What's next?

Post date: May 20, 2019 3:14:31 PM

Show season is here! So I'm trying to keep the car together and running so we can hit the circuit. 4 shows so far, no awards.

Shaun and I got the seat coolers installed and wired. The manufacturer warned me that it was a "very advanced and complicated" install. So I sent some pictures to them after we got it done in an afternoon, and they said they wanted us as their DFW install partner!

Shaun even perforated the stock covers.

I've talked to three upholstery guys. Big price range, one has experience with the Rally seats, one strongly discourages leather (says it just doesn't hold up). No one has been real helpful on getting matching leather. The last guy works with a company that does custom dye lots, but he never got back to me about it. So proper seat covers are still on the back burner. I might need to modify the bolsters a bit more as well - probably need to push out the tubes for my man-spreading.

The next week there was a little incident that caused me to be distracted for a while:

We got it all fixed up - welded in a quarter panel patch, new deck lid, new lights, new bumper from the junkyard. I did a terrible job with blending the seam, and the paint is a tri-coat. So it doesn't look good, but for a car that's worth $1,500, it's an entirely appropriate repair. I should be getting a check from Fedex (their truck hit the car) Real Soon Now.

After that I started chasing down the power problem. I picked up a refurb Street Demon carb. Had to dramatically lean out the primaries and still can't get the secondaries rich enough. Already drilled out the jets beyond their largest size, need to go more. While the primaries were more responsive, it still felt down on power compared to how it was in '16/'17.

One definite problem was the torque converter. While I told the builder I wanted a 3,000 stall, it really flashed up around 3,750-4,000. Way too high. So I got a new hybrid converter with a 2,800 stall. That helped responsiveness quite a bit, and we learned how to swap converters without removing the trans or headers!

It still just felt lazy. So next step was a trans swap. Naturally.

We got the TH350 put back in this past Saturday and I've only driven it once. Feels better, but still not quite where it was before the cam swap. Not sure where to go from here, so going to leave it like this for a while and just think on it. Might put a recalibration kit in the 200-4r, might stick with the 350 and get a gear vendors, might wait until I swap rear end gears, who knows. But for now it drives. Just can't go faster than 60 for very long......

In other news, Shaun's 4.6 finally got a proper tune. That sucker put down 450 ftlbs/472 hp at the wheels! While the Cutlass weighs about 1,000 lbs less, I simply can't let this stand. So I'm starting to gather bits for a new build. This really kicked off when a guy posted some 350 diesels for sale. I got an entire engine shipped down, thinking that would be in the best shape. Well, all was going great until we took off the oil pan and the #4 main fell out with it. The block cracked straight through the web. So all of that was trash. Got another bare block from him, and this was all in one piece but looked like it had been at the bottom of a lake for a few years. It's cleaned up and I got Kim to drill out and time sert the #5 oil feed main. None of his machines had enough room for the filter feed holes so Shaun and I had to make do. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

But, it worked!

The only real modification required for these blocks is grinding down the injector drive boss to make room for the timing gear.

The general plan is to use the 4" stroker crank, probably bore to 4.165-4.185, short fill on the block, and reuse everything else from the current engine. Who knows when I'll get to actually build it as all those parts are pretty pricey. Also have to get custom caps and adapters to reduce the main journals from 3" to 2.5". I did manage to get a stock small block #5 cap for free at least.

Other minor notes: cut up and shifted the parking brake pedal another inch or so. Also got the trunk done. As Shaun likes to say, now the car even has John Deer parts! The spare hold-down is a chunk of a plow disc....