Holley carburetor rehab for the 99 percent

   Carburetors are dead! This mantra has been repeated over and over. Detroit hasn't built a carbureted vehicle for over 20 years,NASCAR has switched to EFI for the 2012 season and most cars featured in magazines like Car Craft and Hot Rod tend to more often be fuel injected. So why do I feel compelled to indulge in the shrinking subculture of carburetor building and tuning?  Good question. In my younger days I remember looking on in befuddled amazement watching my uncles Bill and Al tune carbs in their respective shops and wanting to be like that someday. Technology evolved but those feeling did not, and as I delved deeper into the automotive hobby my tuning skills slowly began to take shape. But back to my original question, Why?  With more and more kits available to retrofit carbureted vehicles to fuel injection from companies like MSD and FAST why not get with the times? Because upgrading to fuel injection is super expensive, like 2 grand expensive. If you added up the purchase price of the last four cars I bought it wouldn't equal 2 grand. So my plan is to screw together a budget fuel mixer for my 76 dodge powerwagon. And this fuel mixer doesn't rely on electronics,It simply uses rudimentary physics.

  I purchased this Holley carb at a swap meet recently for $80. Swap meets are prime hunting grounds for unwanted Holleys. This model 3310 Holley it flows 750 CFM (cubic feet per minute) has vacuum secondaries and a manual choke. It even came with the crappy taiwan chrome fuel line! $50-$100 is pretty much the going rate for a rebuildable Holley.

 My original plan was to buy a kit for this rebuild. But thanks to years of hoarding Holley parts I already had most of what was needed to bring my el cheapo carb back to life. Since most people don't have a milk crate full of Holley parts,a rebuild kit costs about $35 bucks. The crate also gave up a secondary diaphragm, which goes for about $10

   Disassembly was the moment truth, Everything looked good,The only thing that concerned me was the  plastic floats which would make me want to avoid ethanol. The floats went back into the carb but I may upgrade to brass floats at a later date.  After disassembly the carb spent a night in a bath of Berrymans Chem dip to dissolve the grime and gunk.

                                                                                          

The one trick part I splurged on was a QFT billet aluminum secondary metering plate for $36. Stock Holley metering plates are non-adjustable each plate is equivalent to a certin jet size, To change the fuel curve in the secondaries It's required to change plates or drill them out which can be a hassle.The QFT plate accepts holley screw-in jets,making it way more tunable.

I changed to a lighter vacuum secondary spring to make them open quicker.

I finished assembly with all the new parts, I also changed to an electric choke which is a little more user friendly than the manual one.Once It was installed I adjusted the idle mixture and float levels.

I was impressed with the initial test drive,It definitely feels stronger over the worn out carb it replaced and it even idles smoother. It currently has #71 jets in the primaries and #75 in the secondaries which seem a tad rich,So I may end up taking some jet out of it later. But with an investment of about $185 I'm one happy cheapskate.

1973 Plymouth Fury big block swap

  I often have a hard time getting to sleep at nights. I attribute it to my heavy diet coke habit and my overall "night owl" tendencies. My chronic insomnia has given my mind lots of time to wander as I toss and turn. The byproducts of my insomnia are a string of brilliant epiphanies and half-baked schemes that end in disaster,this next story falls somewhere in between.

  When I wrecked my 76 dodge powerwagon I bought a 73 dodge truck as a parts donor to repair it.  The 73 parts truck was equipped with a low deck 400 big block with a fragged fuel pump, which I pulled before the 73 was sent unmercifully to the crusher. At first the 400 took up floor space in the shop as I dreamed of building a 451 stroker engine out of it. Then I woke up and realized I'm poor and came up with another plan: I always thought full size C body mopars with small blocks were lame, and I owned a small block C body mopar. My 1973 Plymouth Fury was powered by a 360 small block, I modded it with an Edelbrock performer intake and a 600 cfm Holley carb and a dual exhaust. The modifications I made helped the car pick up some much needed power because the thing is damn heavy and nothing moves a heavy car better than big block torque, And I just happened to have a spare big block laying around.

    With limited funds a full rebuild on the 400 was not an option, Instead I replaced key components for the most reliability and performance. I started by scraping and scrubbing off the 30 plus years of crusted pennzoil frosting and stripping it of everything I wasn't going to use. I replaced the timing chain,oil pump,fuel pump,valve seals and threw a gasket kit at it. I also added a windage tray and a swap meet sourced aluminum 4 barrel intake manifold,I used some 1970 HP exhaust manifolds to replace the truck log style units. I recurved the distributor and finally painted it to make it pretty.

  Then I let it set for about a year as I frantically worked on the four other project cars (I often say I have project car ADD as I often jump from one car to another for no reason)  The project was jump started after I sold the aforementioned 360 in the Fury which was still in the car. I battled the sweltering july heat and a swarm of wasps that took up residence under the huge plymouth. And pulled the 360 from it's home for over 38 years.

  I had the engine done but I still needed a transmission, I reused the 727 torqueflite from the truck.
chrysler 400 engines have a cast crank and are externally balanced. That means the torque converter has balance weights welded to it from the factory so I'm limited on converter selection so I stayed with the stocker. I drained the torqueflite,adjusted the bands,and installed a fresh filter and pan gasket. I'm about 90% sure the tranny will work.

  I stole the kickdown linkage and some assorted brackets from the small block torqueflite.The tranny cooler lines from the small block worked on the big block which was a relief.

   With everything bolted together I dropped in the 400/727 combo with motor mounts from my junk pile. I use an engine tilter which works trick when installing an engine by yourself. I was able to reuse the old driveshaft but the exhaust wasn't even close to matching up, So later I'll have to make a trip to the muffler shop.

  It took several weeks of scrounging to make everything come together,The pulleys came off the small block, I got the alternator bracket from mancini racing,It was originally chrome but I scuffed it and painted it black. The biggest pain was rewiring the ignition,since the distributor on a big block is on the front I had to lengthen all the wires. Other than that Its mostly junkyard parts. The first fire was kinda anti-climactic due to a wiring issue that had no power to the key. With the electrical snafu fixed it fired right up and ran pretty snappy the only other problem was a small gas leak. With the cold weather rapidly closing in I still need to get the exhaust fixed and find the right power steering bracket. I'm not really sure I'll be able to get in a road test before the snow flies. But a mild winter might fix that problem (crosses fingers) So stay tuned for that. Next summer hopefully I'll be doing bodywork on the Fury and installing a 8 3/4 rearend with a 3.23:1 sure grip.

  I thought this was going to be cheap! After crunching the numbers this thing really nickel and dimed me bad! And I'm not finished spending. All told I spent about $650 to make all this happen.

400 cubic inch Pontiac buildup: Part 4

  The Pontiac engine buildup resumed once a replacement timing chain was procured. I was lazy and installed the cam "straight up" without degreeing it. I installed the fuel pump eccentric and torqued the bolt with threadlocker.

  I next installed the valvetrain. The pushrods and roller rockers are from Comp Cams. Posi-locks are used to keep the valves adjusted. This is a real basic build and the roller rockers are the only real "trick" pieces on the engine.

  With the valves adjusted I installed valley pan,valve covers and intake manifold. The intake is a vintage Edelbrock P4B (pontiac four barrel) it was kinda grungy so I painted it Dupli color aluminum blast paint. The Valve covers are Moroso anodized gold held in place by the wing nut valve cover bolts.Most of these parts are to give off the vintage 70's vibe.

 Here is the finished product with the front cover and water pump installed and the Hooker super comp headers. The ignition will probably be a HEI although I would like to use a Pertronix ignitor kit so I can use the old points distributor. Once I get the transmission squared away It'll be time for installation and startup......I can't wait

400 cubic inch Pontiac buildup: Part 3

   Its on to the oiling system. I started out by installing the pickup tube on the Speed pro high volume oil pump. Some people weld the pickup to the pump,but I hedged my bets and used safety wire to keep everything in place

 Next I installed the windage tray. It's a cleaned up stocker.the oil pump was installed with the proper gasket and torqued to 30 ft lbs.

Instead of cleaning a beat up stock oil pan thats probably seen the business end of one too many floor jacks,I opted for a stock replacement from Milodon. It has a few extra baffles that the stock one doesn't have. I haven't decided whether to paint it or leave it the anodized gold

I painted and installed the oil filter adapter and torqued the bolts to 30 ft lbs

  I took a huge leap of faith and purchased some rebuilt #62 heads off ebay. The guy I got them from claims less than 2000 miles on them and I believe him because everything looked fresh. The #62 heads have 2.11 intake valves and 1.77 exhaust and have 75cc combustion chambers. With a .042 crush head gasket this should give me a pump gas friendly 9.5:1 compression ratio.

 I slammed the heads down on the block. The ARP head bolts require 30 weight oil on the threads and a torque spec of 135  ft lbs. Sadly,I self sabotaged this project once again by dropping the cam sprocket on the floor and breaking a few teeth off of it. So I'll be patiently waiting for the UPS guy to deliver a replacement.So stay tuned for the 4th and hopefully final installment.







1973 Dodge Dart underhood rehab

Last weekend I  thrashed on my friends 73 Dodge Dart. Although it ran well there was several things happening under the hood on the 318 that really bugged me. The ancient Weiand intake manifold was a piece of junk,It didn't fit well and it needed a carb spacer for the Holley 570 street Avenger carb to work. Which caused a ton of problems making the carb linkage and Auto trans kickdown work properly, And caused hood clearance problems.The cheap Taiwan chrome valve covers were warped and were constantly leaking.

The previous owner rigged up this train wreck carb linkage, The Auto trans kickdown linkage wasn't even working properly. Torqueflite transmissions need the kickdown function to work otherwise it will greatly shorten the lifespan of the trans. The Weiand intake was a pain to install,several bolt holes were hard to get at with a socket and the carb spacer probably killed a little low end torque on this 318 which it really can't afford to lose.

We replaced the Weiand intake with an Edelbrock performer. The Edelbrock is basically a stock replacement manifold, It will allow us to ditch the carb spacer and use stock carb and kickdown linkage. The only hassle was finding all the right pipe plugs to get the Edelbrock ready for installation.



The Edelbrock manifold installed easy and solved all of our linkage and hood clearance issues. Mopar Performance cast aluminum valve covers (made in USA) with cork gaskets replaced the leaky Taiwan chrome junkers,Cast aluminum valve covers don't warp like the stamped steel stockers and have superior sealing ability. We also recurved the distributor for good measure and did some additional tuning. The engine now pulls 20 inches of vacuum to keep the power brakes happy. This probably isn't the end of the 73 dart saga but thats all for now.





Chrysler 400 big block spray can rebuild update.

  Last June I scraped 30 years of crud off this Chrysler 400 and made it pretty. I also replaced some key mechanical components which will hopefully help it make a few more horsepower. Within the next few weeks hopefully It'll be off my garage floor and in my 73 plymouth Fury. The only thing holding me back is finding the correct pulleys and brackets. I'm hoping the weather and life cooperate to make this happen because I've always wanted a big block Fury.

400 cubic inch Pontiac buildup Part 2

 The crankshaft is a factory nodular iron piece. It's been turned .010 under on the main journals and .020 on the rod journals. The oil passages have been chamfered on the journals to increase oil flow. The crank will be spinning in grooved Clevite bearings.

It doesn't get any more old school than this. TRW forged aluminum pistons P/N: L2262F-30 on reconditioned stock rods with ARP rod bolts. For rings I used Speed Pro moly rings.

  I carefully set the crank into the block making sure not to nick the journals. With the ARP main studs the factory torque specs are no longer used. After installing the cumbersome rope rear main seal (rubber ones are available) I torqued the rear main 120 ft lbs and the rest 90 ft lbs with the supplied ARP moly lube on the bolt threads. The machine shop checked the bearing clearances for me but I still re-checked them with plastigauge.

 I'm doing this a little bit backwards. It's easier to install the camshaft before the crank because it's easier to navigate it through the block without nicking the cam bearings. So the cam in question is a dual pattern Crane cam with .467 lift and 222 degrees duration @ .050 on the intake and .494 lift and 234 degrees duration @ .050 on the exhaust. Pontiacs,especially ones with stock type heads like dual pattern cams due to weak flowing cylinder heads on the exhaust side. I used some of the sticky Comp cams assembly lube on the cam.

  After checking ring endgap and installing the rings,It was time to slam in the slugs. I used an adjustable tapered ring compressor. All was going well until I broke a piston ring which halted all forward progress on the engine. Since it's an engine thats been out of production for 30 years It's gonna be at least 3 to 5 business days before the replacements are in. What a huge letdown.

When installing the pistons I used these cool Clevite "bolt booties" to prevent any crank damage. The cheap alternative is to use some spare fuel line on the bolts. As soon as my replacement piston rings comes in I'll be back with part 3 cylinder heads and valvetrain