and blueprinted high-performance engines that provide awesome performance and bulletproof reliability.
Fittingly, a Ford engine from Smeding Performance will power the old Ford hauler that CCT's Feature Editor is building with his dad. Follow along as Smeding's crew makes a 351ci Windsor small-block Ford sing like a Ford 427ci bad boy by pumping up the volume to the tune of 427 stroked cubic inches! CCT
Fresh from the machine shop centers and engine build room within the Smeding Performance showroom, both brand-new Chevy and Ford stroker engines are on display. |
From a bird's-eye view you can see one of the differences between the stock .030-over piston on the left and the .030-over 427ci stroker forged-alloy dished piston on the right. The stroker dished piston accommodates various valve sizes from the different aftermarket high-performance aluminum head manufacturers. |
Notice the stock .030-inch-over piston on the left has a wider piston skirt than the .030-inch-over 427ci stroker forged piston on the right, which is one of the ways the stroker piston achieves more cylinder volume. The lightweight forged stroker piston is also coated with Duroshield to reduce friction and increase piston life, and it is designed with the wrist pin below the oil ring for superior oil control. |
On the left, the cast-iron stock connecting rod pales in comparison next to the 4340 steel with 7/16-inch ARP-cap-bolts-equipped stroker connecting rod on the right. The stock connecting rod is 5.956 inches in length center to center, while the stroker connecting rod is 6.125 inches in length center to center. |
Compared with the stock performance crankshaft on the left, the "long arm" stroker crankshaft on the right is comprised of 4340 steel, provides a 4.170-inch piston stroke, and is balanced with a new 28-ounce flex plate and balancer. |
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. |
Around the spark plug openings, the Newen machine cannot be used. No worries, Ben smoothed out the area the old-fashioned way. |