Wd45 for school project

If your "rules" allow a bigger carburator (and maybe manifold throat) that it very easy and instant HP. Are your RPM's limited??

Run a D17 gov spring. What limitations do the local pulls give? Around here its pretty much stock appearing. Guys have 500+ cubic in Farmall M's, worked Olivers, etc. Rules are what we need to know to understand how far you can go. Wi50 has a basically bolt in setup for a 226 to make it almost 300ci with crank, cam, rods etc. I think he's asking 2700.00 amd you'd be keeping up with amd spaking Olivers.

Spanking Olivers with 300 cubes???........You will be at a 100 cube deficit.

A smart puller with some reasonable engine in an AC platform will pull with 77's and down.....88's need some beef to compete with

most oliver 77 6 cylinders around these parts is 410 cubic inches

Martys kit is a 5.5 stroker with a bit more bore. Send him a PM and I'm sure he could help set something up geared toward what you want

Thanks for the advise guys. I have an idea of the direction we should head in. Thinking about worrying about the stroking, bigger pistons, and carb for now, then going through the head and other stuff when we have the time. What about flywheel and clutch? Ours is still holding, but dad put it in 3rd on accident last pull and let the clutch completely out, and the tractor didnt move. He then put it back in first and it held that pull and three hooks after that. Dad wants to go ahead and put a machined flywheel in the tractor while we have it apart. Who is good to get ahold for this?

i should mention i typed this before i seen your post, i dont know who to go to for machining but wi50 for engine work, (among others, dr.allis and others who will hopefully chime in)

You're wasting your time if you don't address the head and cam while it's apart....you'll already have it off. To do all the other work and not do the head is like putting a 2 barrel on a blower motor....wasted effort.

Your hand clutch will handle just about what ever you put in front of it. If it is shimmed up the right way and everything is in good shape it won't have a problem holding the power.

Did some tractors come with two and some with three? I have not seen one before other than looking at the picture in the shop manual to really know what one looks like.

I wind up going through this time and time again with people.  They want to spend some money, and where is the best place to spend that money?  What do you do so that in the future you have the best chances of being able to upgrade and not have to throw away much of the previously spent time and money.

Lets start with the short block assembly.  You can spend all the money you want on fancy billet parts and the latest greatest trick of the week.  You can make it bigger, you can make it 500 cid in that little engine if you have enough time and money I suppose. 

Or you can use things that are commonly available and cheap.  You can take that famous Buda rod and stroke the crank and put it in.  BUt that rod has a straight cut cap and it isn't going to clear the block all that well.  It will to a certain point.  Now you've spent money to stroke the crank and you've found a rod.  You have to come up with a piston that will work to get the desired compression ratio you want.  It's going to take some looking to come up with a piston tall enough to make things work with that short rod, or you are going to buy a custom piston.

If you use the Farmll H rod, it clears well, the cap is rotated and the rod clears better.  The rod is also a decent length and will allow you to pick from a wide variety of pistons that are common and cheap, stocked parts from one of many suppliers.

Stroking the crankshaft is going to cost the same weather you weld it up and go to 5 1/8" stroke and use your rods and pistons that you already have over again.  It's going to cost the same if you go to 5 1/2" or to 6".  Work is work and with this it's all the same in the end.

I put together a setup that is reasonably low priced and has a good chance of the average guy being able to assemble it.  I typically use a Farmall H connecting rod and do a lot of work to the rod.  I use a set of Allis sleeves that are simply bored oversize slightly and honed.  Taking a 4 1/8" overbore sleeve and boring it .030" over to get a true cylinder.  I typically go to 5.4" or 5.5" stroke and this clears in the blocks with very little additional work.  You can go out to 5.75" stroke with that Farmall rod and there are plenty of available pistons that will allow you to use that combination.

The earlier blocks like a WC and WD blocks are narrower and just don't have the clearance, the later WD blocks and WD45 blocks have more clearance.  So I stay in the 5.4" stroke range on those earlier engines.


In the future should you decide that you want to build a larger engine, you can use that same crank and rod combo and some commonly available larger bore pistons in the 4.5" to 4.625" bore size.  It's a simple matter of making a new bushing in the end of the connecting rod to accept a larger wrist pin.  Typical smaller bore pistons have a .927"-.928" diameter wrist pin.  Typical larger bore pistons use a .990" or 1.040" and 1.090" wrist pins.  Of all the Farmall rod will accept them by making a simple bushing.

I'm trying to steer you in a direction so that you can re use your parts and money spent in the future if you have problems, or build a larger engine.  I had someone bring me an engine recently that they spent a lot of money on.  Way more than the figure you posted above and all they got was stock D-17 rods and pistons trimmed and a 5 1/8" stroke crankshaft....270cid.  Now the crank journals are machined to wide to use another rod, the existing rods are to short to use a common larger bore piston.  I can't so much with the crankshaft to change things without spending a bunch of money.  Had they used some different parts, they would have had more options.

I'll lay it out like this, common prices for parts and work for one of those setups,
Pistons are a Keith Black 9911HC "claimer series" $230 for a set of 8

Rings are $35 for a cheap set, $135 for a pretty good set

Core rods are $100, make bushings, machine and clearance, machine more, balance, hone pin and big end.  Balance them $200 out of pocket and a bunch of time....lots of time and if I pay myself just a little bit $400 for a set of completed rods but you may be able to do them yourself.

Sleeves, I buy at junk yard say $50-$100, I blast them clean and machine a taper on top and bottom, true up O ring grooves and install in a block.  Boring and honeing $100. 

So you have about $400 in your rods and about $400 in the cylinder package.

A crank is about $850-$900 typically to weld and grind the 4 cyl crank and get stroked to whatever you want.  Then weld and grind mains and true the ends, grind the flange square, weld up the seal surface on the nose and grind it, takes about another $200-$250.  Then balancing the crank will add some cost.  I machine the nose of the cranks and turn the nose end flat, drill and tap threads in, this is very handy to hold a degree wheel.  This is important to get the camshaft timed to the crank properly.

Cams are usually $170-$225 to grind a new profile on, depending on the cam grinder and the volume of them they are doing.  I always pull the plugs out of the ends of the cam, blast them clean inside and out.  I turn material off to get a smaller diameter between the lobes for rods to swing past.  When I get the cam and crank together I put them in a block and start to indicate things in and set the cam timing or (phasing) to the crank.  Simply lining up the timing marks isn't quite right, things need to be timed a little different to take full advantage of the engine.

Gasket set $80, main bearings $100, cam bearings $75, rod bearings $60

When it's all done it seams like it takes $2500-$2700 out of pocket to do all of this and have new parts.

None of this really matters if you hang a small carb and a poor flowing manifold on the engine weather you have 270 CID or 400 CID.  If you can feed 300 CID to it's full potential you will make more power than starving a 400 CID engine.

Buy a few books, Engine Blueprinting is a good one for starters, it's probably $20 from Summit Racing and there's lots of others to pick from.  Learn how to degree your camshaft, learn how to take measurements like your block height (center of the crankshaft bore to top of the deck).  Buy yourself a cheap dial indicator and magnetic base.  Get a degree wheel.  If you like working on engines the knowledge and some of these tools will be priceless. Experment with your engine when you take it apart and take some of these measurements.  Pay attention to geometry and don't take to much free advice on the internet, there's some real dimwits out there.

I am sold out of any parts for the time being and probably won't be doing any more for some time.  I'd sure help you out with whatever you want to do but I'm already behind on shop work for the year.

You really don't need a different flywheel, just a good 9 spring pressure plate and a 4 pad button disc should hold all the engine you are going to build, and it leaves money to spend in more important places.

Is the compression ratio much different with the Keith Black pistons compared to the wc/wd flat tops? I would be at 4.125 instead of 4.155, but that doesn't bother me. If the claimer pistons are much better i will go with that set up, just wondering.

Ok thank you.  I'll just go with the claimer pistons then.  Thanks for all the input again this is my first build and you guys are helping a lot. I just uploaded a video to youtube so you guys could see the tractor we have talking about.