1948 Chevy full kustom project.

That back end just needs a chrome continental kit with a airbrushed vision of a topless Viking lady on a horse, carrying a Dixie flag whilst a sky wolf howls at the moon in the background and it'll be a proper "trad" kustom.

I always like it when people have an airbrushed mural of their car on their car. And portraits of their grandchildren smiling, often with black teeth for some reason.

Portrait of Liberace, with "Jerry Lee Lewis" lettered underneath it.

Eating coal. It’s a northern thing...

Not far off, but not green I don’t think.

So here what stealthstylz did for me.

I gave him the 235ci block, with instructions to tank it clean, bore it til the bores would go again, sleeve the pitted one if necessary, and some vague instructions to try to zero-deck it and a rod and piston to facilitate with the measuring.

As much as I take the curse word for him being a p1key gnome, he’s rather bloody good at this stuff. How spanking is this?


The little haircut even removed 99% of the waterway corrosion.


There’s still stuff to do, like drilling for a full flow filter (although they have full pressure oiling, filtration was still done with a bypass filter that was an accessory option) and rodding our the oil galleries, but that’s stuff I can do.

Obviously there’s things there I need to explain, like 1.- what is zero decking?

Well, it’s making the top of the block level with the top of the piston at TDC. So all your compression happens within the head chamber.
The reason that older engines didn’t have pistons that came all the way to the top of the block is basically poor fuel. Back in the 50s fuel had poorer octane ratings, and was very variable in quality, especially in the states. To prevent detonation, compression rations were low, somewhere about 6.5 or 7:1. With modern fuel with guaranteed octane ratings, that is basically wasted power.
Now, on most engines to get that ‘free’ power, you’d just skim the head. The issue here is stovebolt heads have very odd combustion chambers and valve geometry.


If you skim the head at all you’re shrouding the inlet valve, and have to do a lot of port work to move the valve up into the head, which messes with the all the geometry to the rocker shaft. So the general consensus these days is to not skim the head but do the block instead. Zero decked they work out at about 9-9.25:1, which is just about perfect.

Next thing is the difference between full flow filtration and bypass filtration. In a full flow setup ALL the oil passes through the filter all the time. In a bypass setup only SOME of the oil goes through SOME of the time- and if the filter becomes blocked, none of it does. This is obviously not a great idea, but it’s from a time before disposable canister oil filters with internal pressure valves even existed, so it was their way of not blowing up oil filters.
These days there’s little reason to not convert to full flow filtration if you’ve got the engine in bits anyway.

To convert a bypass engine to full flow, you have to drill into the oil galleries to let the oil out to the filter, block one of the galleries in the block so all the oil goes out to the filter, and put a return into the block further downstream, but before any important bits need that oil.

On a stovebolt, that involves modifying the area where the oil pressure switch is on the side of the block. First, you remove the oil pressure sender, and drill the boss for it out to be tapped for a larger fitting. You can see the edges of the oil gallery drilling inside the block.


Then you tap it for the fitting. 3/8”npt is the generally accepted best size, in terms of maximum flow without weakening the block.


IIRC this is actually the return, not the feed.

The best place for the feed is at the side of this little boss here, which is for the bypass type setup. You don’t use the boss itself though as if you do you can’t block the gallery in the right place. You can see again where the drill has broken through into the oil gallery behind. This gallery is the main feed off the oil pump which is mounted below, and you drill and tap the end of it internally above where I’ve drilled this hole with a 1/8”npt plug, to stop the oil going that way. The hole is deliberately drilled at a slight angle.


It’s then tapped for the fitting, and you also have to grind away a bit do the web to allow you to get onto the fitting to do it up.


But, that’s about it really for the block modifications. I’ve got to knock the plugs out of the end of the galleries and rod them out to remove any swarf, then mount an external oil filter head to that unused 3 point engine mount, with some short lines to the fittings on the block. The location of that is determined by the exhausts though, so I’ve got to mock that up before making bracketry and lines.
But on the whole it’s not a difficult modification when the engine is at this stage, once you’ve summonsed up the balls to take a big drill to your freshly machined block!

I reckon so. This is referring to a stock 1954 235ci engine-



So with nearly two full points of compression more and a extra carb and exhaust, I’m hoping for about 175ish hp. But more like 250ft/lbs, and at a comically low rpm, so it should be capable of Surprising a few people.
I’ve geared it around this, with the floor mount 4spd and a very tall rear axle (3.4:1), so it should be a pretty nice drive.

They are very, very odd combustion chambers, but these were first designed in the ‘20s! It’s partially because the exhaust valves don’t sit square to the inlet valves, they’re at about a 15deg angle.
Internet pic-


One thing that I forgot to elaborate on is one of the reasons you don’t cut the valves deeper is the inlet tracts take a fairly sharp turn straight above the valve, and if you sink the valves at all it totally ruins the flow into the head. This has been flow bench proven, with quite dramatic effects. Another reason I shan’t be messing with the head at all, just a cleanup and relap.

Enjoying all this immensely