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kastein posted:If you just want it running well and don't really give a crap about being able to squeeze every bit of horsepower out of that (as you noted) smogged-out 454, you can swap on a late-gen 454 TBI setup from the boneyard pretty simply. It's a very common swap on AMC 401s and given that you have a 454, you might even be able to bolt it on (possibly including buying the intake manifold from the donor? I don't know if it'll bolt up, but it's worth checking into maybe) instead of having to make an adapter plate. the motor is a Pontiac 455, not a Chevy 454. a GM TBI conversion was the first thing i thought of too, since it would be slow, reliable, cheap, and complicated. perfect for a project car you don't need to drive right away. you have all winter to play with it!
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Sep 18, 2020 08:00
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is there a reason not to rebuild what you've got? probably a good cleaning and a new set of gaskets would sort you out, unless you suspect there are actual mechanical problems with it like worn out bores for the throttle shafts then again ive never rebuilt a qjet so maybe there's something about them that makes them not worth rebuilding?
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Oct 18, 2020 04:36
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Valt posted:It is insane to me that anyone would pay any amount of money for a quadrajet rebuilt or otherwise. There are like ten thousand aftermarket carbs that way better and are mostly totally fine out of the box. qjets are supposed to be pretty sweet when set up right, with the tiny fuel-sipping primaries and big fat secondaries. at least, thats the praise ive heard sung about them from several sources, i just put holleys on stuff lol
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Jan 23, 2021 06:04
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Valt posted:I mean any carb setup right is probably fine. But most of those aftermarket carbs are better. I mean I got a edelbrock carb and manifold from a friend and I put it on the 307 in the truck with 0 tuning and it runs totally fine. yeah this has been my experience with edelbrock, as long as your motor is pretty stockish. as soon as you need to adjust stuff, it might not be able to get there. i guess an edelbrock is the "set it and forget it" option, a holley can be fiddled with for a bit more performance, and a qjet can be fiddled with for a bit more economy/smoothness. or something. you're right, though, that just about any carb that is in the ballpark of the right size can likely be made to work pretty good. with that in mind, i dont see anything wrong with sticking with the qjet, especially since he would already have the spreadbore manifold and it would keep it looking stock. not the choice i would make, but a valid choice
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Jan 23, 2021 08:53
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vacuum advance is generally only for fuel economy while cruising (high vacuum low power, can add more timing, but it backs off when you get on it to avoid pinging) i wouldnt think it would be related to any hard starting or anything like that. ive always had mine connected to ported vacuum 
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May 18, 2021 03:12
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i think they came out just fine. i like the polished ring and center cap in contrast with the matte centers. gold would look nice too but maybe thats more for the snowflakes than the honeycombs for a 7" wheel i think anything from 185 to 255 should be appropriate. a narrower tire is going to feel "tighter" going around a turn, because you won't have as much sidewall rolling over, but its going to give you less traction for a straight line launch. on the flip side, the wider tire will give you fatter contact patches but they'll wallow a bit in corners. i have 255s on 15x7s on my impala, and the sidewalls look kinda balloon-y and you can feel it in turns. im thinking of something more like a 225 for my javelin, which will be getting 15x7s soon, to try to remedy this. looks like the stock tire size would be a 225, according to some quick googling, though the sites don't disambiguate based on wheel options
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May 24, 2021 03:46
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Steve French posted:My understanding is that the 15" wheels came paired with F60-15 tires, which as I understand it would be a P235/60R15; so I'm thinking I will either go with that or _maybe_ put 245s on the back for just a little bit of stagger. that could be. i was going off of some forum post that named GR70-15, which dude says is equivalent to a 225. you probably know better! i just bought the javelin; mine's a '68. i actually liked the 71 and 72 the best beforehand, but after seeing this one im now a fan of the early cars. i posted about it in the your-own-ride thread if you wanna read too many words about it: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3032817&pagenumber=605&perpage=40#post514262362. cliffs notes is that it's a 390 4-speed, and the basics are solid, but it needs a lot of little things. Darchangel posted:236/60-15 is what I ran on my '70 Cutlass with 15x7 Olds Rallye Wheels. how much drop is that? i like the stance
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May 25, 2021 04:16
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Darchangel posted:A bit too much, actually. It was supposed to be 1.5-2" as I recall, but that's not what I got. It was closer to 3". do you know what the spring rate was on the edelbrocks? i do love the stance, and my chevelle is going to be much stiffer than stock, but idk if 600lb/in springs are going to be stiff enough for 3" clearance. it does look good as hell though i think i spec'd my springs out for 2" drop but with an extra 1.5" adjustment either way, so i guess i will see how it sits once i get it back together
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May 27, 2021 05:05
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my understanding was that the bimetal spring held the choke closed, and as the engine warmed up and as electric heat is applied, it slowly opened the choke until it was fully open usually the "closed" position is adjustable by loosening a couple screws and turning the spring enclosure, so maybe it shipped in a position where it was always open that said, ive only owned an electric choke for about 4 weeks now, and haven't really observed it or messed with it in that time. so i dont actually have any firsthand experience with whether im right about any of this
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May 28, 2021 00:52
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there's no audio on that clip, but id agree that it looks more like stuff burning off than an exhaust leak if it sounds like a "fut fut fut" noise, try to wave a shop rag around near the exhaust and see if you can find a spot where a jet of exhaust is escaping and blowing around the rag. this is harder if you have a fixed mechanical engine fan exhaust leaks can eventually lead to cracked valves due to the inrush of cold air onto hot parts, but also ive had one for decades on my truck and i havent noticed a problem yet. so imo it's one of those "fix when convenient" sorts of things
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May 29, 2021 04:47
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STR posted:That sounds totally normal, that smoke is just crap burning off of the manifolds. Probably oil that dripped from the valve covers over the years it was parked. agreed with this. also make sure all your spark plugs are tight, ive hosed this up more than once. whys it down on power and making a bunch of noise??? lol the idle sounds normal. if you hear a louder tapping/popping when you rev it up a little bit it could still be an exhaust leak, but i dont see anything that points to that being the case in that video if the smoke doesnt go away, youll need to figure out where the leak is coming from. i had one once where oil would run down the back of the motor onto the flexplate, and the flexplate flung the oil onto the exhaust, where it constantly made a smokescreen
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May 29, 2021 08:12
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did the second gen have rear disc brakes stock? i didnt think they did, but i also dont know f-bodies too well. if they're a retrofit, it could be that those wheels clear the original drums, but not the retrofit discs. ive seen bolt-on spacers as small as half an inch, but like you i dont quite trust them. i would agree that longer studs and a (hub-centric! with the right size hub diameters!) small spacer should be no problem. but, ive never done it, so i definitely defer to those posters who have the studs are easy to change, at least with the original brakes. take the caliper off, take the rotor off, and tap the old studs out with a hammer. pull the new ones on either with a special installer tool, or a flat nut with a thrust bearing, or with a flat nut and some random flat washers with grease between them, or a junk lug nut and some washers. in decreasing order of preference. hopefully your backing plate allows for enough room somewhere to get the new studs behind it. actually, dont the pontiac versions of the 10- and 12-bolt have bolt-in axles from the factory? if so, if there are clearance problems you can undo four bolts and pull the whole axle out for clearance. you can even press in the new studs with a hydraulic press if you wanted.
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Jun 8, 2021 04:44
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Steve French posted:Today I got a timing light, because I haven't verified or adjusted the timing at all since we got it, and I also felt like it was idling really high, and didn't do any followup tuning on the carburetor, just sorta slapped it on. I got an Innova light that also does RPM. Didn't get around to doing any timing adjustment, but went through the adjustment steps that they sent with the carb. Good work on the carb idle tuning. Little stuff like that always has a big impact on drivability. As to the fast cam, you sometimes have to give the throttle a pretty big stab/blip to unload the idle stop and let it return properly. So if you're driving it gingerly, it might not be disengaging completely. For the tach, since you have an electronic distributor, the tach (both the stock one and the lower end aftermarket ones) sometimes don't trigger off the square wave output. They look for the voltage spike from the coil field collapsing when the points open. You can buy an adapter from MSD (and probably others) to generate that waveform from a square wave output, or you can build one. IIRC, I didn't have to do all that and I was able to get by with a diode and resistor. But I installed my tach like a decade ago so I don't remember exactly. You might get lucky and not need to splash out for the expensive adapter. For timing, I'd just completely ignore what the base/idle timing is. That's not super important. What's important is how much timing you have when the advance is "all in," i.e. the weights are all the way out and you have all of your mechanical advance. I'd suggest unplugging any vacuum advance (this can really screw with you if you don't, since there is no load on the motor when you're testing it), revving the motor up until the timing mark stops moving, and then reading the timing there. It's probably like 3000RPM or something like that. Set it to about 36°BTDC, then let idle fall wherever it's going to (and check it, so you know how much advance is in your distributor), and drive it for a while to listen for pinging. You can bump it up to 38° if you are confident in your fuel and cooling, but 36° is a safer value IMO. What I do is lug it up some hills on a hot day and listen to it, and bump it back a degree or two if I hear anything.
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Aug 20, 2021 10:38
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Steve French posted:Awesome, thanks. The fast idle I determined not to be a problem; it was definitely doing the right thing after a short drive. personally, i operate the throttle linkage to rev the motor while shining the timing light on the balancer, then set everything down and bump the distributor, then rev it back up and check with the light again, repeat as many times as necessary. dont forget to tighten the distributor hold down when you're done, or you'll be doing it all again after you test drive it lol. if you need to see the vacuum gauge, maybe a good spot to leave it would be on top of the air cleaner? personally i use the gauge when setting idle and when troubleshooting stuff like power valve / step up springs, but not timing.
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Aug 22, 2021 05:23
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whats your goal? autocross? tighter high speed street handling? cushy road cruising? the best bolt-on (i.e. not a full subframe) stuff is the speedtech afx tall spindle with coilovers and tubular control arms, from what i remember. i didnt want to spend that kind of money so i pieced together some other stuff, but thats not generally what i would recommend lol the sky's the limit if you want to go fast McTinkerson posted:Every rubber bushing is for sure way past it's service life. Do not put in spherical bearings. Stick with rubber, just new stuff. Maybe polyurethane but try and get rubber bushings if at all possible. arent the modern delrin sphericals supposed to be 100% fine on the street? i hope so, cause i got a set for my car, lol. wont know for a couple years since it wont be drivable for a while, but ive read nothing but positive stuff if you want something that handles tighter than rubber
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May 31, 2022 02:46
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if you want to improve handling, imo the big things are these:
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May 31, 2022 02:53
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Steve French posted:Primary goal for now is to have the car in a state where I feel comfortable driving it and not worrying about old wear items falling apart. Secondary goal is to do a thing with a car in my garage. Performance after that, but I’d say mainly focused on somewhat but not terribly spirited road driving. I think my wife likes the idea of making it an actually fast car, which I’m willing to indulge, but just seems like such a long adventure to get it somewhere close to the RS4 we already have and can use for that. I want it for the project/driving experience enjoyment the ridetech streetgrip package might be worth looking at, in that case, as it's sort of a "refresh" kit without going all out with spindles and tubular arms and coilovers and stuff. i would guess it would handle significantly better than stock, but not as good as you could get it if you were replacing everything. replacing the rear leafs with a multilink coilover setup would be pretty cool, but idk how much the rear suspension is really limiting you right now Steve French posted:I was looking at the speed tech kits earlier and haven’t yet quite made sense of them. Budget isn’t terribly much of a concern, so I’m happy to spend whatever gets me a good outcome, but unsure which of their options would make the most sense. yeah i know what you mean. i spent like, 9 months researching all the suspension bits for my own car, trying to figure out what was worth doing for actual performance and what was just shiny. i ended up with sort of a hodgepodge, and i dont know yet how well it's going to work!
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May 31, 2022 03:10
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Steve French posted:Looking over what Speedtech, Ridetech, and Hotchkiss have, in terms of getting a full refresh without going nuts and switching out leaf springs for coils, it seems like Ridetech is pretty promising in terms of price and comprehensive upgrades. looks good to me. you might consider looking at how much more it would be to upgrade to coilovers in front. it would involve a different lower control arm, and of course their coilover instead of the springs/shocks. looks like they don't sell a kit for that, weirdly, so it would be pieced together with arms + coilovers + swaybar + rear end stuff. would be easier to switch spring rates, or adjust ride height, or whatever in future. it is really only half a coilover, since the top fits in the frame pocket where the original spring went. if you're not gonna fuss with rates and shock adjustments and stuff, though, the kit you have is bound to be perfectly fine. one point in ridetech's favor is they are owned by fox shocks, so they're the only ones using fox stuff for classic applications. and at least a couple years ago when i was doing research into this, fox is the best monotube gas shock available for this kind of thing. if you do go ahead with ridetech stuff, i would suggest buying through Matt's Classic Bowties (mcbparts.com, sales@mcbparts.com). their website kind of sucks, but they are quite a bit cheaper than buying straight through ridetech or summit. and they set up a drop ship straight from ridetech. i think it was like 10% off across the board, or so? not huge, but it certainly adds up when you're buying a fat stack of gear. i found out about them via the pro-touring forums, so i PM'd them through there asking for a quote, but you can probably just email them with an RFQ and get quoted that way. i ended up getting quite a few ridetech bits for my chevelle, and they're all still sitting in my living room lol. so i can't say how well it goes together. but the fit and finish seems very good!
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Jun 2, 2022 04:17
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Darchangel posted:Detroit Speed has the (half) coilover kit in non-, single, and double-adjustable, and even remote reservoir. the ridetech ones don't use normal coilover springs, they're open at the top. but yeah, requires a coilover lower control arm. but imo that's a benefit, so the control arm can be designed for what you're actually using it for, instead of being adapters all the way down. mr french seemed to be interested in doing tubular control arms anyway, so that doesn't seem like a hurdle that said, if he's not going to be constantly adjusting/swapping to find the right spring rate and ride height, probably just the streetgrip stuff would turn out great
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Jun 3, 2022 03:29
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Steve French posted:Any concerns about this spring compressor? Not really clear what to look for in an internal spring compressor, haven't noticed much difference between what I see, but am yet still a bit paranoid about using one. theres one a lot like that in the autozone loan-a-tool program, looks like. its probably fine come to think of it though, when i did it in the past i think i just popped the upper balljoint apart with a jack under the knuckle (keep the nut partially on until after the taper is separated), and then lowered everything down until the spring was decompressed and came out. i dont remember using a spring compressor at all, although its been a few years.
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Jun 3, 2022 08:41
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i think the 455 is closer to the weight of a big block. hmm. lets see according to some guy on the internet, the book "Practical Engine Swapping" lists these weights: SBC = 550lbs BBC = 625lbs Pont. = 590' for 350-400 Pont. = 640' for 455 Buick = 450' for 350 Buick = 600' for 430-455 Olds = 600' for 330-455 SBF = 460' BBF = 625' (FE 332-428) SBD = 550' BBD = 670' (383-440) Hemi = 690' Caddy = 600' AMC = 540' (304-401) so you'd be heavier than a BBC. So I'd select big block, in that case. e: some disagreement with those numbers. another source: hotrod mag from 1977: PONTIAC(326-455)640 lbs. SBC(262-400)575lbs. BBC(396-454)685lbs which seems a bit more believable, since the bbc is physically bigger, it makes sense for it to be a little heavier in that case, it could go either way! you know, i bet the ridtech guys would be able to answer this question better than any of us, they probably have done a number of these by now Raluek fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jun 4, 2022 |
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Jun 4, 2022 02:47
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what was the advice from ridetech? that the original 400/455 was closer to the big block, so only use the small block springs if you were gonna ls swap? i just hope that the ride height isnt too tall if the springs are expecting another 50lb
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Jun 7, 2022 03:23
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now that i think about it, if you still have the iron intake and manifolds and stuff like that, it might be about the same weight as a BBC with an aluminum intake and headers. i wonder if they take factory weights, or typical enthusiast upgrade configurations when they figure that stuff out yeah worst case you can cut the springs or just throw another set in there. i think muscle/pony cars look best when dumped super low, but on the other hand, doing that with a softer spring rate seems like a poor choice. so getting the stiffer big block rate is probably a good call from a handling point of view of course, saying all that, if i drove two T/As back to back, one with small block springs and one with big block springs, idk if i would be able to tell the difference from the drivers seat. they are probably not that far off
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Jun 7, 2022 03:43
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Darchangel posted:Ridetech’s website and the PDF instructions for the coil overs disagree without you. hmm, you are right. i guess i was thinking of the style used by QA1 and others:  i don't like the way ridetech does it, because it puts the whole weight of the vehicle on those little shock mount bolt holes in the frame. there's not much surface area to spread that out, and it feels more sketchy than a proper eye mount in double shear to a gusseted bracket. i mean, ridetech has mechanical engineers, its probably fine, but i dont like it. i thought they did it the other way, cause that way you would get a lot more surface area contact with the frame to hold the weight, and you still get height adjustment at the bottom. but then the downside is spring availability. really i dont see a good solution unless you cut out all the stock stuff and weld on upper mounts designed for coilovers. my gut feeling is probably wrong on this, so if you know better then please share.
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Jun 8, 2022 04:09
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agreed with ioc. i think i would pop the balljoints off their tapers, jack the LCA up to take the spring weight, take the UCA off, take the knuckle off the LCA, slowly lower the LCA until the spring falls out (make sure the car is high enough for this!), then unbolt the LCA. installation is the opposite of removal, lol. Steve French posted:Here’s a random piece of rubber on top of the upper control arm. Guessing it is meant to bump into the top of the wheel well under full compression? Don’t think it’s doing much anymore. Will be gone with new UCA anyway. there's a rubber bumpstop underneath the UCA that hits the frame at full droop. i think that's the barbed part that pushes through the control arm and holds it in place.
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Apr 21, 2024 01:53
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it looks like it's off the bottom of the spring perch, it's just hung up at the back, right? looks like the control arm still has further it can pivot to free it. i don't remember it being any real hassle getting the old springs out on either my chevelle or impala, but it has been a few years since i did it. from what i can see in the photos, there's not much compression left, the inside corner just can't get around the hump in the middle of the perch. if it was me, i would probably start yanking on stuff down there, see if i can feel how much force the spring is putting on the control arm, and if it can be dislodged by hand. however i am rather foolhardy, so i completely understand if you don't feel comfortable doing that.
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Apr 22, 2024 03:17
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