Wretched: awesome! I think I might take you up on this. Much appreciated for you checking for me. I think I will give it a few more days before making a decision. I have one or two places up here in northern NJ that I might check at but the price seems right for what you are offering. I will certainly get back to you about it. For now I put some red duct tape on the area and it blends in well enough, so I might keep it this way until UMI is over with....but my spirit is still crushed!
Brian: thanks again for the engine oil. and yea the new pump was a free replacement so I am glad about that. I took the car over to the local cruise-night tonight and the new pump is working great. I will monitor temps while at UMI but the fluid cooler itself is getting hot to the touch and the fluid line directly after it is just slightly warm to the touch, so it seems to be doing its job. No worries if you can't make it to the UMi event but if you do, it will be a great time hopefully.
I am going to order a set of 3 ARP crank pulley bolts from Summit racing. I will install one at a time on the pulley using red locktite and torqued to spec. going forward I will make it a frequent habit to visually/physically check on the bolts. these
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/a...make/chevrolet
as for the fuel pressure gauge. I was thinking, since the gauge is only ever going to be installed to this exact -8 fitting, and wont ever need to be removed or rotated.... perhaps I can JB-weld it in place where it is clocked/facing the correct orientation. JB-weld is perfectly safe for fuel, and will cure nicely, locking the gauge in place with no leaks. thoughts? its not that I don't want to buy another fitting, but my guess is that if I bought another fitting, the gauge would just wind up pointing in the same 5:00 orientation and I would have wasted my time and money to wind up with the same result. after further research, yellow teflon tape is not an option I want to try. I might retry it one more time with the PTFE sealant, but if not, I might just neatly do a JB-weld assembly of the gauge to the npt fitting port.
