Went out this morning for an early morning tuning session. Made a pass, checked plugs and made an adjustment. Made another and went to check plugs, and pulled the wire off without the terminal. After getting that sorted out, I went back to tuning. After about 2 hours of tuning, I took these videos. This one, I've got the secondaries hooked up and went full throttle. If I had rolled into the throttle, it may have picked up. But when I'm on the street and need to get on it, it's not there. And the only change I made in this video, is disconnecting the secondaries. I should've made a few rolling starts to show the kickdown, but it runs like a proper car without the secondaries. It'll squeal the tires if I hammer on it now, which is pretty cool.
I let off at 30 because I thought it was going to stall. I figured it'd be a good comparison between having the secondaries hooked up vs. not at all. I've put the stock jets and rods back in it, so the only change between the vids is removing the linkage for the secondaries.
Yeah, I was messing around with that last week. I can get it to transition properly, but then it's either surging with lean jets, or falling on its face with rich jets. There is no happy medium with the secondaries.
Got my Q-jet from Quadrajet Power on Monday. After some fiddling I got it running. A lot better than the Street Demon. The pictures with the knife show how much bigger the Q-jet's secondaries are in comparison to the Demon. I didn't have a tape measure handy so the knife was the next best thing. Goes to show you should do the research, and listen to the people who've done this a time or two. However, I'm definitely not out of the woods yet. I was adjusting the carb and one of the pcv hoses started putting out white smoke. Now with everything back together and running, I've got white smoke out the driver's tailpipe on hard acceleration. As well as smoke out the dipstick tube after shut down. So I'm thinking some piston rings are shot. Which kinda sucks, but its my own fault. I shouldn't have assumed the story I got with the engine was true. As well as rushing to get everything running before winter hit. But I've got a new Q-jet, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Boy, that escalated quickly. I've got more smoke, and now smoke and oil out the dipstick tube. So I spent the long weekend taking the engine back out, and last Wednesday I took it down to an engine shop. I don't have the tools, time, space, or experience, to tear this down and get it running again before winter. I'm hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.
Got a call from the engine builders today. When they tore into it, every top ring was in pieces. My flexplate is cracked. The crank needs a regrind, and the block needs boring. But it's a good core, from what they tell me. The heads aren't cracked or warped. And to my surprise, the camshaft is okay. Sometime next week they'll have some parts in, and I'll have some more info. I grabbed a few pics of what was close.
Everything sounds normal You'll get new rings for new forged pistons anyway. Flexplate is basically a wear item. Cranks usually need to be turned. Cam and lifters will be replaced. So far sounds like your in good shape!
Yeah they seemed fairly unfazed with what I brought them, except for a couple things. I'm hoping we can reuse the cam, since it's barely got six thousand miles on it. I'm just going for a stock rebuild, aside from the parts I've already bought. I've found a few spec sheets from the late 60's that says a 9:1, two barrel 350 made 230 hp/350 lb-ft. If I get anywhere close to that, I'll be happy.
Just make sure not to cheap out on the pistons! The $89 jobber 8:1 pistons sound tempting price wise but don't fall into that trap or you'll be lucky to make half that HP that you posted! To upgrade to the 10:1 sbb pistons is cheap HP that will give you around another 130 HP over the jobber pistons that is about $2.00 per extra HP. The extra cost for the better pistons is the best bang for the buck with a budget build that you can get. Even though the better pistons claim 10:1, the block would need to be blueprinted to get that compression ratio. If the deck isn't milled .020" under the written 10.187" spec and .020" steel shim head gaskets aren't used the engine won't reach the 10:1 ratio. To get the block down to 10.167" there would more than likely need at least .050" removed to get there because the factory left at least an extra .030" on the deck height than what the blueprint spec is! If you save some $$ and skip the deck milling and use the fel-pro composite gaskets that will put the piston down an extra .070" which should get you right where you want to be @ 9:1 with the better advertised 10:1 pistons. Otherwise if you get the 8:1 jobber pistons you will be closer to 7:1 because of read above about blueprinting the block. If you think you can get the cheap pistons and have the block milled to get those to 9:1 would mean that there would need to be around .080" taken off of the deck to get you there and have to use the more expensive steel shim head gaskets. Even if that didn't cost over $200 to have done, it would mean that either the head's intake mating surfaces would also need to be milled or the intake would need to be milled. And there would be zero chance that your factory push rods would be reusable because they would be WAY to long now to get the proper valve train geometry.
I appreciate the info. I'm not getting jobber pistons, and the block is getting milled. I couldn't remember specifics of what we talked about, so I wrote what I did. This also isn't a budget build. I'm not going to say how much, because I've had enough arguing with my own family over this. I don't need to start here. I've told the builders what I'm after, it's going on the dyno when its done. And I've gotta work my ass off to pay for it.
Engines done. Back in the car. Running and driving on Dec. 24th. Still shaking down some things, but its done.
Runs great, but this video sucks. I can't really get video driving right now, because the test roads are covered with snow. But on the clean pavement, it hauls pretty good. I've been going easy on it right now, till I've got everything worked out. But right now, it runs fantastic and I'm enjoying the hell out of driving it.
