IT LIVES!

Post date: May 20, 2012 11:40:40 PM

After two full days of wrenching and making big messes, it runs!

As always, Shaun did a huge amount of work on getting things prepped. The final assembly went real smooth on Friday. I noticed that the #2 cylinder was leaving a wide oil streak in one spot where none of the other cylinders were doing that - I'll have to double check the compression sometime soon.

Got it on the stand and learned many things:

There's an intermittent spark problem. I'm assuming it's due to questionable spark plug wire assembly by yours truly, will verify tomorrow.

The headers do NOT clear the RobbMC starter. This is very annoying. Will have to use the Powermaster starter that they were designed for. The headers also hit the fancy stands, but that can probably be worked around.

The water pump spews water along its seal. Hopefully a re-tightening is all it needs!

The rockers hit the cheapo chrome valve cover's baffles. The stock baffles are a little smaller, so maybe they'll clear? This is even with the super thick SCE gaskets.

Plastic timing light pickups melt when touching exhaust manifolds.

Leaking exhaust is HOT.

We had to extract the exhaust tubes from the other car, so looks like I'll be buying the new set earlier than I thought. We had lots of problems with frozen bolts, plus a mis-match of tube sizes, so it basically ran with open exhaust all afternoon. I'm sure the neighbors love me even more now! No visits from the cops, though....

Cam break-in went smoothly, although it ran rough under 2k RPM. Idle was just terrible. Looks like that was due to the spark problems. Hopefully it ran well enough that the cylinders didn't get washed down!

Oil pressure looked really problematic, but it was just a bad assembly of the pressure line. Replaced that and get a consistent ~35psi at low RPM and quickly builds to 60.

Really good progress, and I'm feeling good about the build. No signs of major problems, the stand worked out perfectly, and it sounds downright mean.

Chris also stopped by to do some welding on the firewall. It's looking like the butchered hole never even happened!