Wide deck Vs Narrow deck IO 360 width?

[bret]

Does anyone know if there is a difference in the distance at the valve cover width between the two engines as far as the Vans baffle kit rear wall goes? or is this a trim to fit piece? I will be going with some type of plenum for the James cowl, heard bad things about the fit of the James plenum and looking for different avenues. buy a plenum cover? fab up something different? seen an all aluminum plenum on the 409 RV 8 race plane last Reno race.......

[crabandy]

I would contact BillL and see if he would make you one of his, unless you "really" want to experience building your own.

[bret]

Originally Posted by crabandy

I would contact BillL and see if he would make you one of his, unless you "really" want to experience building your own.

I have contacted him on his a while back, very nice work. as a remember, I think his were for the parallel valve and was about 1 - 2 inches narrower that for angle valve....

[airguy]

I would have to be a voice in favor of fabbing your own plenum - my experience with the James plenum was not positive, I have had to cut and hack every corner and one of the inlets to get it to work. I literally would have saved time (and not a small amount of money) fabbing it from scratch.

The James Cowl, on the other hand, was great.

[lr172]

Originally Posted by bret

Does anyone know if there is a difference in the distance at the valve cover width between the two engines as far as the Vans baffle kit rear wall goes? or is this a trim to fit piece? I will be going with some type of plenum for the James cowl, heard bad things about the fit of the James plenum and looking for different avenues. buy a plenum cover? fab up something different? seen an all aluminum plenum on the 409 RV 8 race plane last Reno race.......

I have never measured the two different cylinders, but would be VERY surprised to find one having a different installed dimension than the other. There is no Engineering reason to do it and convention would demand consistency.

Larry

[rgbewley]

The footprint of the engine should be the same whether it's a wide or narrow deck engine. The difference is in the size of the cylinder flange at the cases, not the height of the cylinders and should not affect the baffling.

[bret]

O.....so they should have called it a wide barrel or narrow barrel flange case? I thought it had to do with the width of the deck? wide DECK, narrow DECK? silly me.....thanks ;-)

[TCONROY]

There is definitely a difference because the stock horizontal air intake snorkel was designed for the 200hp -A1A which is an angle valve and it stuck out about 2" wider from the valve cover than it needed to be for my -M1B parallel valve.

[Walt]

Originally Posted by TCONROY

There is definitely a difference because the stock horizontal air intake snorkel was designed for the 200hp -A1A which is an angle valve and it stuck out about 2" wider from the valve cover than it needed to be for my -M1B parallel valve.

The 200 hp angle valve motor is wider than the parallel valve, but as noted by our resident expert (Rhonda) the parallel valve wide and narrow deck are the same.

[bret]

The parallel 360 is 31 1/2" my A1A angle valve is 33 1/2" at the rocker box baffle mounting surface.