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John do you know anyone who was at Tonawanda or are you comfortable that they did the big blocks the same way over there ? Also could you explain the differences in broaching with a W engine as opposed to a straight broached 396 and later big blocks.
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I was only at Tonawanda twice in the late 60's, but their paint process was similar to the one at Flint V-8. I recall one of the Tonawanda process engineers commenting during a lunch discussion that the old "W"-blocks were decked using a simple rotary mill process instead of building a huge broach machine like they used for the high-volume small-blocks. I posted a photo of the Tonawanda broach cutters in another thread - that machine was about the size of a large locomotive, and the relatively low volume of the "W"-block didn't justify that kind of tooling investment.
