GatorDog72

Mine's a 72 and was missing the trim piece when I bought it. I don't plan to put one on either, I like the way it looks without one. If you like the way yours looks with the trim, put it on there. I don't worry too much about being "correct" Just do what you think looks cool

Got the intake back from the machine shop today. The foggers are installed in the runners and are ready for plumbing. The manifold already had bosses cast on the intake runners, so no welding was required. Had to tip them all 2 degrees toward the carburetor for valve cover clearance. Now the fun part begins, bending the stainless steel 3/16" hard-lines and finding room for the solenoids. The tubing has a flare on the nozzle end, and uses compression fittings on the solenoid end. I ordered a nice tubing bender to make this job a little easier, it should be here by the end of the week.

Got the manifold ripped off the motor today, I will drop it off at the machine shop tomorrow. Running the hard-lines is going to be difficult. There's not much room to work between the throttle linkage/ fuel log and the valve covers. I was going to try and tuck the solenoids into the valley between the center 2 runners on the manifold, but it wont fit. This system is going to be a pain to set up compared to the single foggers or a plate system. I would have gone with a plate system, but the hood already rubs on the air cleaner with the carburetor bolted straight to the intake. I ordered a 15 pound bottle with this system, I have a feeling I will need another one. $9 a pound for nitrous is insane! I thought the local speed shops were expensive, they filled my 10 lb bottle for $75. I'm going to a welding supply to get a 100 lb mother bottle, I hope its cheaper than that!

Time to do some more work. I ordered a direct port kit from Nitrous Express and will be installing it on the 489 in my Monte. Should be insane, it comes with jetting for 200-600 HP. I've installed smaller, single-fogger NOS systems on my older cars but never anything this big. I'm going to use a progressive controller so it doesn't come on all at once. The intake manifold has to come off and get drilled and tapped for the foggers. I'm bringing it to a machine shop to have it milled to fix the end gaps from leaking oil, and I'll have them drill it out while it's there. I'll install the rest of the system. Any nitrous guys out there, any advice is appreciated!

Sea foam does work, but it can't make miracles happen. I also use this stuff in a can called "dragons breath" it eats through carbon like crazy. Good for blasting out carburetors and such

Usually when you purchase a float/ rebuild kit, it will come with a table to show the different float level adjustments for whichever engine you are working on.

It's finally warm enough to drive the car, so I'm going to continue to get this carburetor dialed in better. It's much closer than it was out of the box, but its still rich at part throttle cruise and WOT. I'm getting around 11:1 on the highway cruising around 5% throttle, and around 12:1 when I floor it. I'm thinking to drop a couple jet sizes on the mains on both the front and rear blocks, then see where its at. As I started leaning the fuel curve out, I noticed a new problem. With the RPM that this engine turns at higher cruising speeds, the water temp starts to creep up higher into the 210's- 220's until I slow down and turn the electric fans on. I may need to install a larger radiator to keep things cooled off. Overall the car runs well. It's not blowing black smoke everywhere and throttle response is good, but I know there's more in it.

Don't change the plugs or the oil until you find the cause of the flooding, you could wind up with brand new oil with a bunch of gas mixed in. Be careful! With as much gas as you found in #8, you could easily hydro-lock the engine and break stuff. Pull all the spark plugs out if you have to crank the engine over for diagnosis. Just cranking it won't hurt anything, but if it starts with that much fluid in the chamber it could be a disaster. Like Sam said, I would check for a stuck float first. If you have a mechanical fuel pump, you will need to crank the engine and watch the vent tube on the top of the carburetor for gas spilling out. If you have an electric fuel pump, the pump should come on as soon as you turn the key to the on position. In my car, the engine sits in the car tilted slightly back. That's my guess as to why only #8 filled with gas. On a dual plane intake manifold, #8 also has a pretty straight shot to the port. Could be that the intake valve just happened to be open when you stopped cranking. Good luck with the fix.

This is what I think is going on. I first thought maybe one of the cooler lines came loose and drained the cooler...nope both were tight. Fluid was coming out from the top of the tube like it was overfilled. Then the level dropped once I ran the car so I'm thinking it filled the converter back up. I guess it fixed itself because its been sitting a few days and its still not leaking.

I put my car in storage last fall, and over winter it decided to randomly puke transmission fluid onto the floor. Quite a bit came out, I would say maybe 3-4 quarts. I found the leak, its coming out of the TOP of the fill tube. This is with the car sitting for months without being run or moved at all. It seemed to be random too. every time I tried to figure out where it was coming from there was no leak. I did notice that the dipstick was just sitting in the tube loose, maybe this had something to do with it...? I started the car and let it warm up to check the fluid level and it wasn't even on the stick. I thought maybe I had over-filled it but I guess not. I topped off the fluid and drove it around, it seems fine. It shifts ok and its not leaking anymore. Very strange. What would cause it to puke fluid out the dipstick tube with the car just sitting in storage? I thought maybe the vent tube was clogged, but it stopped leaking once I started the car... The transmission is a Turbo 400 with a reverse manual valve body. Its got a deep pan on it also. The internals have been worked over a bit. It's pretty much brand new, almost no miles on it yet. If it starts leaking again I'm going to call the shop that built the trans to see if they can help.

Had some awesome 70 degree weather today, so I woke up the Monte from winter storage. Did a valve lash adjustment and an oil change then went for a drive. Shes hittin' on all 8 and ready to rip! Hurry up and get all this salt crap off the roads, I have no traction!

I also put the moog cargo coils in my car. 275's on 8.5 inch wheels fit perfectly in the rear.

Unless you have deep scoring on the cylinder walls, you could get away with doing a valve job and a quick hone with new piston rings. This is a quick fix and won't last forever. If you want it to go another 160k without issues, I would just bite the bullet and rebuild the entire thing.

New custom plates came in the mail today. Finally found one I like that wasn't taken already. Check it out!

This is the rad I'm using. Keeps my big block cool with electric fans and water pump on a 90 degree day

Holy cow! I've dug car parts out of the woods that have had less mud. that's amazing!

Thanks! I wish I knew the numbers for sure, but according to my desktop dyno it should make between 650-720 flywheel hp on motor with 91 pump gas. I built it a little conservative because I plan on slamming this thing with tons of nitrous. I have to get it dialed in on motor first but I would love to get it to 1000 rwhp on nitrous. I should have it at Carlisle this year, I cant wait!

No, it wasn't speedway. I was looking for them earlier and I can't remember what site I bought them from. I wish I had inspected them closer before slamming them on the car. I could have just sent them back

I don't think there's a difference. When I bought aftermarket ones, they only ask for the year and model of the car. My axle is a Dana 60 just with A-body mounts and it uses the same control arms. The upper control arms center the axle in the car and the lowers control the thrust angle. If all the bushings are wore out, the axle can move wherever it wants to. That would cause all sorts of handling issues. Mine were so bad it was like having rear steering

Got that meter hooked up today and its working nicely. At my current settings it was reading about 13.5:1 at idle. I tried leaning it out some more to around 15:1, but it didn't like that adjustment. Every time when coming to a stop the engine would go way lean and stall. Almost like the floats are too low or something. I put the mixture screws back to where they were and it runs fine. It shows 11-12:1 at WOT, and 13:1 part-throttle while cruising along. The sensor may not be accurate at idle. I put it in the side of the collector then found out after I read the instructions it tells you not to put it there. It should have been in a single exhaust tube. Not sure how much it will affect it.

I think I'm getting much closer. I found out the misfire was due to a spark plug wire melted to the headers. Also found out the idle air bleeds were .057" not .070" like I thought. I changed those to .067". Idle mixture screws now like to be at 1 1/2 turns out. It runs great now and it's more responsive than before. I had to go up a heat range in plugs because the auto parts store was out of the plugs I needed. Went from an Autolite Racing AR3932 to AR3933. The plug in the picture has about 20 minutes of run time with some cruising and one good pull through the gears. It looks a lot cleaner than before. Like GermanMonte said, I may have to hook up my A/F meter to see where it's running before going any further.

I drove it around some more and it seems a little closer but still rich. The idle cleaned up quite a bit, but its still misfiring at cruising speeds. The plugs are still black but not wet anymore, I'll try going up in heat range on the plugs and start fooling with the air bleeds after I see what they look like. This is what the plugs looked like after I adjusted the throttle blades.

Got a little more seat time today, drove it to work. It ran like poo. It's loading up at part throttle cruising and idle and starts to misfire. When I got home I played some more with the idle mixture screws and the more I turned them in, the higher the idle went. It got so high that I had backed completely off the curb idle adjustment and it was still way high. At this point I thought there was a vacuum leak or something else funny going on. Apparently there is an adjustment screw on the passenger side of the carb for the secondary butterflies. It was screwed way in causing it to pull a ton of fuel off the secondaries at idle. After I corrected this adjustment, the idle smoothed out and the black smoke went away. I'll have to take it for a spin and see how it runs now. I cleaned off a plug just to see where its at until I get a new set.

I set the initial timing at 24 degrees BTDC. Had it locked out at 36 but had to run a timing curve for pump gas.

Thanks for the advice, Sam. I tried playing with the idle mixture screws when I adjusted the floats and it didn't respond much to anything I did. I believe they are all at 3/4 turn out now. I wish I knew the size of the idle air bleeds, I haven't taken them out yet. Figured I would take the whole carb off so I didn't drop the jet down the manifold like an idiot. I think they are .070" but I don't know for sure. Here's some pictures of the carb and what the plugs looked like.