wallaby

Is there a way to adjust the power steering boost? I have my pump running both the steering assist, and a hydroboost power brake unit...both are very touchy. My steering feels over assisted, and there is no feel of the road...the brakes require just the weight of my toe. Panic stops almost always bring on wheel lockup. Is there a way to dial down the amount of assist I get? I want to have more weight to the steering, and use a little more leg when braking.

Is the overspray somewhat fresh, or old? mineral spirits work well with a rag to remove recent paint. Mineral spirits also make a good solvent for parts cleaning. If its old paint, the mineral spirits might have a tough time with it. Lacquer thinner is stronger stuff that might work, but it tends to dissolve everything it comes in contact with...like plastics. The good news it that the fan shroud wasn't painted, so scrubbing won't reveal anything you wouldn't see anyway...unless someone in the past painted it and that makes your job tougher

camshaft selection is a tough decision. It determines the behavior of your engine like no other ad-on piece. Mechanical and roller cams are hard to compare. Rollers get the job done with much less duration, so a roller cam with good specs ends up having a decent idle, while the mechanical (flat) cam ends up with a rough idle...doing the same job. and small block engines have different needs than big block engines. Comparing cam specs between the two only causes confusion.

that's them. Once you get into the 110 LSA cams, you loose vacuum and brakes can be an issue, Sadly, they also give that rotten idle that sounds good to the ear. The bigger the engine, the more cam it will take. A 454 might be happy with the 703, but the 396/402 engine might find it a bit much for a daily driver. It;s always better to error on the small side...that's probably why the cam guy recommended the 701, No matter what cam you choose, it's bound to be better than the stock cam because of the added lift the aftermarket cams give. Stock cams are around 480 max lift I think...to go bigger you will need long slot rockers and matching springs, as the stock pieces won't handle larger lift.

well, the low speed runs all the time when the key is on. Not sure if it is the orange wire or not. I hated that function and unhooked my low speed so that position on the switch became "off"

I think the 201 is too small for a muscle car. Might be good in a boat, or a motorhome. I ran the 202 in my otherwise stock 454 and even with it's low compression I got decent vacuum, mileage, and a sound from the tailpipe that gave the impression something might be lurking under the hood. I had a comp xtreme 286 before the voodoo and i liked the voodoo better. A big block engine has enough torque that you will never notice any loss in low speed grunt with the larger cam vs the smaller one, but you very well might notice a difference at higher rpms. Funny, I tried to look them up at Summit, and the part numbers are different, or have changed. Both the voodoo cams have good descriptions with them. I think with the higher compression you are running, the larger cam will be more pump gas friendly. Summit numbers: Voodoo 10110701, and Voodoo 10110702. Both of these are hydraulic flat tappet cams.

a good bleeding of the lines might be in order. I had an old car that would slowly apply the brakes as I drove higher in elevation. I actually had to stop and let some pressure out 1/2 way to my destination. No problem on the way down. A good pressure bleed with fresh fluid fixed it.

I think it's your power source. I don't remember the horn relay being on the firewall. I bet if you disconnected from that relay then extended that wire all the way to the battery you would find the light works.

You should be able to test the motor with a test probe (or jumper wire) hooked to the positive side of the battery. Just poke it onto a connection where the purple wire is hooked to the relay. This should get a response from the motor. At least if you know the motor will run, you can work backwards to find out which item is failing to send power to the blower. If I remember correct, (hmm)...the resistors are actually inside the suitcase where circulating air can keep them cool? I've never seen them go bad; they are pretty heavy duty. Their job is to drop the voltage that is sent to the blower to provide lower speeds. On high speed, the resistors are bypassed and not used at all. The regulator does the switching between the "resistor circuit for less than high speed", and the "damn the resistors full speed ahead" modes.

http://www.madelectrical.com/electricaltech/remotevoltagesensing.shtml Here is some good info on what to do with that flat 2-wire plug. If you wade through all the technical info they have on their site, you will get a good idea of where improvement should be made, and what to leave alone. Really there is a good wealth of info on the Mad Electrical site.

Oh, that darned electrical community.

Locate the wire going to the sending unit and you can stab it with one of those pointy circuit testers hooked to a good ground, The added load of the bulb in the circuit tester should cause the fuel gauge needle to move. Give it a couple of minutes...the gauge moves slowly.

I had a similar problem when I was running electric fans. The fans rotating inertia would be enough to have them become generators when i turned off the key switch, and it would backfeed into the fuse box and keep the ignition powered up. I suspect your fan blower is doing the same thing. A diode fixed it for me. For my situation, a small diode placed between the positive feed for the fan, and the ground wire for the fan fixed it. When the fan is on, the diode prevents current from going to ground, but when the fan was shut off and its polarity reversed, the diode would dump the power back to the positive side and short out that action. It only worked momentarily when the key was shut off, and didn't have to carry the full 30amps the fan would require.

The sending unit is at the ground end of the circuit. It basically controls whether the gauge has a good ground, or a poor ground. Sadly, I can't remember which way the gauge moves. The sending unit wire can be grounded and the gauge will read fully in one direction, and the sending unit wire can be disconnected to send the gauge fully in the other direction. I had issues with several replacement sending units, as the arm for the float would come in contact with the filler tube for the gas tank. Our filler tubes extend from the rear of the tank almost all the way to the front, to prevent fuel from sloshing out under acceleration... the sending units I found are designed to fit on top of a tank with clear space underneath. Some trial & error bending of the float arm was required.

If you are going to use both wires, 10 ga is fine. That is what I did. I left my original harness intact, and added a 10 ga wire on top of it. If I remember correct, the alternator output wire runs to the buss bar under the voltage regulator. (1971)

You don't have to worry much about the "D" shaped ports if you have them. Those are just like a round port with a raised floor, so the round header pipe ends up dipping a bit lower than the actual port. Round port gaskets work fine. beyond the ground clearance issue, another problem is going to be the header length. A full-length header is going to reach back beyond the bellhousing, and side pipes are going to begin forward of that, under the front fender. I have seen some creative exhaust U-turns made under there to make it all work, but it's restrictive and concentrates a lot of heat right under the floorboard where you want it least. If you want to go the sidepipe route, I'd be looking for a shorty header. Those dump ahead of the bellhousing flange, so exhaust plumbing would be much easier. another consideration is backpressure. Some sidepipes have quiet mufflers built in, and they can be very restrictive. I had a set back in the 80's that flowed so poorly that my big block couldn't flow enough air to open my Q-jet secondaries. I would love to have a set of the Hooker header sidepipes they make for corvettes. They look so pretty, but are too short to fill the space between the wheels on a Monte. I guess one could get the painted ones, cut them up and weld in an extension, then have them jet hot coated... it all started to sound like the hard way.

I second the Cliffs. He is the one place I know of that does them right. They don't come cheap, but once you run a proper Q-jet, you won't have need or want for anything else.

Who are you, and how'd you get in here? I'm a locksmith, and...I'm a locksmith. That's a feeble attempt at the Hard Luck award.

That's why the generic term for those is "jesus" clips.

My local chain parts supplier has these in a package of different sizes. Sure you have to buy 10 to get the one you want, but they are cheap. I think Home Depot has them too, if you are willing to dig through all the drawers where they keep the plastic washers and such in the hardware isle. The real question is why they keep falling out. A bad groove in the stud? a worn out weight that rattles around? I've never had one come out...

Getting fuel is important...stay with that project. Once it's back together try starting the engine. If' you're lucky, that's all it needs. If it doesn't start some items to check are: ignition timing. Did you have the distributor out? it's common to get the rotor 180 degrees off when reinstall of the distributor. Make sure the rotor is at #1 when that cyl is at the top of the compression stroke, not the top of the exhaust stroke. Does the carb choke work? It sounds to me like your ignition is working, I'd focus on the other stuff.

No...I went with the aluminized steel. I insisted that the muffler shop do everything, including the flare at the engine end for the exhaust donuts. This turned out to be a nightmare. The thing they managed to fab was awful. It was like a 2" pipe welded into a larger pipe that had the flare... I didn't want 2" pipe anywhere, let alone right up against the engine. This is all just FYI. It's better to use the original first bit of length and have them add your system behind it. You can probably find the pre-bent section that goes behind the mufflers and over the axle. Stainless even...the entire system is the same as Chevelle. You can get a full Chevelle setup and have them put in. Your next quandary is going to be: what kind of muffler should I use?

Most of us have gone with a 2 1/2 inch system. I have one on my '71 SS. I used a shorty header, but they are kind of a pain. The factory manifolds are ugly to look at, but work pretty well and keep the engine bay cooler and quieter. My headers are close to everything; the suspension, the oil filter, the spark plugs.... I ordered a set of mandrel pre-bent pipes from the mufflers back, and had a muffler shop do the easy part from the mufflers forward.

I'm guessing new cushions would work just as well, but may come with a penalty.

The black wire going to the external capacitor isn't going to affect the ignition, it just quiets the ignition noise from coming thru the radio. The Yellow wire is important; it supplies power to the ignition when you have the key twisted into the "start" position. If you leave the wire from the starter unhooked, the engine will crank but not start.... or sometimes you get lucky and it will start just as you let go of the key. The ignition switch is constructed in a way that when it's turned to start it will power up the starter motor, but it shuts off power to the ignition at the same time. The activation of the starter sends power through the R terminal to give power to your ignition. It's weird, but it works. It's their way of giving a full 12 volts to the ignition when starting. Once you let go of the key and it returns to the "run" position, the starter stops and the ignition is fed through the ignition switch and resistance wire to give something close to 9 volts to extend the life of the ignition points. I just went through all this when I installed a hi-torque mini starter as it didn't have any "R" terminal. I had to buy a wiring kit with a diode to perform the same job the factory starter did.