thrustnut

I do like a few Pontiac's, and own an 03 Grand Am GT which has been pretty good other then having to re-seal the intake manifold due to water mixing with the oil (which is such a common problem fel-pro makes a "fix it" kit-but GM would not cover the repair). My biggest problem is I dont plan on selling it anytime soon, and I foresee problems getting parts for it in the future and my re-sale value is gonna tank, its already only worth like 5,000 as a trade in. Its hard to get rid of a car that not supported anymore. I agree with cutting Hummer or GMC, I like GMC trucks, but they are just upgraded Chevys, and with our new "green" outlook, im surprised the Prez. kept a big tank like Hummer on the road. I dont know anyone who could buy (or afford the gas) for one right now. And im not a hater, I was in the military for over 10 years, and have a few miles both behind the wheel and as a passenger in a REAL Hummer and have allot of respect for them. But the 30ish bimbo with the little yipe dog in her purse and the big glasses and hubbys gas card just knows she wants to be like her friend that has one. Let her have the trade-in problems.

Ya man, keep your head up. I dont see anything on the car that would not be fixable with a little cutting and welding, POR15, and some fiberglass. Unless the frames shot you should be OK. My car sat for over five years with no engine or tranny while I got my stuff together. I drove it for the first time about two weeks ago, and man I felt like I was in high school again. Talk about a time machine. KEEP IT ON THE ROAD!!

I dont break check for the following reason... Me and my pregnant wife and daughter where driving from Reno to So. Cal in our brand new 03 Dodge Ram 1500 quad cab 4x4, not the smallest car out there on the road, when this a-hole in a newer Tahoe comes weaving through traffic. Im not paying much attention to him, just cruzing about 65 or so in the fast lane, wife and kid sleeping. Well, I see him one lane over brake checking the car behind him for no reason, so I slow down to get away for this idiot. He cuts over in front of me and dose the same, pretty hard to slow a truck that big down from 60 to 30ish on the highway. So, he punches it and takes off. Now im a little shakin, but get back up to speed with the rest of the traffic and start to forget about him when up ahead of me i can see tire smoke, this guy did it to someone else...now im like WTF this guys crazy. So about 2 min later hes slowing down and weaving through traffic and ends up in front of me again, brake checks and off into the dirt on the side of the road I go. Now my wife wakes up pretty pissed off at me for driving erratically, I try to explain myself, shes like whatever, so I get back on to the highway and no kidding less then 5 miles down the road there this a-hole is AGAIN. Now im thinking maybe this guy stole the truck and is just asking for it, hes still doing the same thing in different lanes of traffic, weaving speeding up and STOPPING on the highway. I did my best just to stay away from him, but my wife believed my story after that. If it where just me in the car, i think i would have layed the front bumper to him and helped him off the highway, but what can you do with your family in the car?

I have a Lunati mysterey cam if your interested. I dont have a cam card for it, but I can give you the part numbers and you can get the info. From what I remeber its close to the MSA stage one cam. I jusr bought a .460 270/280 cam, so I dont need the Lunati. Its brand new, been sitting in the box for years. Can send pics if interested. 50.00 plus shipping

LOL...ya, things don't quite "pop" when your 16 (though I sure thought they did at the time). This kinda goes into another thread, but me and my wife have an understanding about my Z, she never tells me to get rid of it and we don't have any problems. Even now with two kids its the most impractical thing I own, I almost need an excuse to drive it. But unless I total it (chances are I would buy another body and transplant as much as possible) they will be burying me in it.

My lighter shoots into the back hatch area if I get on it hard off the line. Pretty cool when you have new passangers. Now for my cool (sort of) issue with my Z. When I first got it I had a problem with my headlight plugs grounding out on the steering collum causing them to turn of. Well, i was 16 and had better things to do then fix it, but I had a set of good fog lights so when it happend, i would just turn them off and hit the fogs. The girl I was dating at the time gave me crap all the time about the car being a piecer, and one particular night on the way home from a party she started up because my headlights went out. So, i did what any teenager would do...I pulled over and let her out (at about 11:00 at night) and told her to find her own way home. I still have the car 13 years later, but that was the last time i went out with her...women...

Hey all, I have a buddy building a turbo VW Bug with MS and hes looking for a set of injectors. I think stock 76-78 Z injectors should work for him. If you have a set, let me know a price plus shipping to 97702. He only needs 4, but im sure 6 would be ok. If you know any better injector for a MS turbo bug set up, let me know as well. Thanks, Chris

Hey all, I am in need of a harmonic balancer/crank pully for an L series engine. I dont care how meny groves I only have one belt, and i think they should be pretty much the same through 83 (let me know if im wrong). I also need the little metal plate that fits between the back of the pully and the oil pump drive spindle. Please let me know a price plus shipping to 97702. Pics would be cool, respond to bigbadzcar@aol.com. I can pay right away with paypal. Thanks, Chris

Wow, I thought Phred was preaching Bernoulli's Principle, which is the basis for jet engine operation (or any efficient pump for that matter). I guess that Bernoulli guy didn’t know anything either. Stupid scientist...

Wash the hippie off...thats good. Im from the South Bay area of California and spent about six months total in Texas for schooling in the Air Force, and man you either love it or HATE it. I HATE it there, the locals can tell your not from there, and most of the time they let you know. Maybe if your girls from there she can help you out. And about the car, If you can afford the gasket kit and some coolant and have the tools, It would be cheap insurance. I know I dont want some randome dude trying to poke around under the hood of my Z.

Like I said, check the obvious stuff first. You dont need to change the balancer, just rotate the crank to #1 TDC and see which notch lines up with the 0 on your timing plate. I bought an aftermarket single grove euro dampener and it has 5 notches, just figure out which ones for you and mark it. I bet your timing is crap. Checking the FI system would be good, but AFTER you make sure the engine is even capable of running right. This is all stuff that is applicable to ANY engine regardless of cylinders, displacement or horsepower. I work on 550CI twin turbo opposed air cooled six cylinders (aircraft) and it is a basic setup for them.

I think 10 deg, but check your cam timing as well. Check other posts on timing for all specs, its not hard but has to be done right. If you have a book, check it out. Your timing may be ok at idle, but drooping through the advance, might want to hook a vacuum pump (hand operated) with a guage to your distributor advance and check for leaking...not while the car is running.

No idle and backfiring into the intake sounds like a vacuum leak, just went through this on my build.

Hey man, I think you should start with checking your timing. If you think someone was just in there doing somthing to it and it sounds funny, it wouldent be a bad start. I would also check the vacuum advance on the distributor, may be somthing going on there. . When i had the stock intake it had the EGR valve on the back, which i capped off when i installed the header and never caused an issue. Just my .02, oh and mine is a 77 L28 and had an N47 on it.

Heres some pics of the finshed engine, a few random wires have been tied up before the drive. No more vacuum advance on the carb, ran to the intake now. Still a little flat in the power, but this is the first driveable tune, so im sure theres more on the table. -Thanks for the info citjet

Can anyone tell me how you upload your pictures to this site? Do you have to save them in photobucket or something first? I want to post the pics of my engine, but don’t know how. Citijet, Im gonna be using a narrow band to help tune as soon as my friend welds my bung in for me. I think that will be pretty close, at least let me know how I am at idle, through the transition from primary into secondary’s and at WOT. Since my adventure with my Carter I have helped my friend go through the Holley 600 he has on his Dodge, and man do I like the Carter! All the stuff you have to go through to get it dialed in is pretty bad. The Carter uses springs and a rod that rides in the primary port as the power valve, the accelerator pump is adjustable from the outside of the carb, and the primary and secondary’s are controlled by changeable ports in the bottom of the carb. You can completely change everything about your carb without spilling fuel or pulling the carb. I think I will just go with an Edelbrock 500CFM if I decide that the 625 is too much.

Im running a Carter AFB, completley diffrent set up. Im in the middle of buying a house, so I still havent had mine on the road. I will update when i get it out.

I installed a Crane Cams Hi-6R with the timing retard commander. I have yet to install the controler, i wanted to make sure it would start and run good before i installed it. Im gonna play with the timing a little bit after the carb is tunned correctly, but i figured the book says 10 deg. so it would be a good place to start. Gonna take it out for a drive around the block tommarow and see how it runs. Its been five years, almost forgot how to drive it.

Hey Oz, thats a pretty nice looking set up. Whats up with the three guages on the right fender well? Also what size carb are you running? Looks like a double pumper? Just kinda wondering because mine is a 625 tuned pretty lean, it sounds good idling and raps up pretty good, no hesitation or anything. Im gonna change the oil and filter today, then it should be ready for a test drive. Citjet, i went ahead and plugged off all the ports to my carb and im gonna plumb my va. advance like AZ to the front bank of the intake. The vacuum for the vapor can was tee'd into my vacuum advance, for now i have nothing going to the canister. My fuel return line i just capped off, im running a low pressure fuel pump, so no need to return. I feel kinda bad, i diddent mean anything bad about your set up, just looks like the PO was not to concerned with looks. I just kinda figure if im gonna shovel cash under the hood, it might as well look like I did. My new camera should be here today, so i will post pics of the engine in the next couple days.

Hey Citjet, if your talking about your forward vent on the intake going to crank, thats kinda like Oz's set up. Mine is diffrent, but not wrong i dont think. Your upper vent you may want to have going to your air filter (mine vents to atmosphere for now). Your set up is kinda unfinshed looking, i spent alot of time on mine and it came out pretty good. Im getting a new camera in the next couple days and will post pics. I got it running right, i think it was just the interference between the intake and exhaust. I also found a chart for my carb online and set it up per spec. I started it up and it sounds BADAZZ, timing is set at 10 deg. idle aout 850, need to put the O2 sensor in and get some readings. My only problem now is my oil pressure, verry low, but i think its an indication problem. It is ok when up around 1500 rpm, when you let it idle it drops just above 0, then drops all the way to the low stop (off the chart). Im gonna look this up in other posts and bring home a mechanical guage to check it. It dosent sound bad, no weird rattles, valves not any noiser then normal and it ran for about 20 min. like that, so i would think it would have seized up if it was that low on pressure. Well, thats it for now, will post finshed pics soon. Thanks all. Oh, BTW my vacuum readings are 17 inHG, Arizona did not have a reading for base set ups on the intake, maby this will help someone.

Who is your intake made by Oz? Mine only has one port per bank of runners and the back one is running my brakes. The front was going to the primary side of my carb, but i think that may be incorrect, so im gonna plug that port on the carb.

Im just running a breather on the tube to the block and there’s a Carquest hose P/N called out for the valve cover to air filter. Check Arizona Z's site for pretty detailed install instructions. I think i found the vacuum leak i was looking for. I feel pretty stupid, but I brought the intake and exhaust into work tonight and laid them flange side down agenst each other as installed and found that a couple of my primary tubes are actually hitting the intake causing it to sit off the bench about .032" on the bottom. When i put it all together I noticed they where close, but it appeared the intake and exhaust where sitting pretty flush (it's hard to tell .032" when installed) and i also noticed that the intake flange was sitting pretty proud from the exhaust, but i chalked this up to a nice flange on the intake, and a shitty one on the exhaust. With them both sitting on the bench, it looks like they are pretty even. So, im gonna go ahead an "clearance" the exhaust and reinstall both with the MSA header gasket. Im also gonna rebuild my friends Holley tomorrow and install it as a test before i shell out the 350.00 for a new 390. Any one else had fittment issues with the Arizona intakes?

Thanks OZ, the gasket is on order and im gonna take the next couple days untill it gets here to go through the carb again and get it sorted. I think this may be a combination of little things adding up to one big problem. I will post again when i get it back together and give an update.

There are two big nipples, on the primary (front) of the carb and another on the secondary (back) of the carb. The secondary side is plugged, the primary side I had attached to the intake, which also has two ports. The second port in the intake was attached to the brake booster. I have tried with all the ports hooked up, and blocked off with no change in the running. Just another side note... i also noticed that the back three cylinders appear wet (including plugs) and the front three are dry. This obviously is an issue with fuel in the primary towers, gonna take the carb back apart and check it out.

I pulled off the intake and exhaust today, exhaust first to make sure the intake wasn’t sitting on the exhaust somewhere preventing it from sitting flat on the head, no problem there though the hardware was all a little loose (thermal expansion?). What I did find is that it appears one or two of the exhaust ports may be leaking into the intake manifold. I just see some staining from exhaust to intake. I was using a stock gasket, I am gonna order a MSA header gasket today. The imprint from the intake on the gasket makes it look like it was sitting much tighter on the top then the bottom, maybe adding to the transfer from intake to exhaust? It also appears i am running rich as I had fuel puddeling in the intake. I pulled the carb off and noticed that the on the Arizona intake two of the stud holes are drilled into the intake passages. The studs where tight, but is there any reason to seal the threads? Just wanted to see if this may be a step in the right direction, if anyone else has had this problem, or if I’m crazy. Thanks