Fastbird
09-30-2005, 01:26 PM
Last night I fired the car again, and after some tuning, things were looking better. Vacuum was still a bit low, wavering steadily back and forth from 6-10 in/hg. But it was idling very nicely at 1000-1150 RPM (on the datamaster) with the VE tables at 40% at the 75-80 KPA MAP it was pulling, unlike the last time where the VE was at 25%.
So......I actually took the car out for a drive. Drove pretty good. Hammered on it a couple of times, and while sluggish down low (big cam and stock gears) about 3500 it came alive and above 6000 RPM it was pretty impressive. It's making enough power to make the entire car VERY floaty on a hard shift.
Brought it back home and left it cool, and pulled three plugs. All three plugs were decently white!!!!!! Yes, I wanted to see if it would run lean instead of carbon fouling the plugs in an instant, and it did!!! That's gigantic progress right there. So, I pulled the manifold to look at the gaskets, and I didn't see any oil seepage!
What I changed were the gaskets. Instead of using the Fel-Pro 1284's, the paper gaskets with the raised ridgeline on the ports, I used a set of Fel-Pro MS95580, the factory styled flat crushed metal gaskets. That's the ONLY thing I changed. So I picked up another set today and will be reassembling it tonight.
When I pulled the manifold last night, it still had a lot of oily residue inside it, but there were also dry spots unlike before. The runners were still somewhat oily, but having been run pretty hard I'm hoping that's just residual from before. My PCV system is bone dry, so it's not sucking excessive oil through there.
I'm still somewhat concerned about the low vacuum at idle, and I'm still getting some light puffing smoke out of the exhaust at idle which I'm hoping is just all of the excessive carbon and oil residue burning off. Hopefully it's taken a turn for the better and I can get it tuned and go blow up the rear soon.
So......I actually took the car out for a drive. Drove pretty good. Hammered on it a couple of times, and while sluggish down low (big cam and stock gears) about 3500 it came alive and above 6000 RPM it was pretty impressive. It's making enough power to make the entire car VERY floaty on a hard shift.
Brought it back home and left it cool, and pulled three plugs. All three plugs were decently white!!!!!! Yes, I wanted to see if it would run lean instead of carbon fouling the plugs in an instant, and it did!!! That's gigantic progress right there. So, I pulled the manifold to look at the gaskets, and I didn't see any oil seepage!
What I changed were the gaskets. Instead of using the Fel-Pro 1284's, the paper gaskets with the raised ridgeline on the ports, I used a set of Fel-Pro MS95580, the factory styled flat crushed metal gaskets. That's the ONLY thing I changed. So I picked up another set today and will be reassembling it tonight.
When I pulled the manifold last night, it still had a lot of oily residue inside it, but there were also dry spots unlike before. The runners were still somewhat oily, but having been run pretty hard I'm hoping that's just residual from before. My PCV system is bone dry, so it's not sucking excessive oil through there.
I'm still somewhat concerned about the low vacuum at idle, and I'm still getting some light puffing smoke out of the exhaust at idle which I'm hoping is just all of the excessive carbon and oil residue burning off. Hopefully it's taken a turn for the better and I can get it tuned and go blow up the rear soon.