1985 Monte Carlo SS known as Barney

[WSSix]

Congrats, Lance! Glad to hear the car moved again under its own power.

[SSLance]

Thanks Trey, it was bitter sweet...wish the result would have been better so I could have enjoyed the fantastic weather in it this weekend. I'll get er all fixed up quickly though then let the tuning and breaking in commence.

[SSLance]

Not too exciting but at least it's proof it runs...

[65_LS1_T56]

Sounds sawwwweeeet!

[Che70velle]

Great job Lance, it sure sounds good. Where is your oil pressure at?

[SSLance]

At idle after startup its at 60 psi, once warm and driven a bit it's around 40 at idle. Really hot and heat soaked it stabilizes at around 30 psi idling at 850 rpm. Just a bump in throttle raised right back up quickly.

It has the Brad Penn oil in it the builder used, think it is 10w30.

[SSLance]

Little bit better day today... Reinstalled the headers today and installed the wideband. Started the car up and it was pretty quiet...maybe just the slightest ticking, almost like a lifter tick but I know it's not. I let it warm up real good, then shut it off and retorqued the header bolts.

So I took off on a test drive with a vacuum gauge and Air Fuel meter running inside the car. Car sounded great, ran great and I really enjoyed my short drive. I drove up to the engine builders shop just to see if he was there, as I pull up...I hear the leak coming back. Sure enough, it has started puffing out a header flange somewhere again. It's not as bad and at least I know what it is now. When I got back home I torqued the bolts one more time with it really hot and a few of them were a bit loose...hopefully this will stop it. Either way, I'm not going to worry about it right now. I know what it is, I know why it's doing it and I may have a plan on how to attack it once I'm good and ready. For now though, it's off to tuning and breaking the new clutch in.

I did open the secondaries up this round...you know, just to make sure they still work. It's quite a bit different than before.

[SSLance]

I've been driving Barney around quite a bit last few days, even drove it 40 minutes across KC to the SCCA meeting last night. I'm having a blast driving it, it's much the same...but oh so different at the same time. It looks the same, it sounds the same, and it drives the same, until you press on the loud pedal. Before it pulled real hard out of the hole, then kind of slacked off the rest of the way up the RPMs. Now it pulls hard out of the hole...and keeps on pulling just as hard all the way up.

I'm really happy with the new Mcleod Street Extreme clutch. It is smooth as silk upon engagement, no chatter whatsoever. I'm still taking it easy on it breaking it in right, but so far I like it.

I've been working on the AFRs, tune a bit, drive a bit, tune a bit, drive a bit and I've discovered that as it heat soaks, the vacuum gets erratic and the AFRs lean out...signs of a vacuum leak. I reused the old carb to manifold insulator so I have a new one on the way, hopefully that is it. If not I have a few other things to check. Once that is ironed out I'll nail down the carb tuning.

It is already much better than I had it last year after the carb swap. While at cruise, it used to stumble or shudder just a bit as it got fat if throttle was applied below 1800 RPM. I drove it home last night in 6th gear mostly around 1500-1600 RPM and it stayed around 15:1 AFR and smooth. Off idle is good as well. It is pretty hard for me to watch AFRs while on WOT for now, need a passenger to do this safely, but I know it feels pretty good with the butt dyno.

A header is leaking again, it gets worse as it gets hotter and is almost quiet on cold start up. I'm not worried about that now. I'm formulating a plan to fix it right but for now I'm working on everything else.

[Tomswheels]

That's sweet Lance.

[GregWeld]

Be careful of that leak -- those hot gasses can "erode" those aluminum heads and then you have even more problems.