Wagonlicious

So, I found a couple of pretty big vacuum leaks on the truck tonight. Fixing those has made a big difference in the idle quality, and got rid of the popping in the exhaust. :) Hooray for all of the air going through the carb. :)

also, the tailpipes are all welded up and exerything is clamped in place. So I now have a 3 inch mandrel-bent full exhaust with an X pipe. Soon i’ll be able to get focused back on fine-tuning with the innovate box and wide-band O2. Maybe I can get better than 9 mpg… :/

So, I’ve been unable to get the old HEI to work as expected. I replaced the starter yesterday and it now cranks over well, but I’m still not getting a solid spark. So I’m going back to the Accel electronic distributor. Tonight I ordered a male-terminal cap for the distributor (to make swapping back to HEI easier) and an MSD Blaster 2 SS. I chose that coil because it’ll work stand-alone, or will work with a CD system (I like the Accel 300+, but MSD boxes are fine  as well).

I guess I’ll know Tuesday evening if this finally resolves the problem or not.

Last week my new 3″ Flowmaster 40-series delta flow mufflers came in, as well as the Summit universal X pipe kit (and some hedman X-tensions).  Over the weekend, I got the parts halfway welded up and hung under the truck.  I still need to make some new tailpipes and finish welding the seams, but I couldn’t resist driving it in to work anyway.  Wow it sounds good.  It’s a relatively low compression 454, but any big block running through dual Flowmaster 40s and a full 3″ mandrel-bent exhaust sounds awesome.  I recommend them.  They’re surprisingly quiet, actually – I think the X junction and fairly large pipe make a difference there (as well as the delta flow technology).  With full tailpipes, I expect it to actually be a lot quieter than I originally anticipated.  Well, as long as I can keep my foot out of the throttle… :)

I’ve had some troubles with carburetors for the last few weeks.  Since I had an extra HEI ignition laying around, I thought I’d see if maybe my old Super Coil and plain Accel electronic distributor might actually be at fault.  So, after about an hour’s worth of making some new plug wires to use the new male-terminal HEI distributor (as opposed to the old socket-style cap on the current distrib), and about 1/2 hour of cranking the engine over and over to finally get the stupid timing mark to line up :) it was running with a stock HEI.

Somewhat surprisingly, it ran way better.  I could actually get the carb dialed in properly.  I think the old (15+ years) Super Coil had just gotten weak – probably from sitting with the key on too long a variety of times.  Now to rebuild the Hei with a performance module instead of the stocker.  Oh, and to get the carb linkage set up properly so that I actually get full throttle with the gas pedal mashed instead of the roughtly 3/4 throttle I get now – I’m sure that will improve acceleration. ;)

So, I stuck an old 600 Holley (not really old, but also not in use) on the truck today. It runs pretty well now – after replacing the primary bowl and metering block gaskets, as well as the accelerator pump diaphragm. A 600 is a little small for the 454 in my truck, but it’ll just have to do while I finish figuring out what the heck went wrong with the 750 double pumper that was on there. I’m pretty sure some passageway got clogged, since I didn’t do a real rebuild. But it runs well enough with the vac. secondary 600 to drive it up here where I can actually work on it.

Actually, the throttle response is great with the 600, the electric choke is convenient, and I don’t really need a race truck. I might just try the 750 on the Chevelle and see what it can do with some real airflow…

In any event, it ran and performed well during the test drive.  The tires ride well, the brakes brake well, and the new fuel tank doesn’t leak.  Plus, I had actual heat coming out after a short ride.  So, I’m hoping to con someone into riding down with me later this week so I can drive the truck back up here.  Volunteers are welcome. ;)