Afternoon motor re-con mission

Pulled the plugs and sure enough, they're fouled. Not a lot mind you from the limited run time but they're fouled. Also, the plugs distinctly smell like un-burnt gas....go figure with flames coming out my headers! I decided to get a little more careful with my distributor setup. I backed up my timing mark to about 14 deg BTDC and reset my distributor. Also, this time I took a level and lined up the center of the rotor contact to my #1 mark on the base of the distributor after I set the timing mark at 14*. I also went through and capped ALL of the loose vaccuum lines to the cruise control, old EGR inlet, the EFE control and the headlights. I'm going to go through and check my valve lift with a caliper tonight and then button it back up for a run tomorrow.....I don't want to piss off the neighbors with the late night open header runs. I'll go through and double check the plugs wires as well just for good measure.

2nd run on the new motor, not so good

The first run last night was ok, rough below 2000 rpm but decent at 2500. I ran it for about 5-6 minutes before the rad started boiling over and I had to cut it off.

Wheeled the car out into the drive way this time. I turned the key and it tried to start up and burped atomized gas straight up out of the carb. I pumped the peddle a few times while turning it over again and it starts to come to life but running VERY rough. I'm talking really rough. I give it some more gas and pull it up to about 2000 rpm and notice that it's taking me tweaking the peddle to keep it going or it starts to fall back on rpm as if it's going to stall out on me. I get her up to about 2500 rpm and it's not running smooth like it was last night. Granted it rained this afternoon and the humdity is WAY up there.

This time I had my father-in-law over to watch the motor and stuff. About a minute into the run I notice my butt is getting real hot and he comes over and yells that I'm shooting 12 inch flames out the headers. Well, that explains why my butt's hot. I go ahead and shut it down and look under the body. Nothing on fire fortunately. Good thing I put down the Thermotec insulation under the body! My drivers side header is glowing hot where the 4 tubes meet into the collector on down. Now it is just about dark out side and so it's easy to see it's glowing. The passengers side header is not glowing but he tells me that I had flames coming out both sides while it was running.

We wheel it back into the garage after the headers cool down some. BTW, these are ceramic coated headers. I'm thinking it's timing so I pull the drivers side valve cover and turn the crank by hand. The valves are rocking ok, at least on #1. The exhaust cycle goes by and then the intake cycle and then I'm right at 0 deg. I pull the distributor cap and then back the crank up to 8 deg BTDC. The 8 deg came from Vizards rebuild book. I check the mark on the base of the distributor and the rotor and it looks ok with the initial edge of the contact in line with the mark.

So, what gives? Why am I getting the flames and the roughness? It would seem that my initial timing is ok, at least good enough to get me going. Is it my Q-jet running too rich? I didn't do anything to the Q-jet but pull it from the original motor which had EGR (this motor does not). And how does the flames shooting out my headers play into this whole thing? I am truly stuck trying to figure this one out and would appreciate some help on where to begin to get this worked out.

It just hit me that I hadn't hooked up the vaccuum line to the bumper tank to the headlights. Could that be it? This detail just hit me too, I have the vaccuum hooked up to the distributor as well. Also, this is the original distributor from my old motor. Both the carb and dist were ok before the pull. The old motor was idling a little high in the 1800-2000 rpm area but not rough and crappy like this motor's doing.

Woo-hooo! 1st run on the motor

Biiiiig day today. The story of the day was getting the little details buttoned up on the car. I had to finish hooking up the radiator, fan, and trany cooling lines. Re-connect the shifter, tighten down the body mounts (I just got the body back on last Thursday and hadn't tightened them all down yet), and connect the steering wheel back up to the steering box. Then I dropped the battery in the car, took a deep breath and turned the key. Nothing. I had been fighting the wiring to my starter earlier in the week as my original tags had all faded. In the process I had a large gauge red wire that I thought was a ground wire. I was wrong. It ended up being the positive back into the rest of the car. The give away was that the cig lighter had no power.

So, I took the wire and connected it to the +12 terminal on the starter. Then turned the key and this time lights! Click it to start and I barely get a turn over on the starter. Nuts! My battery went bad in the 6 months sitting there. It's a 3 year old battery and the guy I bought the car from before had it mostly just sitting in his garage before that and thus, the battery being bad is no surprise.

Off to Wal-mart to replace the battery. I get back, drop in the new batt, throw a little gas down the throat of the carb (fuel lines are brand new, new fuel pump, and filter) to help get it started. Turned the key again and now a solid turn from the starter. It coughs a little and then starts turning over but then stops. Of course by that time, the wife and duaghter run down stairs to complain that I'm going to have the neighbors all mad at me. I don't have the exhaust hooked up yet and so it's just open headers.....unbelievably loud but, music to my ears. THe wife protests about 5 times and then gives in. She knows that she's not going to convince me to not turn this over tonight after nearly 5 months of working on it!

I throw a little more gas into the throat of the carb and try again. This time it starts and when I give it some throttle, it comes to life! I bring it up to 2200 rpm to break in the cam and motor. After running a couple of minutes I notice that it's getting a little back fire when it drops near 2000 rpm. I run it around the range of 2000-2500 rpm and find that it runs very smoothly at 2500 rpm but it's a little rough below 2200. The oil pressure is solid and watching the temp gauge it starts climbing up to about 210, stays there for a while and then starts moving past and up to the yellow line. Its' then that I shut her down after about 8-10 minutes of run time. I don't want to overheat the motor the first run! In the process of shutting it down, I pull off the throttle and as it drops it's really sputtering and then drops out and burps some gas back out the carb. It's then that I notice that there's steam coming out of the outlet from the radiator that would go to the puke tank. I hadn't hooked up the puke tank yet. The rad had puked a good bit of water all over the floor in those last few seconds.

Not a bad run but I need better....of course!

1) Should my rad be spewing out like that? I had put in 1 gallon of antifreeze, do I need more? Hook up the pouke tank? Or something else?

2) The roughness and back-firing, I had not touched my Q-jet in putting it on the new motor. The motor is now completely without EGR. How much could that effect the operation below 2200 rpm? What is the likely cause of the roughness below 2200 rpm but smooth at 2500 rpm? IN setting the initial timing I had followed Vizards instructions in his book on re-building small blocks.

I'm going to give it more time in the morning when my neighbors can't complain about waking them up at least!

Body back on!

Another biiigggg milestone today. I got the body back on the frame. It was a work of art in progress too. You know some days, you must be living right to have things go so well. Today was one of those days for me....rare thing too!

We'd set the body in place under the hoist frame on Tuesday. I started by lifting the body up with the hoist about 2 feet so I could get under it and put the Thermotec insulation in trany tunnel. I bought some short metal screws with the eye type washers to hold the insulation matting in place. Once I got that done, I realized I had forgotten to remove the old body mount from the channels. That took some "convincing" of the old rubber to get out. But out they came and then popped in the new mounts.

Then the moment of truth. Not only does the body need to line up with the frame but also I'm crossing my fingers that the 5 body mounts I welded on to replace the rust rotted ones were dead on in the right spot or this could be a short launch! Lifted the body up to max and then wheeled the frame out. Started dropping the body and moved the frame forward about 6 inches to get it roughly in line with the rear mounts. Drop the body to within 4 inches of the mounts. Unbelievable, all my mounts on the frame line up perfectly. No side to side adjustment of the frame, no more back and forth, and all the new mounts are exactly where they should be. This is just too good!

We drop the body another 4 inches to get the rear most mounts going, and the bolt right in. Drop it another 3-4 inches to get the #3 mounts on each side and they bolt right in! Finish dropping it the rest of the way and the front end lines up perfectly with the #1 mounts on both sides. Seriously, I couldn't have planned this to go this well! Tear everything down, wheel her back into the garage. Done in 2 hours. Completely unbelievable. Had to right it down or I might not believe it myself!