Thursday, August 9, 2012

Fast forward update

Instead of posting about 30 more posts to catch you all up to where I am with my car I'm just going to tell you everything I've done up to this point. First things first I blew the head gasket on my 305. I figure that I blew the head gasket considering I had coolant in my oil and the car was running hotter then ever. So I got in contact with my friend up in Olly, PA and he found me a new motor. But not just any motor, no it was a worked over 400 small block Chevy. It was bored 30 over with a comp cams 268 cam and flat top pistons for a 9.5:1 compression. So the swap started with tearing out the very tired 305 and taking all the parts I needed from the 305 and transferred them to the 400.
After about two or three days of assembling the 400 and getting everything ready for the 400, it was time to install it into the car. Me being me while installing it I accidentally released the engine hoist to lower the engine instead of tightening it to stop it from lowering more causing it to slam onto my grill/ front end. Just a couple nicks in the paint, but still enough to get me pretty mad.
Once the engine was completely in and ready for its first start up, I began to get a little nervous cause I had no clue what it was going to sound like. When I finally got it started up and adjusted the idle and tuned the carb, it was time for its first test drive. The first time around I took it easy just to get used to my car again and get used to the increase in power. But the second time around I really got onto it. The motor really woke the car up and makes it move. Since the engine was built for more of low to mid range power, the torque just carries the car like its not even there. But the happiness was shortish lived since the carb I bought wasn't even close to be jetted to my motor.

It just dumped fuel into the engine. It ran alright but you could tell it struggled. It would wanna cut out around turns cause it of running so rich. I adjusted the floats and everything but still couldn't get it to not want to cut out around turns. It also caused my car to run really warm, I mean, the paper thin radiator I have really doesn't help at all but still. So I purchased a Holley 6709 750 cfm mechanical secondary double pumper and had it rebuilt by Jason Risser. I highly recommend him for all carb and engine work. He knows his stuff and is very far with his prices. After the Holley, it doesn't want to cut out around turns, and it runs like a dream. And since it doesn't dump fuel into the engine anymore like the old carb did, I seen a big increase in gas mileage.

One of the next upgrades I did was to dual electric fans. I ordered dual 14" electric fans off EBay.com for pretty cheap with the zip ties to hold them to the radiator. My brother helped me wire them into the car and get them to run right. I seen a big increase in cooling, and throttle response since it didn't have the heavy 7 blade fan with fan clutch swinging on the water pump pulley anymore.