Holy thread resurrection!
Our Camaro has gotten most of the attention lately, so of course the truck decided to speak up and ask for some back in the spring.
To backtrack a little, in 2013, our bracket racing interest kind of flamed out thanks to our favorite track changing hands and some other factors. With no racing going on, the 8-10 mpg the QuickFuel 850 was returning got old pretty quick, so we picked up a Holley 750 for it.
The setup on it was alright out of the box, I attempted a little tuning on my own but never really got it right. Cruised it around a decent amount, the Holley picked up the mileage a tad, things were alright.
Shortly after this bit of parking lot fun on worn out Z tires, it started acting up. The 406 was never the easiest thing to get along with, mostly due to the fairly radical Comp Cams Extreme Energy cam we used, but this was out of the norm. Significantly down on power, didn't want to idle, just all around unhappy.
Fought with it off and on for a month or so, thinking it was a carburetor issue, and eventually pulled the valve covers to adjust the valves in hopes of finding a backed off stud or broken spring. After working through the firing order, I found the source of our woes on the last cylinder.
The number 2 exhaust lifter decided to become a non-roller, and in the course of chasing "carburetor problems", turned most of that lobe into a fine powder.
After finding (well, confirming) the problem, and cutting open the oil filter to look for any evidence of bearing wear, we decided to go forward without pulling it. 3 cans of brake clean and a few quarts of store brand 10-30 were poured through it to flush out the remaining cam sludge, and it was time to reassemble.
We decided on a complete Lunati Voodoo assembly, which is the same setup as the Camaro, but in a slightly more tame profile. This also meant changing springs, which was a full afternoon on its own. With all that installed, it was time to go back together. At this point, we're 2 months into this, working between autocrosses and other 'life'.
With all the 'functional' stuff back on and the oil system primed, we finally got to fire it back up last weekend.
Aside from a worrying amount of smoke, which turned out to be transmission fluid on the exhaust caused by sitting nose-high on stands for a few weeks, everything appears to be happy.
The last two things on the list were recharging the AC and getting the the grill back on, which isn't bad except for the one missing welded nut that requires a bit of, um, finesse?
Yeah, I could have pulled the bucket out, but this was quicker - it pays to be the skinny guy with small hands sometimes.
Really digging the new cam what little I got to drive it. Power seems much smoother and more linear than before, but that may be because I'm used to driving the Camaro right now? Either way, I'm hopeful that it will be much happier than it was with the previous setup. We had already been talking about doing a swap before all this got started, but I could have stood to get there a little differently.
Still have the urge to see what it will do in the quarter, so we may have to make a trip to the Motorplex before the end of the year with it.
Now, to get back to actually enjoying it..