Re: Relieving 8BA Block
Since I was the crew chief for Stan Lomelino, up to the time he stopped racing, I feel qualified to respond---It is true in the early days we would spend countless hours porting and relieving our engine blocks. This had to change when we started using 100% nitro and the racing schedule expanded wildly to a minimum of 3 events weekly. Eventually we found that softening the eyebrows combined with "normal" porting worked best and gave us the most power. There are several reasons why that is true which I explained in my book.
As an aside, Ken Kloth, perhaps one of the more well known Flathead racers, learned to avoid relieving the Flathead block in order to get top performance.
The secret (if there are secrets) is in the port, valve pocket, and head. Not the block relief. Doing wet flow studies will help us understand that the area being "relieved" does not play a significant roll in the breathing potential of our Flathead engines.
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