Finally making progress

I didn't realize how hard it would be to get Chevy small block measurements. I am doing the best with the few that I have managed to get. I changed my mind again about going the cast or billet route. I have decided to go billet for a few reasons. The most important of these is increased strength. I would hate to have to pay to have a second block cast because of a crack or because of a defect introduced during the casting process. After doing a little research, I found that I can use water jacket plates to address the water passage problem with machined blocks instead of going to an open deck design.

Starting over from a "blank sheet" is proving to be a great decision. Ditching the parametric approach has simplified things drastically. As seen above, I have a "rough draft" of the cylinder banks completed so far. You can get an idea of how the water plates will attach to the block. The cylinder head bolt bosses extrude all the way down which means the cylinder head bolt holes will be blind. I decided to go with the Gen I head design simply because they are very cheap to obtain. Keeping the first physical prototype cost as low as possible is one of my design goals. I want to place the fluid passages for the intake/exhaust valve actuators where the camshaft would normally be located, position the actuators where the lifters are normally located, and hopefully be able to use a stock pushrod length. This would knock out the cost of having to order custom length pushrods. I have a few designs for the actuators on paper but have not decided which one I will try to incorporate into the block just yet. I am still trying to get the dimensions for the main web thicknesses and spacings before I add them to the CAD model. These must be accurate in order for this block to accept a Chevy crankshaft. I am going to concentrate on the valley area until I am able to either measure a block or get these measurements somewhere online.