It was a busy week for everything except the car, but I finally had a few hours on Friday and Today to get stuff accomplished. Got the converter, transmission, driveshaft, (old) headers, radiator, fans, electronics, nitrous, distributor, sniper efi, fuel lines, starter, new Lokar tv cable, trans fluid lines, etc etc installed. Poured in some fluids too. Cranked the engine over without fuel just to make sure everything sounded normal. Since it did, I put fuel to it and the damn thing fired right up. Oil pressure was there right away and not "off the charts" like I was used to seeing. My dash gauge is probably not super accurate, and the 20w-50 oil was cold/thick so the dashboard gauge displayed higher than the 70 psi that the 70 psi spring in the pump should produce.
(Two gallons of the evans was the stuff I removed/saved from the cooling system a few weeks ago, so I only needed to buy one new gallon...and turns out, I only needed about 1pint from it anyways!)
Later on, hours AFTER I put in the 20w-50 VR1 and ran the car for a bit my buddy suggested I put in some lighter weight oil for the cold winter ahead. So I drained the fresh VR1 and put in some Valvoline 10w30 because I do plan on running the car occasionally and doing some short test drives during the cold winter anyways. I saved the brand new VR1 and it will go back in the engine around March. Maybe I am overthinking it, but the brand new oil pump and gaskets/seals might get worked-in better without having to pump 70 psi of thick 20w-50 oil during cold weather cold-starts.
I cut open the old oil filter (May 2021) and the transmission filter (February 2021) like I usually do, and everything looked very good. Just a little bit of metallic sludge on the magnet of the transmission filter, but the filter element was clean. Same for the engine oil filter, very clean.
Oil:
Trans:
I have a few more button-up and clean-up things to do tomorrow since I am off from work, but afterwards I plan to take the car on a road test. If everything is in order, I can start moving on to the research/purchase of some of the other winter projects.
- Long tube headers with a full exhaust
- Set of gauges in the A-pillar (oil pressure, fuel pressure and secondary Oxygen sensor)
- fuel tank access door in the trunk
- getting water pump pulley and crank balancer pulley refinished
- replacing oem steel transmission fluid lines with CopperNickle 5/16" lines