BlueStag

When you write that you are pretty sure the fuel/induction is correct, you ARE saying that the two pistons in the two carbs are rising and falling freely, with an audible click? You've run the engine with the whole air cleaner assembly off, and witnessed the pistons rise and fall as you blip the throttle?

I suspect those things can go wrong pretty easily. I want to buy the sight glass concept from ZTherapy to see how mine are doing.

Just a guess, and certainly I have no reason to say that it means anything, but when I got my car running last summer, it would randomly bog down. The front fuel float was sticking closed. Are your needles working? Are your floats working? Easy enough to check.

Now now. Tony is a gentleman and a scholar. He has been very good to me. No, he connected me with another enthusiast at the MSA clear-out who sold me a down pipe for next to nothing. That down pipe has no extension of the pipe beyond the flange. The gasket before this last, when I took it out, clearly said that the exhaust was escaping above it and straight toward the back of the car. Can't change cars. Mine is a Triumph Stag. It is my only car. Let me tell you, it is a rare day indeed that I take it out and not get positive comments. And only once so far from some guy who I suspect has never seen a woman naked. Even without paying for it. When I was committing Tony to finding me a turbo, I meant to say a complete package. Engine, induction, exhaust, ECU, what-have-you. Everything that you would hope to have in place the day that you pulled the L24 out of your 240, with the hopes of getting back on the road in a hurry. I have found the cast iron to be challenging to tap, but not impossible by any means.

Tony, I have the manifold out. Had to hack off the last original stud and helicoil. I put in a flex pipe a few months ago when first I was struggling with this. But the current arrangement does have the down pipe hug the underside of the floor very tightly. I have a muffler shop offering to face off the manifold for free, which is a price I rather like. I'll take it in tomorrow. I hope to see a very much cleaner surface when he is finished. I don't know that I'd be able to sand it. It has definite areas that are much harder than others. But I'll ask the muffler guy to bias the flange slightly such as to drop the end of the down pipe away from the floor a bit. As for a turbo, I'll be counting on you to find me one like you did this down pipe, thanks again. I will be looking for as full a package as I may get, in the hopes of a very rapid swap. Possibly I can sell my SUs for $300 when the day comes.....

Oh, god. Do you really want to?

Found the right muffler guy today. He said it would be so easy, assuming that I brought it to him off the engine with the studs out, that he could not bring himself to charge me for it. He said he could make it flat in less than 5 minutes.

Got sent to a good muffler shop today. The guy there smiled gently and told me that he would have no issues grinding my manifold flat. Yes, tapping cast iron is a pain, especially old stuff like this that will have hard and soft regions, after 40 years of heating and cooling. I fully expect to shear off the last of my original studs when I next take it apart. And I'll drill and tap it for a 12mm plug that I will then drill and tap 8mm.

Oh, and try taking a pair of SU's with their intake runners and balance tube off all as a single component some day. That is good fun. Hint: one needs to take the heat shield off early in the process. But you can leave the choke cables attached, and that is a good thing.

Yeah, I think that is the answer, if it can be done. I suppose if cast iron blocks can be machined flat, a manifold can be.

Oh, and I had tried that at one point. Did not mention it. Was getting too wordy.

Not clear??? It is leaking at the flange. The flange where the exhaust manifold meets the down pipe. That was all I wrtoe about. Well, and some pulled studs.

Just kill me now. This damned 260 cast iron exhaust manifold is killing me. Years ago, when I first worked my engine swap (L6 into Triumph Stag) one of the studs had failed and I helicoiled it. Of course, I had forgotten. I was using an original down pipe, rusty and banged around, which the muffler shop used to build a custom rig to fit the engine to the car. As those who have been reading the painful story of my car will know, I had it up on stands for 9 years and only got it down last August. I noticed how noisy the exhaust flange was, clearly it was leaking. Took it apart, tried to get the original down pipe flange to level out, no chance. Down pipes are not available separately. Tony hooked me up with another enthusiast who sold me one for silly money, new MSA rig with a flange thick like nothing else. While I was wrestling with the whole mess, I wanted to eliminate the air injection hardware, managed to shear off a stud. (I was replacing the throttle bodies so I had all sorts of stuff torn apart) I had forgotten that I had some helicoils, so I took it to my shop. The guy sort of lost track of what he was doing, and drilled it for a 10mm heli rather than and 8mm heli. OK, I own a lathe, these sorts of things are cool. I made a stud 10mm at one end and 8mm at the other. Stuffed that in. Got the MSA down pipe in place and crawled under the car with my wrench and extensions, and what do you know? I pulled the helicoil from 13 years ago out. Here is the cool thing: IT IS POSSIBLE to take SU induction off as a single piece, even without pulling the chokes off (those need to be balanced). I was able to get the exhaust manifold off an hour after I started. Upon inspection, the pulled heli was not going to permit a 10mm, it was just too gone. I drilled and tapped for a 12mm grade 8 and drilled and tapped that for 8mm. I'm pretty sure the 12mm thread will hold in the cast iron. Put it together. And it leaks. Take it apart, be very careful that the down pipe is not constricted in its alignment, tie it back together, and the goddam thing leaks. My budget is constricted just now. I am looking for a solution that is not buckets of money. Although a tubular header is looking good just now. Is there a process to machine the cast flange flat? I am sure the MSA flange is flat enough.

OK, Save the match and gasoline.

Well, that is all nice technology. I won't be employing that stuff, I think. Pricy! Possibly the v-clamp could work for me, if I just can't get it tight with a conventional clamp. Or I may just gut it out and weld the joint shut.

Challenger: No, you understood me. One pipe is 2"id and the next is 2"od. My L6 is in a Triumph Stag. It's rear suspension is similar to that of a 280ZX, semi-trailing arms. There are two holes in the subframe that supports the diffy and the semi trailing arms for the original V8's exhaust to pass thru. Mine is routed thru one of those holes. Which makes the exhaust pretty rigid. Taking the down pipe off the manifold is next to impossible on my car if the down pipe is welded to the rest of the exhaust. So I want a slip joint there. I am having trouble getting the clamp to close it up. It could be that I need a slightly smaller clamp. So you think I can close it tight with a muffler clamp?

Hey guys. Does it actually happen that one pipe slips into another and is clamped, can that ever actually close up tight, or am I wasting my time? I really don't want to weld this joint just.

Gasoline. Match. Cliff. I would swap in that new ignition switch so fast it would spin your head.

Another point to know: None of the Senators or Assemblymen care much what you think unless you can help them get elected. Specifically, the people you get to vote for are the people you especially need to write to. Unless you have absolute buckets of money to splash around, the others really don't care. You can go ahead and write to the committee members, but it will not have anything like the impact of a letter from a constituent. Oh, letters with stamps count vastly more than do e-mails. Seriously, they keep track of the difference. Phone calls count more than e-mails. If a bill that you care about is under consideration in a committee that your rep does not sit on, that does not mean that you should not let your rep know what you think. These people sit on six or ten committees each, they all work with everybody in the chamber and talk to everyone else every few days. When the first bill was under consideration about 1993, the one that exempted '73 and earlier, I called my assemblyman's office. Now, I was active in the party at the time. He called back in half an hour, I told him what I wanted and who the author was, he told me he was meeting with him later that day and would probably vote for it. That is not to say that if you want to donate $100 to the authors of a bill even if they are not your rep, that they will not notice. But find out where their political office is and mail it there. There is no reason you cannot say expressly "I don't live in your district but I appreciate your work on this, please accept this donation to your reelection." (We have short term limits in this state, so fully a third of either house is termed out for any given election, they might be on the way out.) I'm still active in politics, and am very tight with one of the leaders in the Assembly. Mike Gatto? The guy putting up a bill to allow retro license plates? He's a car dude. He probably would support it if it got to the Assembly. I would not mind seeing a version of the bill that required that cars fitted with cats maintain them. Cats don't slow you down, and they do a lot to clean up your exhaust.

Yeah. I checked that while I had the manifold off.

Funny. I had the cover off the other day, and noticed that the exact same piece was bent away from the cams slightly and was a little loose. The lobes looked ok to me. I wonder if my spray bar is about to fall to bits?

She's a big stinker, but she does photograph well. Unlike her daddy. I won't be chroming. I'll replace it with a header first.

Mine looks like the '76 one. Cannon's is like the earlier design. The gasket is the size and shape of the whole flange, with five holes. Three for the studs and two for the pipes. Indeed the gasket has steel rings around the holes that the pipes pass thru. It seems to me that the rest of the gasket should be slightly thicker than the rings, but compressible. I don't get consulted when these things get designed.

Yes, the manifold could be beat, I suppose. I did a bit of cleaning of it while it was off the engine. I don't, really don't, want to take it off again. I am trying again tomorrow or the next day with a fresh gasket and different adhesive. I have no difficulty finding the leak, although I cannot get a camera in there to photograph it. I just start the car from absolutely cold (so that the pipes are not hot) and reach around there and find it. It is coming out directly at the block, directly away from the middle stud. Could be that I am cranking down on the middle stud too much.....I'll torque the other two a bit more than the center one. Interesting that you have seen the longer pair pipes on 240s. As I wrote, mine, which came off a 260, is very short indeed.