Can't wait to see how this goes, but already love the concept. Best of luck.

Good for you Bentley! Cool project, I'll be watching.

Great project. Glad to see these posted. Bentley has spent a great deal of time and effort into building this engine and shoveling away cool parts for this build. Upcoming photos should be very good. Congrats buddy.

Love it Bentley! I don't know how I missed this when you first posted.... Good luck!

Short Block All Buttoned Up
 

I finally have the bottom end and entire short block together. You may notice that I have an aftermarket SFI 8 inch balancer. You may also recall that I explained earlier that the PO lost the original balancer, so he said. I have several 8 in. factory balancers. Most are assigned to their original engine and I don't want to split them up from the engine they came with. The few other extra ones have severe hammer marks from using a sledge hammer to install BITD.
So, at a swap, back in the winter. this 8 in. gem presents itself. There will be a few items like this that are not technically "Day II", but I think this will be ok and hardly noticed. I did use the correct AOR timing cover, btw. The cam choice gave me more problems than I thought. I wanted something civil on the street. I did not want fouled plugs every other day. I also did not want detonation, so that meant bleeding off some "effective" compression. I also insisted on a solid lifter cam. It was finally decided that I would use my ZL1/ LS-7 cam. I may regret this choice. I also know better grinds are available. I wanted to use what I already had. So, this is the one and that is one less expense I will have. I bought a couple of other items at the swap and sold them for more than I gave for all I bought, so the balancer was free.
Last picture is a teaser- intake & carbs

Looking forward to following this build... I have all my shots, so this is my kinda car!

Cool build!!!
I have no regrets using an original GM 3959180 (9181) cam.
Much more power could of been made with a modern roller but I wanted a old school hard hitting solid cam that wasn't made of cheap material. Works well with Crower EDM lifters.

That TR2X, :Can-I-Have-It:

Freddie, that came out of Winchester, Ky. When I bought it, it had 2 tops. One was a single 4. I don’t think anyone that builds a TR street car and looking to create “eye candy” would want a single 4 top, so I sold it to recoup some money.

I had one of those back when I was about 18. I sold it with the 660s and linkage for about $250. I wish I had it now.