Things are happening. Dealing with John at Southeast Performance.
Questions:
The oil cooler, is it full flow? I am thinking of removing it all together and just looping with a short hose/pipe. I have before used a small electric pump, taken oil from sump through a air/oil coolerand back to sump. With a manual switch and used only when needed. With our temperate climate and daily running I won't really need it alot. I did that on my old Vauxhall race car as when not being raced I didn't need it and the extra length of pipework and cooler puts more drag on oil system. Also if you did suck some air under extreme braking, it was gone before power went back on rather than be some out there in external filters and coolers. I saw a lot of expensive engines fail, I believe, that is what happened.
0 deck height. I agree. Piston flush with top of bore. Tell me the science please.
With the better heads should I stay at 10.5:1 comp. Enjoy the extra safety margin.
Should I trust John with parts choices and cam profile?
Make sure to use an O2 compatible sealant on the threads of the fasteners that pass through the sidewall of the Intake Port on the Strikers (if you decide to use those heads). If you dont, you will have an air leak past the threads.
AND... dial back the torque by about 40% on those fasteners. Dry torque and wet torque have considerably different values. Strikers use Helicoils, but Aluminum has some pretty abrupt torque limits at times.
A great choice for a cam is in the 228-232 range at .050". Mine is ground on a wide 115 degree L.S.A and still has a nice lope at idle. Too much more duration and your e.c.u. WILL complain. A cam like this will give you a WIDE torque band and around 170 cranking compression at sea-level and 13" at idle, (operating temp). In other words, that late(r) closing Intake Valve doesn't close so late that the cylinder can't build good low r.p.m. pressure, a.k.a. TORQUE. You could also split the duration between Intake and Exhaust. As I'm running 4 Cats on my truck, I added 6 degrees duration to the exhaust profile; a definite advantage when you design your own cam profile! .650" lift is a good target number.
Whoever is building your engine also needs to DEGREE the camshaft as some of the chainsets released by Lamborghini were whacked and the camshafts were factory installed really late. I.O.W. simply lining up the dots isn't good enough. It never is, but particularly so with the Gen III. I'd also HIGHLY recommend a positive-stop method for finding T.D.C. prior to degreeing the shiny new cam.
Set your valve lash at TWO FULL TURNS (if you go with Strikers) and o.e.m. Lifters (recommended).
This is VERY important with either the T&D Rockers or the Jesel for maximum power.
10.5 : 1 would be a great target for pump gas with Strikers. 10.75 is also fine with pump gas as you are zero-decking (?) AND Strikers have a high-swirl and fast-burn chamber.
With Strikers and related parts, you will be over 700 horsepower crank, which is beyond the design capacity of the o.e.m. injectors. The rest of the trucks' fuel system is plenty good enough. As pulse-width tweaking in the tune controls the injector, I wouldn't go too wild on capacity as it REALLY makes tuning much trickier and is unnecessary. Unburned fuel kills oil and accelerates engine wear. Again, the injectors JMB offers work (but are physically shorter) and an Intake Manifold tweak is required to get the spray-tip out of the well far enough so they don't puddle. If you do this now you won't have to retune for A/F changes later.
You can get higher capacity injectors through JMB Justin or maybe the guys you are dealing with for heads.
If you decide to use some properly ported Gen III Heads you will be down around 50 horsepower (compared to Strikers) and your o.e.m. Injectors will be enough.
Plugs: NGK LFR6A11 @ .040
20 ft. lbs. NO thread goop.
You WILL need a good tune to pull it all together.
Best of luck!!
