<VV> Milling Piston Faces

[Mikeamauro at aol.com]

"...have run the motor before this way. It did pretty well, did not ping  
that much, but still more then I liked..."
 
Geoffrey:
I'm late to this conversation; have you reduced the cylinder head quench  
area? Stock is somewhere around 60-70K, and this makes the 110 especially prone  
to detonation. I've two 110 Vairs: a Greenbrier and a 67 Coupe...both are  
powerglide and both have A/C. Before I reduced the combustion chamber quench to  
.032, both knocked like hell (even with Safeguards, the best gas I could find, 
 and retarded spark to where performance hurt). With .032 quench space, even 
in  hot Florida weather with A/C full blast, hardly a peep from the knock  
department (and that's running 14-degrees advance with the van and 18-degrees  
with the coupe). Compression ratio on both is stock @ 9.5:1. With the coupe on a 
 trip, recently achieved 23 mpg averaging 75 MPH (has a 3:27 rear, which 
would  make it even more prone to knock!).
 
The key to making a 110 run effectively on today's gas is to modernize the  
combustion chamber... not lower the compression ratio. Just adding gaskets, or  
milling off the tops of the pistons, can actually increases the quench area 
and  (unless the compression is lowed way down) can INCREASE the likelihood  
the engine will knock.
 
Mike Mauro