We Build It, Small Block Chevy

Each workstation has a tray with a slot to hold each of the parts to be assembled in that operation. The technician fills this first, then opens the manual that shows, with better photographic detail than any Revell or AMT model kit's instruction sheet, exactly what to do. What could be simpler?

We start off with a mostly naked block and marvel at the giant 4.125-inch bores, spaced 4.4 inches apart as God and Ed Cole intended. These coffee cans are so close together that even their pressed-in liners touch each other, leaving less than 0.02 inch of material that can be safely bored out in service. Our first step is to remove the six-bolt main-bearing caps that are installed and torqued down before the engine block is machined to assure dimensional accuracy. First we number them from front to back and paint an arrow toward the front before stowing them in a tray. We set the bearings in place, taking care to put the one with the oil groove in the block and the one without in the cap. We recall that both bearing halves were typically grooved before the small-block engineers discovered that the smooth lower bearing could handle double the force of a grooved one. We lower the forged-steel crank into place with a lift (anything over 35 pounds must be lifted by machine) and then reinstall the caps.

Every bolt on the engine is tightened using computer-controlled torque wrenches. We start by pointing a laser gun at a bar code beneath a picture of the operation we're about to perform to tell the wrench how much torque to apply and point it at the engine's bar-code decal so that the actual torque achieved can be tracked in a computer file. Then we squeeze the trigger on the wrench until it shuts off and shows a green light. When all the bolts in the operation have been tightened, the computer panel gives a flat-line display. The operator then dots each bolt with a paint-pen to prove it's been torqued. This step proves the hardest one for us greenhorns to remember.

Extra short, lightweight pistons arrive at the plant dressed with rings and assembled to their titanium connecting rods. The rods are stiffer and weigh 30 percent less than those in an LS2--a key factor in spinning this large-displacement engine to 7100 rpm (an OHV production-car record). The rods are coated with a friction-reducing chromium nitride. The flat-topped pistons arrive marked with an arrow pointing toward the front. We only have to remove the caps, install the bearings, thread in a long pin to guide the rod into place, slide the piston into a ring-compressing funnel, feed the rod through from the top, tap the piston into the block, and reattach the cap.

One cap fails to match up when a bearing slips out of place. Another refuses to bolt up because, despite all the arrows, instruction sheets, and coaching, we manage to slide it in backward. Fortunately, the cap doesn't fit that way, so Carl quickly catches the error and we fix it. The computer still has trouble torquing some of the bearing cap bolts. The spec calls for 20 Nm plus another 80 degrees of rotation to stretch the bolts. Most of the bolts in the engine are rated only for four such stretches before they must be replaced, and our trainee bolts are simply overstretched, but it gives us a chance to press the yellow button to summon assistance to our station. A light flashes and an electronic ring-tone riff on the "Hawaii Five-0" theme plays. Each station also gets blue and red buttons to summon replenishing parts or to signal a line stoppage.