deMideon

Nope... I actually had really bad luck earlier with them leaking and my machinist told me to use hylomar so that's what I did...

No it's not bottoming out, definately sits lower now though. I've had problems with this since I built the engine. From what my machinest said the intake was not at all flat(on the surface that mates to the head). Lots of high/low points. A little more info... When I first built the engine the intake was very difficult to bolt up, I needed to elongate the holes to get it to match. It did leak at the time. I then had to pull everything apart and had the deck milled. When I put it back together I saw how far off the intake angle to head was (.008 on both sides. So I had the intake machined to match the head angle. When I put it together everything fit very well, the bolts lined up etc.. I used gasket sealer when I put it together to help if there was any space between the head and the intake. When I bolted it on it squeezed out some of the sealer so I thought I had a good seal. As far as the leak, it's easy to know since I pull it off and there is very lovely goo covering the underside of the intake where the water is dripping down inside and mixing with the oil the only place with the goo is under the water passage.

Slowly figuring out the problems with my engine... Had a bad cooling issue and figured out that is was cavitation in the water pump due to water leaking out of the intake into the valley inside the engine (I'm sure my cam LOVES that!). So anyway onto my question. I have a 400 block, Canfield heads, and a VicJr intake. I had the block decked .021 as well. I found that the angle between the heads and the intake was wrong (about .008 larger at the bottom), so I took the intake to the machinest and he set the angles right for me. It fit a lot better, but the @!*$&%&%&!!!! thing is still leaking! Either the intake is cracked or I'm thinking that the distance between the head and the intake may be a little to large for it to seal. So my questions are... has anyone had intake problems like this? Can I put 2 intake gaskets together on one side? I'm not sure what else to do about it. Thanks!!

Heh... well that was pretty easy! I bolted it on... and it works... really well too. I do have to pull the float bowls off and reset the floats, but otherwise it's amazing that it bolted up and runs well!

Hopefully you are asking which SBC to use... the 350 is the most abundent and cheapest to work with. More parts, cheaper parts. Good size etc. Now that said, if you happen across a 400 grab it if you can. Still uses the same parts as a 350. It's gotten to be a rare engine so it's kind of unlikely you would find one.

Well yes it's supposed to be much easier to do the idle adjustment... I'll let everyone know what happens!

John did you have one with their new EZ Idle setup? Well since I just got I'll have to see what I can do with it. It really is pretty! LOL!!! I am mostly interested in great throttle response so this should work well for me. I do know I'll have a lot of work to do getting it setup properly. I don't expect this one to work right out of the box like the Holleys do. The 750DP I have right now is very old (out of production) and while I glued the base back together it's not something I want to use for very long. So at least I do have something I can swap back and forth while I am getting the Demon tuned right! Thanks! Joe

Thanks! When I get it if I do have any more questions I'll let you know!

Sounds like the way to go is the Demon carb... I'm going with a 750 Speed demon with mechanical secondaries, I should have it in a couple of days! While I have a cam that is at 244 @ .050 duration I really need to have the choke for winter. So I can't really go with the Mighty Demon... and I'm right on the edge so hopefully it will be Ok. So .... please let me know what you've learned about tuning it ect... I would really appreciate it! Thanks!!

I've never heard of a pro form... where did you get it?

LOL I really like the feel of a mechanical secondary.... I get to choose exactly when I get into it.

Well... I just broke the base of my Holley 750 double pumper... as it's an old carb (I got it used), I am going to get a new one. I wanted to find out what everyones opinion is. I want to go with mechanical secondaries and I have a 450 hp SBC 377. What should I use? I was thinking about the 750 speed demon with mechanical secondaries. Let me know what you think!

That's how I did mine. Ground one wire, and connect the other one 2 the signal. Find a good 2 mile road and you can set it up!

Thanks!!!! I will do that!

Thanks John! That's right, it will work now that I have a working timing light! I do that at about 4000 rpm right?

I'm running about 11:1 compression and I am using 93 octane. I had a problem with the TDC not being set right and now I found out that my timing light was also broken!!! So I had the engine rebuilt and had my machinest make sure the TDC was right... I also had the block decked .020, so I could use a .038 head gasket and now my quench is right were it should be so I expect that I will have less of a tendency to ping. Also now that my TDC is right and my timing light is correct, I set it to 10 degrees adv at 1200 RPM.

Cool!!! That's a great article! Thanks!!!

Now that I had to get my engine rebuilt since I had too much advance... How can I determine if I am getting detonation? I can't hear anything when I have the engine under load so I just wanted to see if anyone knew a way to check for it. Burning hole in my piston was not fun and I would really rather not do it again LOL! Thanks!!

I have a T-56 with a hays aluminum flywheel. I'm putting out 410hp at the wheels and I'm using a Centerforce dual friction. It works very well so far. I put about 2000 miles on it before I had to tear down my engine (burned a few pistons!) and the flywheels looks great!

sub-frame connectors are what you need... over what hp? I wouldn't know. Take a look at my yahoo picture album to see what I did. It made the car amazingly solid feeling.

I didn't have it decked when I first had it built... but I plan to now. I think my engine builder did not do the proper ring end gap and it broke the pistons. The KB hyper pistonms I used need more of a gap than normal. I am going to use the Mr Gasket Ultra seal head gasket Pete mentioned in one of his posts (I think!) but that means I will have to get the block decked by about .020 to get the quench righ since the ultra gasket is .038 thick. Damn but I'm glad I pulled the engine apart right now... never would have found the piston problem before it caused serious damage!!

Thanks! I'll keep it in mind... I just ttook apart the engine and found that 3 of my pistons are cracked at the rings.. so I have a lot to figure out!

bounce... still need to find a good thin head gasket I can get to seal!

Thanks! Me too! Maybe there is a better spray than I used! I'll have to see what SCE recommends.

I'm running the copper, SCE .021 headgasket... I don't think Felpro makes a .021 gasket for the SBC 400 do they?