Doing some detailing today before it goes to the tuner on Saturday. Took this interesting shot...... kind of cool looking picture that I thought I'd share. Also a picture of the driveshaft booboo..... 
I see you made it Congrats it is gorgeous! Your patience in the build is self-evident in the patience you're showing in not tearing it up!
Steve thanks for bringing the car to the GS Nats. The craftsmanship and attention to detail are second to none. Even my 13-year-old son pointed out the beautiful welds throughout the car. This is a car that has to be seen in person to truly appreciate all of the details.
Yes, I had it there for show only, but still had a great time! The car show judge told me that it scored 100 out of 100 points in the Top 25 class! I'll continue where I left off once my new driveshaft arrives.....I'll update when I do......
Steve, it was great to finally meet you. AlphaLark is a stunning car in person. I can't wait for you to get some runs on it to see gets down the track.
I really enjoyed looking at this car in person and talking you at BG. Everyone is absolutely correct, pictures do not do the Alphalark justice... it is amazing!
Well, the new driveshaft came, and I got it installed this week. Also did a little work to the front-end alignment. The global west control arms have 6 degree positive caster built in, which is fine for power steering, but not so much with manual. I had a hard time cranking the wheel around at the Nat's, even with rack & pinion. I changed it to 3 degrees positive and it's much better. I may even go to 2 degrees. It still tracks nicely down the road with 3 degrees................. speaking of tracking down the road. I was finally able to build some boost and see what it does on the roadway............. WOW, is all I can say!! It pulls HARD!!! Can't wait now to get it on the chassis dyno and put a decent safe tune in it and find the results. After that it'll make a trip to a dragstrip and see if I can achieve that elusive 8 second time slip. Steve
Well, I guess it's been a while since my last update. I had the car on the chassis dyno and it couldn't pull over 5000 rpm. It was breaking up and not sounding like it should. I proceeded to look for the issue by trying one thing at a time, jetting, ignition swap, coil swap, crank trigger, distributor phasing, timing, etc. I even sent the "expensive" ProSystems E85 blow through carb to CSU in California for a "tweaking and fine-tuning session", which made no noticeable improvement. After all the trials and experiments nothing seemed to make any noticeable improvements above 4800-5000 rpm. I currently have about 180 miles on it and if you stay out of the throttle, it runs/drives just fine. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'm floating the valves. I had originally opted for hydraulic rollers, and with that comes fairly mild valve spring pressures. Using the appropriate Wallace calculator, I figure that I'm losing 30-35 pounds of seat pressure with 10 lbs. of boost. Add that to the mild pressures we started with, (187 seat and 431 open), and I believe we have valve float. This winter I'll be swapping out the hydraulic rollers for solid rollers with bushings, heavier valve springs and the appropriate length push rods. Hopefully it will cure the issue and I'll be ready to make some passes by early spring. In the meanwhile, I took it to a local show this weekend and did very well......... "1st" in my class and "Best of Show". Also had a great relaxing day, "not working" for a change! LOL
