I've been side tracked a bit lately by lots of spring projects going on around the house but nonetheless I've been able to make a bit of progress on the car.
After painting the engine, I removed all of the masking and bolted up the oil pan for the last time, making sure to torque all of the bolts. Next came the harmonic balancer.There are a ton of options out there for balancers, everything from $50 stock replacements to $400 top-of-the-line ones. Again I went back to the books I've been using for reference, and ended up choosing a 6 3/4" SFI-approved balancer from Professional Products. The SFI approval means that it is tested for up to 10k RPM, which is way overkill for my engine but for the small extra price it was worth it to me for the peace of mind. This is a good, middle of the road balancer that fits in my budget and should work just fine for my needs.
Fresh ARP crank bolt:
Gotta paint the oil pan bolts before installing:
Bottom end buttoned up:
All was going along just great until I rotated the engine on my stand and noticed what a sh*tty job I had done with my paint job! Note to self, do not paint an engine upside down! I missed a ton of little spots that weren't visible when the engine was upside down but were right in your face when you turned it over:
So out comes the tape again to mask off the whole engine one more time to put on another coat of paint. Pain in the ass but you gotta do the job right!
After that was settled, I wanted to measure my cam specs before buttoning up the top end of the motor. I ended up having to take off a rocker and measure the lift off of a pushrod, since having the rockers installed resulted in my lifters collapsing and getting low readings (took me a while to figure that out!)
I measured duration at 0.050" by measuring the diameter of the balancer and converting that into degrees... not perfect but I thought it would at least get me in the ballpark.
Here are the approximate specs I came up with:
Intake: 0.480" lift; 223deg duration at 0.050"
Exhaust: 0.512" lift; 233deg duration at 0.050"
Stock cam specs for a ZZ4:
Intake: 0.474" lift; 208deg duration
Exhaust: 0.510" lift; 221deg duration
Based on how close these are, and knowing that my measurements aren't perfect, I'm assuming I have a stock cam. I also couldn't find any markings on the snout of the cam to give me a clue on who made it.
A few questions here for the experienced: I've been going back and forth about putting in a new cam. If I do, would I need to put in new lifters and remeasure for new pushrods? I already have nice 1.5 roller rockers from Crane. I know I would have to take off my oil pan and timing chain cover again but that's not a big deal, it's just time! The engine ran great when I removed it from the car so I'm hesitant to mess with a good thing. Thoughts?