This morning we got going on the intake swap on Rob's engine. We removed the tunnel port intake and Rob spent some time cleaning the gasket surfaces in preparation for installation of the single four intake. When he was finished I took the opportunity to snap a couple of photos of this really cool engine, with the intake off:
Next we installed the 4V intake and then re-installed the valvetrain. Here's a couple of photos of the engine at this stage; the second one shows Blair doing the valvetrain installation on the left side.
We finished the engine off by installing my 1150 Dominator on the intake. After installation we started the engine and ran it for a few minutes to warm up before making any pulls. Unfortunately the engine didn't have crankcase vacuum any more, in spite of the fact that we re-sealed the distributor with The Right Stuff. We suspected that the end rails of the intake, where we had used The Right Stuff to seal, just hadn't had enough time to set up, and that the leak was there. Rob confirmed this later in the dyno session by noting that we had a minor oil leak at the back of the intake. As a result of no crankcase vacuum, we expected the engine to be down a little bit on power.
Nevertheless we went ahead with a few dyno pulls, first with my 1150 Dominator, and later with Rob's brand new 1050 Dominator. Rob's carb made a bit more torque than mine did, and ran about the same peak horsepower. It showed a little leaner on the A/F readings, but they were pretty close. Here's a dyno plot of the best pull with Rob's carb, which made 629 lb-ft of torque at 4900 RPM, and 672 horsepower at 6400; these are the black lines on the graph. The red lines are the previous day's result from the tunnel wedge intake:
Finally we installed Blair's double throwdown, triple whammy, brand new 4150 carb to try it out against the Dominators. Here's a shot of the carb on the engine:
Unfortunately, at this point the dyno quit cooperating. We had been having troubles on and off with the starter during the past three days, and after making a brief checkout pull from 3500 to 5000 RPM with Blair's carb, the starter quit engaging the flywheel. I've been using this particular flywheel for about five years, and the teeth have definitely seen better days. It appears that they chose this moment to check out. I tried replacing the starter with one that had a better gear, but it was no use; the engine would not turn over more than 90 or 180 degrees before it would stop and the starter gear would grind against the flywheel. So, we had to call it a day without testing the 4150 carb.
In any case though, we had a great time over the past three days, dynoing the two engines very successfully and shooting the FE breeze along the way. I have to thank Blair and Rob for making the 1000 mile drive from Tennessee to dyno the motors here; it was my pleasure to have them, and I hope we get a chance to do it again some time.
