Thoughts on a 225 rebuild

And just one example of his mistakes. When I was reading and learning about early Hemi engines after I got my 331, I used his pages as a source of reference. I also joined a couple of Hemi forums. After I became familiar with the engine, I tore it down and began cleaning it up to prepare it for the machine shop.

Now, I will give him this much. My engine is somewhat of an anomaly. It is a 1956 331 Power Giant truck engine and they are a bit different than the automotive engines. However, he had them lumped in with the automotive engines.

Had I gone by his information, I would have had my machine shop deck the block over .070" from where it was in an effort to blueprint the deck height. When we found out it was that "tall" I immediately called Bob Walker at Hot Heads.

When I told Bob where I had gotten my information on deck height, he almost dropped the phone laughing, saying that while the Victory site has some good info, a lot of the specifics are either left out, or wrong altogether. He gave me the correct deck height and mine was only out like .013". All of the guys on the forums I joined also echoed the Victory site's good information and it's mistakes as well.

So be careful where you get your information from. Get it from many sources and compare. I like listening to guys who use dynos and build engines for a living and guys who use the drag strip. Although there is room for error depending on which dyno you use, what it's corrected to, blah blah blah, there's no substitute for experience. There's also no better result source than the drag strip. Trap lights do not lie.