64Avanti

I hope you got your money back. He made front seats in leather for another car for me a few years ago and they were good. I know he got very sick and I am not sure he is still alive. I know somebody was planning to take over the business.

What I didn't say is that given the tolerances on the rod bores, crankshaft journal sizes and bearings it is possible to end up with clearances that are too small. In that case you may need to make adjustment to the crank or the rod. You will have to work with an automotive machine shop that knows what it is doing. If you have a mild street engine and don't rev it very high then .0015 could be accepted.

.0005 is way too close! Besides the need for cooling if the engine is revved to high rpms the big end of the rod will distort enough to pinch the bearing and you will end up with a spun rod bearing. You should have more like .002 in of clearance.

Given an equal coefficient of friction between the pads and rotors the size of the pads will make no difference in wheel torque. To change the wheel torque you need to change the size of the caliper pistons to get more force for a given hydraulic pressure or change to a pad with a higher coefficient of friction.

Those are forging numbers not casting numbers. The rods are different because the oil squirt holes have to be in a different location between the left and right banks.

The 3.75 bore engine required relocating the oil galleries and there wasn't much room to relocate any more. I suspect that the block Nels has was built to the 3.75 drawing but overboard and perhaps the size of the oil galleries were a little undersize to allow boring it larger. It would be interesting to check the wall thickness to see if it conforms to the 3.75 bore drawing. Another point is the R3 heads which I believe for a number of reasons was slated for the new intended 1965 engine would not have been a great head for a 340+ cubic inch performance engine but would have been ok for just an average passenger car.

I was also aware of an Avanti with a Pontiac engine that was swapped about 1970 or so in Chula Vista as well as a 425 Olds with W30 cam in a 63 Hawk.

The drawings for the larger bore engine show a bore of 3.75 in. This required moving the oil galleries some. If they had a very good block with little core shift they might have gotten to a bore of 3.840 at .090 over. But that would not have been good for a production engine. There was no way to get to 4.00 in bore without making some major changes to the oil galleries.

Knowing Joe he probably got Studebaker to pay him!

I am working on obtaining Koni shocks for Avanti's and other Studebakers. These will fit not almost fit, such as the Camero shocks that some have used. If you are interested please post your interest.