Ran out of time!

We worked for hours on saturday, starting at 8am and by the time it got to 2.30pm we were ready to light up the belly of the beast. Unfortunately we didn't even get a burp!

Perhaps to rephrase I should say, that after a heap of work we got the new heads on the engine, manifolds, fuel system, electronics and mounts all bolted up by 2.30pm. Enough time to bolt the gearbox up and get loaded for racing. However the first gentle punch of the starter switch laid waste to all those plans. The engine cranked over, and over and over and, well you get the picture. We had no spark! The coil pack had power but nothing was going down the spark plug leads. After reading the coil pack user manual we decided to check the crank trigger sensor in case it had slipped, even though we didn't have to go near it to swap heads, and I had only driven the car into the shed on Monday and all was fine.

After what seemed to be an eternity we got the sensor out and checked for cracks, then re-installed it setting its gap to the trigger wheel. Hit the starter button and still nothing. Checked the volt gauge and the battery had over 12 volts, and had started the car perfect on Monday. But as we had run out of ideas I went and grabbed the battery from the forklift, attached the terminals and we had just over 13 volts.

Not expecting that to have solved the problem Pat hit the starter button, the engine flicked over, but hang on, it was trying to fire. A quick pump of the throttle and BOOM a huge backfire out of the carburetor (luckily we always place the air cleaner on when starting the engine). All of us got such a fright we jumped back off the car. It doesn't look like the 600 VS Holley will cut the mustard for the new camshafts hunger for fuel. Second attempt and we pumped throttle a lot to make sure there was enough fuel to start the engine without back firing. Upon ignition you could feel and see an immediate improvement with the engine, it had a much better note out of the exhaust. Remembering of course even with this improvement we are still going to be nothing compared to those 400+hp $35k and up engines. But any improvement over a standard engine has to be a bonus.

After leaving the engine running for a while, we shut it off and decided that we now really need to get more fuel into the engine, 1 for more power but without enough fuel the engine will run to lean and possibly melt the pistons. What were we to do? Hmmm <looking around the workshop> I remembered that Bryce bought a new Demon carburetor for 73a, so somewhere there must be a 650 Holley double pumper. After a bit of hunting we found the carburetor and bolted that onto my inlet manifold. Changed the fuel line over and the engine roared into life. The force of the gases coming from the exhaust use to be like a light pitter patter on the palm of your hand, now its like someone kicking it. With more fuel being burnt the engine must be producing more power, which is always promising.

So for now we will get the gearbox back in and move the car out off the hoist and give it a tune. I'd like to get it on a dyno for some final tuning and to find out how many little horses it has. But at the moment this close to christmas I just can't afford it, perhaps in the new year......Yeah Right!

Here are some pictures, but all the changes are internal so not much to see. :)

Catch ya......MadPhil