jt1

Jon is correct. I was mistakenly thinking of the HD vs. GT rotors, which are generally the same weight. jt

My experience with the Wilwoods is that the heavy duty rotors are made of a better grade iron. They don't heat crack as bad, and they last a lot longer than the standard rotors. The weight of the rotors themselves are nearly identical. jt

Just checking- do you have the big nipple on the bottom of the carb capped or hooked to the brake booster? jt

My 16x8's, which are 8'' inside bead to inside bead, are 5" backspacing, or a -12 offset. They will not clear the standard springs, you've got to run coilovers. I can run most 245/45/16 tires, with the rear lips rolled. jt

Mine is Russell stainless all the way. jt

hindi, your piston choice depends on the bore of your block, the desired compression ratio, the chamber volume of the heads, and whether you run it NA, boosted, or sprayed. This is way too vague of a question for anyone to give you a good answer. I recommend you find a copy of the book "How to hot rod small block chevys" and give it a good read. You will earn a lot and have a much better understanding of how to achieve your goals. jt

With the hooker mounts and headers, you don't have to cut out the hood latch. With jtr, you've got to cut out the 45 deg part to clear the distributor. I'm not sure about msa. The hooker mounts position the motor pretty high, and air cleaner clearance is very tight. You see a lot of hooker cars with the little foam air cleaners on them. I use the jtr mounts because you can wind up with an almost 50/50 F/R weight dist, about 52% on the rear with me in the seat. I do road race track days and time trial my car, so handling is important. With the hooker setup, you're probably going to wind up 54 -55% on the front. It's not the end of the world, but it's not optimum for handling. For a nice street car, it probably wouldn't be an issue. There are a good many compromises made in a project like this. Set your priorities and name your poison. And yeah, Secondhand Lions is a masterpiece. One of my favorites. jt

Mine does the same thing. It hasn't caused a failure in several years now. I can only guess dye from the seals/orings discolors the fluid. It looks bad and bugs me somewhat, but I've flushed the fluid several times and the dark color returns. jt

The main issue with the motor that far forward is getting the exhaust around the steering shaft. Damper to rack clearance is also an issue. You basically have three variations mounts you can purchase, hooker, msa, and jtr. The hooker is most forward and uses the hooker headers, the jtr is most to the rear, the msa is in between. Msa and jtr can use S&S headers or block huggers. The exhaust is the most problematic part of a V8 Z IMO. Lots of good reading here on the site, and check out jtr's site. jt

You're right about the nascar engines, I was referring to big blocks. Somewhere, maybe Popular Hot Rodding, there was a long discussion about Jon Kasse's engine that won the enginemasters competition. It was a large bore/short rod combo that was chosen to minimize detonation, since they had to run pump gas. There was a good discussion of chamber design, flame propagation, piston dwell and the effects on power and detonation. These were big cubic inch low rpm engines, especially compared to F1 engines. I'm pretty sure nascar limits bore size to 4.185" max. jt

Thanks for the further explanation. After reading post 13 & 24 a few times and a good nights sleep, the lightbulb is beginning to flicker on for thickhead here. There has been some discussion of the same problems with the speed of the combustion events among large bore V8 engines, like the mopars and pontiacs. With 4.5 and 4.6 bores, the same thing is showing up at roughly half the F1 rpm levels. It seems shorter rods with less piston dwell time bandaids the problem in the stockers. Thanks, John

John, does either of the articles explain why the greater number of smaller pulses produces more power? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just can't get a handle on how that works. It's kind of like the 4-7 firing order swap currently fashionable among the chevy crowd. John

Assuming "equal technology" combustion chambers, at some cylinder displacement the compression ratio is going to force detonation. More displacement to a given chamber means more comp ratio. So it's a matter of fuel quality to chamber design. This is irrefutable evidence my V8 is superior to the sixers. jt

I've gotten it several times. Not regular, just at odd intervals. jt

So why is 10 small pulses better than 8 larger ones if the displacement is the same? Are we assuming equal rpm? Edit: 10, not 12. But what about a V12? More power yet? jt

Very nicely done. I saw the pics in the projects thread and thought it was a really smooth, clean install. Maybe mine will look that good one day! John

Glad you found it. Did the first "good" spin around the block put a big grin on your face for a while? jt

Wayne's suggestion of a vacumn leak is a good one. That will cause the idle to jump around and could cause your backfire. A can of carb cleaner or an unlit propane torch are good tools to use to check. Remember the big nipple on the base of the carb. Pull a plug, put it back on the wire, ground it, and spin the motor over. If you get a good blue white spark, chances are the coil is OK. If the spark is reddish orange you've got problems. On a hei dist the coil is located in the dist cap. Sometimes on a freshly painted motor the grounds don't make good connection. You can always run a ground directly to the battery to check. jt

Bah. The glass is full of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and trace elements. jt

If the dist is 180 out, it won't run at all, only backfire, stumble, and sneeze. Make sure the accelerator pump on the carb is working. You should see it squirt fuel from both squirters with only a slight movement of the throttle. Eddies are known to have the pump seal dry out and not squirt properly. Also try some more advance. Your spark curve is a whole new topic, but you can probably use some more. If the carb is squirting properly, I would try another coil in the dist. jt

A fabbed scca ITS cage is about $2K, give or take. jt

Glad they worked out. They sure do dwarf the stock setup, that's for sure. jt

I built a dolly out of 2x4's with swivel wheels to move the shell around. Around here a complete bake & blast will run $1200 - $1400 depnding on how much they do. Be aware you won't get back as much car as you take them. I thought my battery area only had surface rust, turned out it needed major surgery. jt

Troy, those are some nice looking mods. Can you push the front fenders and airdam out any, to cover the front of the tires? jt

95 psi is pretty high for only 2500 rpm. Since you can get 40psi with your fingers, the first thing I would do is try another gauge. If possible, one you know is working right. Another possibility would be to test your gauge with compressed air, using a compressor with a gauge you figure is about right. jt