I have about 350 street miles now on the EFI setup. Andrew and I (mostly Andrew
) have been tweaking away on the tune and I think we are just about done with it. After working on the fuel table trying to clean up a few small problem spots, we finally started adding timing and that woke things right up. Turns out this Fastburn 383 likes more timing in the mid RPM range, a little bit more timing upper RPM WOT and a little less timing at idle. Who knew?
We now have it where it'll lug smoothly at 1200 RPM in 6th gear on the highway, pulls like a freight train everywhere else when asked and runs like a 5th Gen Camaro under normal everyday driving. Still haven't decided if I'll ever put it on a chassis dyno or not, only real reason would be to see what the torque and horsepower curves look like and where the peaks are. My butt dyno says the HP peak is a lot higher than the 5400 RPM it was before with the dual plane intake and Quadrajet though. I raised the rev limiter to 6400 from 6000 because I kept hitting it regularly with car still pulling hard. I hardly ever hit it before as I was shifting before it got there.
Couple other things I've cleaned up to make it more street friendly. I put a new blower fan relay in which not only lets the fan work at all 4 speeds now, but also doesn't kill the charging system when the fan is on high.
Took the 600# rear springs out and put 250# springs in and added a UMI Autocross rear sway bar back in. Both are a big improvement for street driving both in comfort and in feel, hopefully it'll still corner good once I get it on track again.
The brand new RE71s I picked up are now installed as well, way over due for them. Hopefully the new rear setup provides more rear forward bite grip and I won't kill these nearly as fast as the last set.
I was going to do a track day at Inde Motorsports Ranch Labor Day weekend as my first track test of all the new stuff, but a family deal came up so I'll have to miss that. Love track days and love that track but at the same time kind of happy that I'll have an autocross event or two to test all the new stuff out before thrashing the car on a big track once again.
Meanwhile, I'm just driving the car every chance I get. First tank of gas netted 11.5 MPG, it'll be interesting to see how the next tank ends up shortly. I'm hammering it pretty hard doing the EFI tuning so I expect it'll get better with more just regular driving. Not really the most important goal but a nice side effect if I can save a bit of fuel along the way.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Hybrid Mode
