Mopars, Drag Racing, Engine Building, etc…
Archive for February, 2009
Many Little Things…
Feb 28th
Today I hit many of the little things on my to-do list. Just about everything on that list is done! I should be able to "test" the car tomorrow. Here’s what I did:
- Clean the valve cover gaskets and the surfaces they sit on.
- Put the valve covers back on and bolt them down.
- Put on the NGK GR4 spark plugs – torqued them all up to 240 inch pounds.
- Inspected each of the spark plug wires and then put them back on.
- Installed the firewall feed through.
- Installed the MSD Blaster 2 coil on the inside firewall.
- Bought 5 gallons of Shell 100 Unleaded Race Fuel.
- Build new ignition wires for the coil to firewall and firewall to distributor.
Tomorrow I just need to hook up the positive and negative coil wires and the car should be ready to go.
Here are some pictures:
Checking the Valve Lash
Feb 27th
Today I checked the valve lash on all 16 valves. Here are the results:
1 155 E 0.030
I 0.030
3 165 I 0.029
E 0.029
5 165 E 0.030
I 0.032
7 158 I 0.032
E 0.032
2 170 E 0.029
I 0.034
4 150 I 0.029
E 0.032
6 165 E 0.030
I 0.030
8 160 I 0.031
E 0.041
The exhaust valve lash on cylinder #8 seems really loose! Andy recommended setting the valve lash to 0.028 on all the intake valves and 0.030 on all the exhaust valves. I went ahead and did that. I am going to have to watch cylinder #8 and see if the exhaust valve gets loose again. That would indicate a busted adjuster.
Maybe It’s the Coil?
Feb 25th
One of Andy’s friend, another rabid Mopar fan, has suggested that maybe the coil is going bad. Coils are cheap, and easy to replace. Andy suggested that at the same time I could put in a firewall feed through so that the coil could be mounted inside the car rather than on the motor. Why? Because coils don’t like heat. Keep the coil away from heat, and I’ll have a more consistent bracket car. Makes perfect sense. I’m ordering the parts from Summit!
Valvetrain Action!
Feb 24th
Today I made a video of the valvetrain action. Here it is:
It doesn’t look like cylinder #4 is any different than the others as far as rocker action is concerned.
Cranking Compression Test Results
Feb 23rd
Today I did the cranking compression test. I tested all 8 cylinders, and here are the results:
#1 - 155 #2 - 170 #3 - 165 #4 - 150 #5 - 165 #6 - 165 #7 - 158 #8 - 160
Andy has suggested that I start using a mix of 3 gallons of 100 octane unleaded fuel to 1 gallon of 110 leaded fuel.
One of the cylinders (#4) seemed a little low compared to the others. I need to check the rocker action while cranking the motor to see if there is any visible difference for that cylinder.
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