I'm gonna clean everything up tomorrow and do just that.

 

I've had to double them up before. Seems that intake has been milled a bunch at some point, since you didn't have that issue with the previous one.

 

I have almost decided to just put the Performer back on. I KNOW it fits and works and we have Buick V. Ford coming up real fast. I don't want to stick this one back on and then it maybe still have trouble and just end up having to swap again. My buddy Jonathan offered his Edelbrock Airgap that he is not using anymore. It is a proven part. Might do that. That would give me time to take a good look at this intake.

Also, the single plane seems to have been designed for heads without an exhaust crossover because it *barely* has enough metal to seal it off from the valley.

 

Almost done. Just a couple of small things to take care of and she will be ready to run again.

I decided to go ahead and borrow the RPM Airgap from my buddy Jonathan. Big thanks to him!

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Watch your mixture distribution with that intake. I tried an Airgap RPM on my 327W and didn’t like the results. YMMV.

 

Good to know, thanks.

 

Does it fit better?

 

Yeah. Did a dry fit first and everything looked good.

 

I cant wait to see how that intake manifold works for you.
I have another project that is getting a paxton supercharger on it and I
already have a Performer RPM Air Gap manifold and was wondering if I could use it.

 

Just like the Perfomer 289 we were originally using, I am running a 1" open spacer and the plenum divider is cut down.

 

It runs again after a mild moment of panic. It seems it does not run well when you leave the vacuum line unplugged and the megasquirt ungrounded. Kind of sounds like the camshaft is going flat. Yowza.

We corrected that and it runs good and idle's good. We have not driven it yet because we ran out of time, but everything looks good so far.

 

Glad to see you got it up and running again. Hopefully this has solved your problem and it was the other intake.

 

I drove it and messed with it a lot on Saturday. It still had a HUGE stumble just as the throttle is yanked open. This time I played with pump cams on rhe primary and secondary sides. Lots of trial and error and the bigger I went, the better it liked it. It has what I would consider a pretty huge accelerator pump shot, which is probably crutching some issue, but it seems to work.

Previously the AFR was lean spiking to 18:1 when the throttle was yanked open from a dead stop. It would stumble around until it apparently created enough rpm to really start pulling fuel from the mains. Then it would take off and haul butt. Now it launches like the 200whp 302 it is. Nothing crazy, but once the boost ramps in, it gets exciting in a hurry.

Why the crazy big shot? I really think it is the combination of a 650 double pumper, a mild 302, a tight-ish converter, and 3.55 gears with 28" tall tires. With the 5 speed you could feed it all the rpm from a dead stop that you wanted. The carb never saw a <2000 rpm stall, WOT launch. Now with the automatic, suddenly the carb is seeing high throttle angles at low engine speeds and it has to fight to make air speed thru the venturis. The accel shot has to be big enough AND long enough to enrich the engine thru this transition. Otherwise it bogs and flops around like a tuna until it can pull enough fuel to run. I think a looser converter would make a world of difference, but for now we will just stick with this one and a big pump shot. A HSAB change to bring the mains on sooner might be the fix. I'm research that a little today.

 

Drove it home at lunch today and it drives much better. Not perfect by any stretch, but at least it does not stumble and cough. The TV cable seems to need some adjustment. I does not want to downshift back to 1 when you come to a stop. You can click it to N and back to D and it is good. 4th is hit or miss but I may just not be going fast enough for 4th to click in. Just an annoyance really. WOT 1-2 upshift happens at 5500 rpm which is right about where I want it. It feels really good. I don't remember this car ever getting loose with the 5 speed, but it dang sure does with the automatic. I didn't really get a good 2-3 because it happens around 86 mph and that is a little sketchy in town. lol

MSDroid is pretty dang cool. I logged GPS data from the phone and it will display speed (updated every second, boo) and will allow you to view the datalog along with your location. This REALLY helps you remember what you were doing, when you were doing it, and where you were doing it.

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I took it out and made some WOT pulls and datalogged them with the Megasquirt.

It would blast through 1st, bang 2nd pull hard for a bit then it would act like it ran out of fuel, AFR would shoot to 18:1, bonk it into 3rd, then hit it again and it ran great again... What the heck?

It took me a little while to figure it out, but it finally dawned on me what was happening. It was going into overboost protection and the Megasquirt was cutting spark in an attempt to get it back down. Spark cut = rpm drop and O2 reading dead lean.

Overboost was set at 11psi which is probably too close to the max boost level it was making. (About 10.5psi because we put a couple of turns on the WG in Pueblo then broke the trans) .

I turned the WG back and upped the overboost threshold a couple of pounds so maybe that will fix it.

 

I am on the right track. Drove it around a little today and it behaved similarly so I was a bit confused. But after looking at the logs, I was totally smashing into the rev limiter. As soon as the rev limit is hit, rpm dips, afr shoots up and the car falls on it's face. The shift light is set to 5500 and the limiter was set to 6000, but with my slow reactions, I was all over it. Every time. Haha. I bumped the rev limit 500 rpm so maybe that will give me a better window. I will test it tomorrow hopefully.

 

This thing is driving me bananas, just when I think I know what it is doing, I am wrong. BUT I *think* I have it working now. But I am learning stuff. lol

I swapped on a new Motorcraft coil we had in the shop to rule out the possibility that the coil was going kaput.... nope.

Pulled the fuel filter. It had a little junk in it but was not the obvious smoking gun I was hoping for. Cleaned it. While we were under there I decided to double up the spring in the fuel pump bypass. My thinking was that when boost ramps up the internal bypass opens and is essentially working against the fuel pressure reg's attempt to raise fuel pressure.

I took it for a test drive and it seemed to behave like I expect now. Maybe it is fixed. I did notice that the electric fan relay is partially melted and wondered if the fan is dying and was pulling a ton of current and causing havoc with the coil. I did not have the fan on tonight when I tested because it was plenty cool outside.

But for now, it seems to be doing what it should which is good because Buick V. Ford is tomorrow. Hope we don't break it. Haha.

 

Good luck tomorrow! Let us know how it goes

 

Judd, my buddy Jonathan and I left Amarillo at 6am and arrived at Thunder Valley around 10:30. We met up with another Amarillo guy, unloaded the car and got teched in. Weather was cool with gusty cross-track winds. Because of the wind, the decision was made to only run 1/8th mile. First time ever in the 25 years they have been doing this shoot out. Judd was a little bummed but hey 1/8th mile is better than not racing. Even though it was 1/8th, there were multiple oil downs. We sat in the lanes for an eternity and it was somewhat exacerbated by them segregating out the "faster" cars to lanes 7,8,9. Seemed like every time they got the track prepped again, they started pulling cars from those lanes while the rest of us (the majority of the participants) had to wait around.

Ok, back to us. Judd made his first pass and I datalogged it mainly to track AFR because this track is significantly lower in elevation than Amarillo. It was a 9.00 @ 87 but it went A-B without any issues. Sounds slow, and it sorta is, but with the converter it has, it launches like a pooch and then boost ramps in about 3.5 seconds into the run. Very Supra-ish. Lol. I pulled a couple degrees of timing out down low and he ran 8.81 @ 90.5. That's 5 mph faster in the 8th than it ran on Race Week with the 5 speed so I feel like we are moving in the right direction. I think a looser converter and maybe a smaller slick would make a world of difference.

They closed the lanes and laddered each team up from fastest to slowest and Judd got paired with a Buick that was about a full second quicker than him. Judd didn't care. He lined up, tree's him, Buick spins and has trouble, and Judd motors by him for the win! Whoo hoo!!

Unfortunately, and completely in line with 2020, Buick beat Ford 35-22 or something like that. First time in several years that the Buicks have won. It is good for the event.

Once it was over, we loaded up, went to Rudy's for some BBQ, then hit the road for home. We finally pulled up to the house at 12:35am. Long day, but totally worth it.

On another note, we towed with the 6.4l SRT Jeep and averaged 12.5 mph running 77 mph. Love that thing.

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Really enjoying this thread. Keep it coming