Been putting some miles on the car since I last posted about a month ago. My goal has been to see what's working and what's not and the things I need to address over the winter.
A couple of big things that have been standing out to me are that the car has a pretty big oil leak, and I need some new seat mounts! I have narrowed down the oil leak to either the back of the intake or the rear main seal. I'm planning on taking the intake manifold off this winter anyway (more on that below) so I will check that first before I pull the transmission. I put a new rear main seal in while I had the engine and transmission out, but it's definitely possible I damaged it while trying to stab the input shaft into the back for the crank. I'm tired of having a puddle on my garage floor every time I park it!
For the seat, I need to find a way to lower it and to get it on adjustable rails. It's just too hard to get out of the car right now which really hinders the car's every day useability. Once I'm in, the seat feels great and fits me well but I just dread the circus act it takes to get out of the car so I'll definitely have to address that.
The big decision I'm working on right now is what to do with the engine computer. The car right now runs well, but there are big "holes" in the rev range where the car will fall on it's face and then pick back up and take off. Again, not a big deal on the track where most of the time the engine is at 4000 rpm+, but it affects how the car feels around town. I really like crisp throttle response and I want the car to take off when I punch it at 2500 rpm. I've gone from a huge 58mm throttle body down to a stock one which helped throttle response a bit but still nowhere near where I'd like it. Right now, I have a stock ECU with a stock chip in the car. The small block in the car has a ton of upgrades including big aluminum heads, a cam, intake, headers... you name it. I don't think the stock ECU can keep up. My 2 options are to dig into burning a new chip for my current ECU or to completely upgrade the engine electronics to something I can tune on the fly. I think I am leaning towards upgrading the whole ECU to something like a Terminator X from Holley. I'm sure I could get the stock ECU to work with a new chip and some tuning, but at the end of the day I will still have an ECU with 30+ year old technology. Yes I will need to re-wire the whole engine bay again with the Holley system, but I think it will be worth it to have a modern ECU I can tune with a laptop.
Back to my intake... if I decide to go with the Holley Terminator X system I think I am also going to swap out my Super Ram intake for a Holley Stealth Ram. Couple of reasons for this, but the main ones are the simplicity of the Stealth Ram over the Super Ram and the other is budget. With the value of Super Rams right now, I am hoping to be able to sell and then pick up a second hand Stealth Ram and a new Terminator X ECU and be about even. That seems like a good trade to me! I think it will also be easier to troubleshoot any tuning issues I have with Holley if I am using both their ECU and their intake.
If anyone has any inputs I'm all ears before I pull the trigger soon!
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