At 0955 Saturday morning........filled up the fuel bowl with a infant medicine syringe and hit the key. She turned over 4 times and fired up with a roar. Ran the rpm's up to 2000 and had my son set the idle speed screw. Kept a keen eye on the oil pressure gauge, read about 30 pounds. Then my tach quit (it was acting intermittent last year) but by this time I had an ear for the rpm level. Kept looking for leaks as well. Things were at bit noisy at first until all the lifters pumped up. After 25 minutes for the cam break-in, we backed it out of the garage, grabbed some tools and fluids, and went for an easy 15 mile round trip to Clarkston and back, didn't want to have to walk back too far. Definitely a rougher idle, really turns peoples heads, and much louder when driving around and shifting gears. Back in the driveway looked for leaks, found none. Adjusted the idle mixture screws and got 15 inches of vacuum at idle. Check the initial timing setting and it was high, near 18 degrees. Previous setting with that distributor was 14, so that's where I reset it. Then we let her cool down overnight. Sunday morning we re-torqued the heads, intake manifold and headers. Then took it for another ride to fill the gas tank with 93 octane. Throttle response is nice and crisp in the primaries (haven't hit the secondaries yet), climbs the rpm's quickly and has lot of torque. I have read many comments about giving up bottom end torque when making a cam change. In this case, throttle response and low end grunt is much improved. I believe that the two performance issues corrected with the project (worn cam lobes, unmatched intake ports flowing into smaller head ports) and the increase to the higher compression (9.7 to 1) and the home head port, match and polish job makes this car a new animal. Really looking forward to cracking open the secondaries!! Which brings up the question...............how street miles should I put on this new cam before I can take it to the drag strip??
A soon as you drove it out the door it was ready to go. If it is broken in right at the get-go then it is ready to go. Regular drag cars don't put any street miles on. Your original low compression engine won't have the torque this engine will plus the proper matching of compression ratio to cam selection as you have done is the reason there was no apparent loss of low end torque. It has been a while since you started this project so it must be great to drive the car. Congrats and good luck at the strip.
Good to hear you got it fired up! You should probably run some ZDDP additive to each oil change for added wear protection! I'm even running it in my roller eng.:TU:
Roger that Marty!! Got it on the workbench..........also used the TA Formula 1 cam paste on the cam, and Formula 2 break-in additive in the crankcase. It's been quite a fun project with my son.........he's pretty geeked up about it!!
Here's a cost update to this project: $240 machine service to pressure test the heads, clean and mill .060 $100 machine service to clean and mill intake manifold .040 $0 workbench porting and polishing (not including pizza, cigars and beer) $170 porting and polishing tools, mandrel, sanding rolls, cleaning supplies. Purchased mostly from TA, some local. $370 TA 212 camshaft and lifters and stage one springs $215 TA stock valves $370 TA head and intake gaskets, hoses, timing gears and chain, thermostat, sealer, oil, heat crossover plugs, adj. pushrod. and other wear items and fluids. $140 multiangle valve job $128 new bonze wall valve guides and install $152 hardened ex valve seats and install $60 plug emmission passages and heat crossovers $100 camshaft degree wheel kit $133 new length pushrods $2,178 Project Total
I'm excited for you as i have been following your thread. Nice long weekend ahead.....enjoy the ride. :idea2:If you are inclined....take a drive to Florida and show me what she's got. Scott
Hey thanks Scott!! Yesterday evening changed the oil and filter and added zddp, drained the water out of the cooling system and filled with 50/50 coolant.........removed, disassembled and cleaned the QJet, will lean out the primaries a step down, was running a little rich. And install a new tachometer so I can re-power time it. Should be a nice weekend up here to get some driving in..........hope you have a calm one Scott.
Friday evening we put the QJet back on with this setup: .069 primary jets .043 primary rods 12/32 float level high volume accelerator pump CL secondary rods B hanger Went for a ride Saturday morning and got into the secondaries a little in second gear.....front end lifts up, I can hear the rpms climbing and she's pulling like a freight train.......felt the adrenaline rush into the viens..........this thing is scary......for an instant I though about opening up to WOT but I was too jittery from the adrenaline. Sunday we installed the new tach and power timed the motor. 34 degrees all in by 2500 rpm put the initial at 16. We don't use the vacuum advance as it leaks so I unhooked it and plugged the hose years ago, haven't missed it.
My son Jake (Ssgt USMC) has been home for a few weeks in between duty stations so we took the GS to the drag strip to see what results we would get since we did the top end work. Bottom line is we shaved a second and half off the ET, 14.5 now vs 16.0 before, and trap speed is 101mph now vs 88 before. View attachment time slips.pdf My car was # 205, and the #210 I raced against was a 1971 GSX, 455, headers, 3.73 posi, open air element. He took me off the launch but then I stayed with him the rest of the way, as you can see by the elapsed times between the 1/8 and 1/4. I have a lot of time sitting in my 60foot, so I believe with a posi I could get it into the 13's. Here's a pic of the '71 GSX, a very clean car. My sons and I are pretty pleased with how the work showed up in the ET's. The car ran very consistant. We did try an open element air cleaner, but it cost us 2-3 tenths, so we stayed with the cold air stock snorkel unit.
With the mph in the traps you have close to another second on the table with better traction,gearing and a stahl converter. Good job so far though! Edit: just opened the pdf,and by optimizing the above mentioned you should be able to get your 60 ft times down in the 1.8s if thats what your goal is for the car.GL and have fun! Derek
The good MPH would indicate you've got a second improvement in ET unfortunately you are up against the "you've got to beat it like you stole it" scenario because of the stick. Good traction and coming off the line at 3500 rpm or more is the only way you will get the ET down there. You don't necessarily have to pop the clutch but you have to let it out fast and find the RPM sweet spot between bog and spin. You can have a good time with the stick banging the gears. If you're talking about the factory ram air hood then there is no way/no how that thing will work better than an open element air filter(assuming a nice sized one) so that is something to look into there. When using the ram air assembly maybe just try flipping the lid over or just use a smaller lid that only covers the filter like you would be using with the open element air cleaner. Possibly the carb could be on the lean side but even on a factory stock car flipping the lid over was worth some power. Nice job on carrying out a plan and getting the car to the strip to see what the no B.S. results are. :TU:
It certainly is a blast power shifting..........I think we did eight or ten passes and by the end of the afternoon I could smell the hot clutch, then we did two more and called it a good day. Yeah, I'm excited about the 101 mph trap speed..........back in May of 2012 when I would go through the traps in the 80's range, all I had to do was coast in gear till the end, tap the brakes a bit to make the turn off and then take the return lane.......on my first pass last Saturday, when I hit the traps at 100, I coasted in gear and was getting near the end when I became clear, very quickly, that I was gonna have to use waaaaaay more brake if I didn't want to end up in the cornfield. Yeah, I was pretty excited to see that timeslip!!!!
UMI has a nice lift bar setup or straight rear control arms with poly bushing. I think you mentioned 4 speed with 3.90 gears. Maybe 3.73 or 3.42 gears to take advantage of the lower end torque of that 212. Also try adding 2 more degrees of total advance. You mentioned 34 total try 36.
Hey Andy, the GS has TA No-Hop bars, really took car of the wheel hop a few years ago. BTW, I was doing a little math with the calculation references in the back of the TA catalog, and according to the formula for calculating horsepower from the 1/4 mile trap speed, I arrive at a pre- and post-project HP number....... Pre-project: 88mph with a 3,600-3,700 lb car and driver, then add 65 to gross up from net, I calculate a range of 255hp-260hp. Which comes fairly close to 1971 gross rating and makes sense as it was mostly stock except for the headers, and then offset by the poorly matched intake ports of the heads and intake, and a couple of worn exhaust lobes on the Comp 260 camshaft. Post-project: 101mph with a 3,600-3,700 lb car and driver, then add 65 to gross up from net, I calculate a range of 355hp-360hp. Do you guys think this formula is reasonably reliable? Also, according to the other formula in the TA reference section to calculate optimum 1/4 mile ET, for this car it's about 13.3 (say mid 13's). Which seems to make sense when I look at the 60ft times in my timeslips. All said and done, my son Cal and I are pretty happy with the results. Nowadays we cruise around in it and talk about a posi with a 3.73..........we'll head back to the strip later in August and September.
100 HP gain would be shocking but awesome. How much does a shop charge to do the porting / polishing on the heads, how much did you save by doing it yourself?
Nice work Steve. 100 extra HP. I do have some nohop bars but they are solid no bushings. Decided not to use on street. Jason porting can cost anywhere from 200 to 2000 depending of who does them and what level of porting. Greg gessler did a set of heads that cost over 3 grand. Its all about the time spent. But gesslars heads flowed almost 300 cfm.
very impressive gains. should be able to shave at least a second off those times with a good 60 ft. are you launching off idle? Also, i don't know what your DA is like up there but especially down here DA can wildly vary with the time of year and weather.
