Although I know this was a pain in the ass, it's good to see how well this thing was holding up. Get the ring gap situmanated and you'll be good to go!
I have a Buick 455 sitting in my garage that has a girdle on it that is like that. You have to shave the caps so the girdle can lie flush and get a little preload on the caps. Most of the ones out there that sit on the stock caps of a 5.0 aren't really doing much. They are just locking all the main studs together, but sitting on the stock round cast caps, they aren't really doing a whole lot to lock them in place. The caps can still walk which is the killer.
Again, 7 main caps,....Inline cylinder orientation,.......turbocharger,........No nitrous.
I had a 2 bolt 460 with one of those girdles on it. It also had a buttload of nitrous. and most of the time,........ waay too much timing.
The engine never audibly rattled,......at least I never heard it. ( I couldn't have heard it if it did...4" bullets hanging off of the 3.5" collectors,...made it..........really loud).
When the engine "expired", after beating on it at the track every Saturday night all summer long....it finally died after subjecting the engine to 350 hp of nitrous off the line. Taking the engine apart revealed a split cylinder, and main caps that had been walking soo badly that there was metal transfer between the two mating surfaces.
All this to say that I think one of the side effects of a "V anything" is the unwanted harmonics that come as a result of opposing banks fighting each other trying to pull the crank one way or the other.
I think Cap walk is more likely to occur because of that, especially when using a power adder like nitrous, that hammers the hell out of the crank even if the tune is right.
I'll never use another v8,....I'm a banger convert.
Last edited: