Hurricane Katrina

Katrina wasn't a very nice girl! We went through Ivan last year almost head on when it came up east of Mobile and due north right up through Birmingham. I grew up in S. Florida and been through hurricanes before but not with trees as tall as they grow around here. A 50' pine whipping around the house is not real comfortable.

Anyway, Ivan came through packing about 50-60 mph steady winds when it got to us last year. That knocked out power and trees all over the place. Katrina was technically 100 miles to the west of us and she was packing winds that were gusting close to 65-70 mph. Blew off some shingles on the house but everything was ok otherwise. The power went out of course but no surprise there. Looks like the coast got really hammered. It's always the storm surge that kills, not the wind, a common misunderstanding by people that never been through one.

Finished motor break in #2

Well I owe you all an update. Started out frustrating but ended well. Here's the story:

* Got the new Holley 4160 installed. That was a lot more work than I expected because of the need to setup the linkages with an Edelbrock linkage kit. Got everything on and ok, took about 2 hours of adjustments.

* Checked the timing again. Set the timing to 8 BTDC just as before with the XE268H cam before it wiped.

* Start her up and it's running horrible. Can't even get it to 2000 rpm without serious blowback through the carb.

* Pull out a different set of plug wires and put those on. No difference.

* Pull the plugs themselves since they were fouled and cleaned and put in new Autolite plugs. No difference.

So at this point I'm pulling my hair out, beating on the car and then I thought to see how the main BAT going into the distributor looked. With just the key engaged I was getting a decent 12V at the clip going into the dist. So, here's what I did:

* I was able to jam the negative lead to my meter into the throttle bracket and wedge the positive lead into the underside of the BAT clip to the dis and then set the meter so I could see it through the windshield.

* Try firing it up and it's running horrible for about 2 seconds, the meter is twitching around from 8V to 12V and all over the place, and then all of a sudden smooth as silk running at 2500 rpm. The meter is showing a solid 14V and it's looking good.

* Running for about 2 minutes and I'm smelling the headers getting too hot again (you know you're getting too good when you can tell a problem by it's smell! ). Shut it off quickly and look underneath and the headers are a dull red at the collector. I let that cool off and advance the dist to 10 BTDC.

* Hop in and start it up again. Now it's running right out of the gate and up at 2200 rpm almost instantly. Let that run for 5 minutes. Shut it down quickly and look at the headers. The glow is gone and the headers are not overheating dramatically.

* Hop back in and it starts up just fine again and I run it to 2200 rpm and vary it every few minutes from 2000-2500 rpm for the next 15 minutes. Everything is solid. Water temp good, oil pressure good, the meter showing a solid 14V on the BAT terminal to the dist.

* At the end I run it up to 2500 rpm, 3000 rpm each for 1 minute and then back down in 500 rpm increments to 1500 rpm each for 1 minute. THis is procedure in the Lunati install instructions.

Shut her down and everything looks good. What a mess though getting all those issues untangled. Looks like a compounded problem of too rich carb, electrical problems, fouled plugs, and 4* BTDC more advance. But it's worth it now that I have the motor running. What a week!