632CI BIG-BLOCK CHEV

POWERHOUSE ENGINES, MELBOURNE, VICTORIA

FORCE-FED small-blocks making four-digit power figures have been all the rage for a while now, but there are some guys who want the old-school, kick-the-door-down bad attitude of a big aspirated engine in their tough-as-nails street car. This NA fat-block built by John Pilla at Powerhouse Engines is exactly one of these combos, and it is going into a tubbed HQ Monaro coupe being built by Ballarat’s Dave Guilfoyle of DJ Automotive & Towing.

“The customer was going to set the car up to do burnouts, but it did one skid and nuked the previous engine,” Dave explains. “I think the last engine made 2200hp when it was set up to run on methanol with a 14/71 blower, but this is a whole new combo that is designed for street driving.”

Powerhouse has put together a killer combo, starting with a tall-deck, Chev-pattern Dart Big M block. Swinging 632ci, it is filled with all the killer parts you can imagine, like a Callies billet crank and steel rods, and custom Diamond slugs, for 13.4:1 comp.

“This engine was built off the previous methanol engine,” explains Powerhouse’s John Pilla, “but the Dart blocks are such a great base for a serious engine that there aren’t any problems going from a methanol combo to a pump-gas engine for the street. A lot of our customers aren’t mucking around with old productionbased blocks anymore and are going straight to aftermarket blocks.”

The cam is a thumping Howards custom solidroller boasting 270/286 degrees at 0.50-inch lift, while Morel supplied Black Mamba Dlccoated tie-bar bushed lifters. They lift a set of custom Smith Brothers 7/16-inch pushrods, with MSD crank-trigger ignition keeping everything timed to perfection in conjunction with the Jesel belt drive and two-piece timing cover.

“There is a lot in that ability to fine-tune the cam timing,” says John. “Sometimes you think you’ve got it dialled, but then you bump it another two degrees and pick up an extra 10lb-ft!”

PAC valve springs and T&D shaft-mount rockers live in the polished, heavily modified Dart Big Chief heads, which feature titanium hardware throughout. Up top, the Bain Racing sheet-metal tunnel ram and pair of APD Dominator four-barrel carbs provide one heck of a set of lungs for the combo.

While the previous donk ran a dry sump oiling system, Dave switched it back to a traditional wet sump from ASR. “I convinced the customer to go with this sump as it’s more of a street set-up,” he says.

All the good gear in the motor equates to plenty of freedom-ponies unleashed on the dyno, with the angry rat punching out 1190hp on pump fuel and nudging 1300hp when fed race juice. “We can put another six degrees of timing in it once we put it on the good fuel,” says John.

IMPENDING NUPTIALS “THE car previously had a flat firewall and a lot of stuff like that, but I’ve put a stock firewall back in it,” says Dave Guilfoyle of the HQ Monaro he’s building that will ultimately house this luscious BBC. “It is going to be a street car, so it needs inner guards and all that. It’s actually off getting an exhaust made right now, then will come back for final fit-up before it gets blown apart for paint. It has to be at a wedding in January, so it will have to be out of the workshop soon.”