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We did a new motor over last winter. My original plan was 0.020 pistons, pay for machine work, assemble myself. We ended up with 0.040 pistons due to block condition. A freind with tons of engine assembly experience offered to help out, which I gratefully accepted.
I did not set a budget, but figured it would be about $1k, with my sponsor providing many of the hard parts free of charge. Well we ended up over $1400 for machine shop, but we used a race engine shop (AMT Racing Engines - St. Louis) for this and did not leave any items undone.
A good machine shop, that will use a torque plate is important.
I have always run a windage tray, so can't comment on gains. I have been thinking of trying a scraper though.
The balancing is more important than I expected. The motor spins so much more willingly now, regardless of how heavy stock parts and flywheel are.
We were running a 60k mile street engine (never even pulled the head on this one) before, that had a header, match port (yes I was dumb enough to do this with the head on the motor), correct fueling and timing. The gains were around 14% with the new motor, but peak did not tell the story. The power band drops much less in higher rpms. Peak torque gains were small, but the the curve has a plateau instead of a point at the peak and drops off much slower than before. I attribute these gains to good balancing, don't skimp here IMO.
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Chris, was it a noticable gain on the track as well?