Alright guys, I had to dig deep into my colorful language arsenal on this one, but I finally have my victory
ccasion14:
Original plan was to replace all the exhaust studs with bolts except the first and last on each side, up until I found out there's more than those 2 that go through the water jacket on each side, and that half of mine were still ancient ones that refused to come out. So then I went to town shortening all of them to hopefully make any header removal easier in the future. (Another PITA the sawzall got broken out for a couple times) Makes me really look forward to aluminum heads without the water jacket headaches, but this should work fine for now.
Also had to do a little prep on the starter, cutting the main terminal stud down to only what was needed (to clear the engine block), and adapting the oem starter relay plug by cutting the plastic away and soldering up a wire with spade disconnect. (The 16 ga pictured had to be replaced with 10 ga to match my existing harness.. :head_smack: but same idea haha)
Then came the joyous install, luckily a couple buddies came by to lend a hand haha. Started by lifting the drivers side of the engine and snaking the new header in, but ended up having to cut my old exhaust for it to clear (the Doug's must be longer than the Hedmans), and got forced to take a little break when the sawzall ran out of battery. :banghead: The passenger side was supposed to go right in, but thanks to my exhaust studs I had to jack up that side of the engine, too. Took some pretty fancy maneuvering and a couple extra hands but
man it feels good to finally have them in
Hooked up the wiring to my new starter and everything turns over great, time to get Frankenstein back up and running! :banana:
Sorry Dev but I couldn't stay completely away from the Chebbie either haha. Been plugging along on my homebuilt blow-thru double pumper, starting with removing the choke tower (probably would've been a pretty decent flow restriction inside the carb hat)
Then broke out the little rotary tool, files, and some sand paper to smooth everything out before a bath in some carb cleaner
Then taped off all gasketed surfaces and the top of the carb, since I don't know how well the cheap harbor freight powder would hold up with fuel. Then a good sandblasting and cleaning.
And some matte black powdercoat :icon_cool: (
huge thanks to cudachick for all the pointers and advice!)
Since the carb was missing the secondary metering block when I bought it, I decided to buy these pretty slick Quick Fuel ones. Adjustable idle feed restrictions, and more importantly adjustable power valve restrictions which will really be nice for tuning the on-boost fueling (otherwise I'd be drilling out the stock pre-drilled pvcr's until it was close, and if you go over you're kinda doomed to run rich haha)
So now I'm still plugging along powdercoating the bowls and other parts, then some modifying the throttle plate and this thing can go back together. Probably going to do a full blow-thru how-to post once it's all done. But first, Charger video! To be continued haha
