spork

My dad has a straight 8 in his 49 buick....neat car, but not sure I'd pick it as a canidate for an engine swap. Get a dynaflow tranny with it and you'd be set...lol!

Drain a quart of your oil and add "Rislone" to it. Its an additive that help clean your lifters. Its not as good as tearing it down and cleaning them individually, but it usually will take care of the lifters after running it for a bit. As far as the conversion goes. If you go that route, you will need a different cam. The hydraulic cam will create nothing but problems in a non-hydraulic head. This may cause an arguement here, but the cams are not the same and should not be interchanged. Will the car run with a hydraulic cam in it? Yes, some people wouldn't even notice the difference in regular driving, but trust me. You are much better off buying a used cam meant for a solid lifter head. You also should resurface your rocker arms, and check your wipe patern. You may or may not need new lash pads, after checking the pattern, you'll know for sure.

Most people disconnect it eventually. My daily driver has it hooked up while the race car doesn't...of course, I'm not using a stock TB on the race car and I saw no reason to waste the time to install it.

Well, hopefully all works out well, but if I were you, I'd replace the remaining core plugs before you pop one out in the middle of nowhere.

Have you even contacted them yet? If not, contact them, then post if you have a problem. You haven't even given them a chance to correct the situation if they're willing to do so. I've nevr dealt with them, but I just hate to see posts like this when the vendor hasn't even been informed there is a problem.

The Harbor freight unit is definetly a light duty mill. I might be bashed on for saying this, but it will get the job done for most of your projects if dealing in aluminum. It can handle steel, but is very touchy. I've used this exact unit before and its definetly more for the hobby end of milling. If you can afford it, get a real mill and use an invertor. Thats what we do at our shop. We don't have 3 phase available and didn't feel like paying the big $ to have the power company set it up. Sometimes you can even find a used one that includes the invertor if you're lucky. Its more likely to find something like that from an individual that does a lot of work on the side or a retired machinist.

I suppose the real question is why. Aluminum is light weight and much easier to do than the fiberglass would be. Buy some pre-bent mandrel bends and then take them to a competent welder and have him weld them up. It could be done, but I'm ot sure I see the advantage to it. There isn't really even a bling factor unless you did them in carbon fiber...

Yup, try the machine shop class, then decide on the equipment to buy. A lot of times if you do some looking and asking around, you can find some used equipment for sale and gets some pretty good deals. Just check for play in the tables, and bearings and so on. Tight Tolerances are the key when buying used equipment.

A stock pump will work for a little bit, and then it will fail. The internals aren't correct for it. You also risk the alky leaking into places you really don't want it. You'd be best with a shureflow pump. A cheaper kit you may be interested in is http://www.alcohol-injection.com/ even if you don't buy thier complete baseline kit, you can purchase individual pieces from them. I'm using the progressive kit on my car (modified some)

I've talked to state farm in the past. You can get coverage and insure it for $10,000 but they will review the value of your car during a claim and may not pay $10,000 in the event of a claim...beware! Many people have fallen victim to this because of mis-understandings with the insurance company. There is stated value insurance like state farm has, and there is Agreed value insurance like Hagerty uses. I insure through hagarty. I also have my regular cars through Geico. Never had a problem with any claims I've had. After working in bodyshops for many years...I'll never insure through Progressive. They purposely hire people with no automotive background. They want car ignorant people as they tend to write claims for less and leave out important bits on the estimate. Ignorant people are also very hard to argue with. When I was working in the auto shops, we sent the progressive customers down the road a lot of the times because the estimates written for thier cars were a mile off from where they should've been. I've talked to many other shops around the country and they have the same problems. They write estimates low and like to cut corners on the repairs to your car.

You say it misses some on start up..what color are the plugs. Do they all look the same? If its low on power have you done a compression or leak-down test? If you think you've got an injector problem, you can send them off to have them tested, or if you're handy, you can build a rig of your own and check the spray pattern and volume. Just remember if you're using your cars fuel pump and actual gasoline, be careful. Makes sure there are no electrical devices or anything else that might emit a spark while test firing the injectors.

I don't neccissarly agree with the T-5 not being able to hold the power I cut low 1.6's with mine at about 400rwhp and had no issues. The real issue comes later when making even more power and not being able to find a single disk clutch to hold up. My Tranny has 180,000 or so miles on it and has never been upened up to my knowledge. With the power I'm making now, I can't get a clutch to grab long enough to make a full pass, so I'm going a different route. At 300hp, the auto your have with some upgrades should be fine. If you want to go manual, I wouldn't be afraid to use the T-5 one bit for your current power levels. If you end up getting rid of the auto, let me know as I could find some use for it.

Uh yeah...what are you talking about?

It depends on the trim and specs of that hybrid turbo. With a properly set up hybrid, the car will run good, but with the wrong one, The car may not come alive until you get into the higher boost levels.

I'm using the Arizone Zcar adjustable gear on mine and have had no loosening of the bolts. I did snug them up pretty tight initially tho. I also turn my car around 7800 between shifts, so I'm sure it gets a work out. The arizona zcar unit is nice and worth the money.

yes, you want an intercooler. Without one you will be severly limited on how much boost you can run on only 91 octane. As far as the calculator goes...its a fun little toy, but not that accurate IMO. There are way too many variables that it doesn't cover such as port and combustion chamber shape and so on.

I've had pretty good luck with 3M's Truckilne adhesives. Only problem is they take a special gun to apply them. Then use a flexible filler over that so it can handle any slight movement (evercoat makes a flexable filler for bumper covers and things like that).

With the standalone you can do just about anything you want. If you don't upgrade the injectors, you can up the pressure, but just use a regular adjustable fuel pressure regulator. There is no need for a rising rate regulator. They just make your standalone that much harder to tune. You didn't name what pump you had, so 125psi doesn't really mean anythin if it can't flow much fuel at that pressure. You'll be fine to up your base pressure some tho. You're going to run out of injector very quickly with that setup if you want to run any kind of boost at all. 45-50psi base pressure would be fine. That only puts you at 65-70psi if running 20psi of boost. If you need more fuel, up the pressure a little more. I'm running a base pressure of 60psi on my 52pph injectors and then 25psi of boost. (plus some methanol since the injectors are maxxed out). All of that said, eventually you're going to want to upgrade injectors. 550cc or so would do you great with that setup and they will still give you a nice idle.

Run water over it, then powerwash it with hot soapy water if possible. Once you've gone around it several times with the power washer, start from the top and rinse your mash mitt often as it will get dirty fast. Then when you're done washing it. Take a good cleaner wax to it to freshin it up some

The lamda number stays constant, the a/f number will change. Here's a chart to go by. Vout Lambda Petrol LPG Methanol Diesel 1.40 0.686 10.08 10.63 4.39 9.94 1.45 0.696 10.23 10.79 4.45 10.09 1.50 0.706 10.38 10.94 4.52 10.24 1.55 0.716 10.53 11.10 4.58 10.39 1.60 0.727 10.69 11.27 4.65 10.54 1.65 0.739 10.86 11.45 4.73 10.71 1.70 0.750 11.03 11.63 4.80 10.88 1.75 0.762 11.20 11.81 4.88 11.05 1.80 0.774 11.38 12.00 4.95 11.23 1.85 0.787 11.57 12.20 5.04 11.41 1.90 0.800 11.76 12.40 5.12 11.60 1.95 0.814 11.96 12.61 5.21 11.80 2.00 0.828 12.17 12.83 5.30 12.00 2.05 0.842 12.38 13.05 5.39 12.21 2.10 0.857 12.60 13.29 5.49 12.43 2.15 0.873 12.83 13.53 5.59 12.66 2.20 0.889 13.07 13.78 5.69 12.89 2.25 0.905 13.31 14.03 5.79 13.13 2.30 0.923 13.57 14.31 5.91 13.39 2.35 0.941 13.84 14.59 6.03 13.65 2.40 0.960 14.11 14.88 6.14 13.92 2.45 0.980 14.40 15.18 6.27 14.20 2.50 1.000 14.70 15.50 6.40 14.50 2.55 1.037 15.25 16.08 6.64 15.04 2.60 1.078 15.84 16.70 6.90 15.62 2.65 1.121 16.48 17.38 7.17 16.26 2.70 1.169 17.18 18.11 7.48 16.95 2.75 1.220 17.93 18.91 7.81 17.69 2.80 1.276 18.76 19.78 8.17 18.50 2.85 1.337 19.66 20.73 8.56 19.39 2.90 1.405 20.66 21.78 8.99 20.38 To quote from (Donnie Wang) on Turbo buicks (since his explaination is clearer than mine probably would be) "For any given stoich mixture for any given type of fuel or mix of fuels, there will be a certain amount of residual oxygen after a perfect burn. Methanol with a stoich of 6.45 to one will have 'X' amount of oxygen in the exhaust after it is burned. Nitro with a stoich of 1.7 to one will have 'X' amount of oxygen in the exhaust after it is burned. Simple gasoline with a stoich of 14.6 to one will have 'X' amount of oxygen in the exhaust after it is burned. The 'X' amount for all three previous examples will be very close to the same. This is the thing that the lambda sensor is monitoring. Not the actual A/F ratio of the fuel mixture being used. It is measuring residual oxygen molecules after the fuel is burned to judge how efficient the burn was. Perfect (stoich), rich, or lean. It is looking for that 'X' amount. The A/F numbers you see on your O2 reading are simply numbers that relate to the fuel mix that the sensor is setup for. Most, if not all, sensors are setup to read out A/F numbers as it relates to burning gasoline. The programmer of the unit has just assigned a certain A/F number to each lambda reading. See 'The Chart'." Here's some other info that may be found useful as well (pure gasoline vs. Pure methanol) Gasoline / Methanol 6.0 / 4.1 - Rich Burn Limit (engine fully warmed) 9.0 / NA - Black Smoke / Low Power 11.5 / 4.5 - Approximate Rich Best Torque @ WOT 12.2 / 5.5 - Safe Best Power @ WOT 13.3 / NA - Approximate Lean Best Torque 14.6 / 6.45 - Stoichiometric AFR (chemically ideal) 15.5 / NA - Lean Cruise 16.5 / NA - Usual Beast Economy 18.0 / NA - Carburetted Lean Burn Limit 22+ / NA - EEC / EFI Lean Burn Limit These numbers above are approx. of course.

You ever heard of spray torch welding? (I think thats what it's called) I don't know much about it, but my brother went to a school on it and you can join 2 different metals using it and he's done aluminum to steel and it forms a strong joint.

I assume you're using a wideband right? If so, use the lamda reading and there will be a lot less guess work. You can tune for the same number regardless of how much methanol you are running. Obviously, the best way would be on a load based dyno, but for most guys that just gets to expensive, so go with the targte Lamda number. I'm running 6 M5 nozzles on mine with a dual pump setup, and may upgrade to some larger nozzles later if need be. The single pump on mine was @80psi (running all out). I haven't checked to see what it is now with both pumps running. Methanol is definetely the way to go!