The final masking before the trip to the paint booth...
http://www.v8tvshow.com/forum/index.....msg237#msg237

The SS496 is finally painted!
 

After many months of sanding, taping, sanding, masking, priming... the SS496 is finally in color! John shot the car over the weekend, and thanks to a local shop for letting us into thier killer Blow Therm downdraft booth, we have a car that came out of the booth with nearly zero dust particles and a new-style "factory" orange peel level. Of course, we're going to cut and buff this one to flatness, (is that a word?), but it looks good already. What a relief. Here's the clip from spray-day...

http://www.v8tvshow.com/forum/index.....msg239#msg239

I'm not sure... he's kinda doing me a favor using company tools, if you know what I mean. I'll ask, though!

The car is back from the paint booth, and now the wetsanding process begins again. The finish was really nice right out of the booth - probably fine for a production car or repaired car after a wreck. Clean paint, slight "orange peel" texture, pretty nice. We're started wetsanding the car with 1500 grit and will cut it again with 2000 before running the buffer over the car. The more you sand it, the easier the buff, and more reflective the finish. It also makes for a lack of fingerprints. Take that, CSI!

http://www.v8tvshow.com/forum/index.....msg266#msg266

SS496 Motor Build part 1 - some assembly, flowbench testing, a look at the heads, and then we had the wrong head bolts...

http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/415/43/

Friday's update - measuring the right pushrod length, milling the intake to fit... the details take time. It's coming together nicely, however.

http://www.v8tvshow.com/forum/index.....msg294#msg294

The moment we've all been waiting for... (one of them, anyway...) the SS496 engine is ALIVE! The dyno sessions at Fast Times went well. We ended up with a smooth idling (750 RPM) street 496 Stroker making 550 HP at 5500 RPM and 572 ft. lbs. @ 4400. The torque is above 500 from 4000 to 5700 in the pulls. Here's the video from the dyno session:

http://www.v8tvshow.com/forum/index....=46.msg304#new

congrats Kevin, that's awesome.

Jody

Thanks Jody! Should be a fun car to drive... when we finish it! :_paranoid

Meanwhile, back at the shop...

Kelle's going full throttle on reassembling the Chevelle. There are lots of little pieces to go together... tonight, we popped in the fuel tank, the convertible top mechanism, rear bumper, hydroboost unit on firewall... there's still a long way to go. We should be dropping the motor in tomorrow, and wiring on Thursday!

http://www.v8tvshow.com/forum/index....=46.msg320#new