A long way to go and a short time to get there.

[Hawk231]

Finally some more progress to report. The rear end is in now.

Btw, the torque arm bushing comes with the Energy Suspension rear control arm kit.

I picked up a 76' parts car with a running 350-4. It has the manifolds I needed for the eventual 350 swap.

[Hawk231]

I finally found some time to post an update on the project.

The temporary exhaust mounted. If the Raptor mufflers sound ok I’ll make them part of the permanent exhaust.

Unfortunately, while I was running down my pre-start checklist, I ran into a problem with the in tank fuel pump. The rubber piece from the pump to the tube had disintegrated. My gauge sending unit was also rusted and not working. Luckily, I had a 4-cyl pickup and sending unit in my pile of stuff. I’ve had three different occasions where the fuel pump had been a problem, for no longer than I’ve owned the car, that’s unacceptable. So, I now have a mechanical fuel pump. The pump is mounted but not plumed yet. I should be able to avoid cutting the corner off of the driver’s side engine mounting plate, with a couple of additional brass fittings.

With any luck I’ll be ringing in the New Year to the sound of turbo mufflers.

[Hawk231]

The Skyhawk sees the light of day for the first time in too long.

The rear tires are 235/60/14, and they'd probably need a 1/4" spacer to safely use those rims on the street.

I'll get to the front S10 conversion a little later.

My brother is supposed to come over this afternoon/evening to help with the startup. Needless to say I'm pumped.

Although, I'm not expecting things to go off perfectly smooth...

[Hawk231]

Woohoo… Fire in the hole.
The cam is broken in and the oil pressure is good. It sounds pretty good too. The throttle response is crisp, even with the 600CFM carb. There’s definitely some tuning to do though. Now the fun really begins.

[flracer]

Nothing like hearing a new engine run for the first time.Good luck


Richard

[Hawk231]

Well I got some free time and decided to do some tuning today. The timing is set about as well as I could hope for. It’s got 14 deg of initial, 20 deg of mechanical advance in by 2800 rpm and 9 deg of vacuum advance. I had to make a stop for the vacuum advance to limit it to 9 deg. The mechanical is limited by a Moroso kit that comes with new weights and a new center plate.

I’ve got new plates for it too, but haven’t installed them yet. It’s going to be a little while longer before it’s road worthy.

[Hawk231]

More tuning today.

I’ve been having trouble getting the idle below 950 RPM since the initial startup. Turns out I did a bonehead thing by connecting the charcoal canisters carb bowl vent port to manifold vacuum. I didn't have the purge port hooked up to anything; the line was hanging below the AC accumulator. After capping off the bowl vent port I hooked the purge line up to the ported vacuum on the carbs primary metering block. The big vacuum leak was supplying the air and the fuel was coming from a carb problem.

The carbs pervious owner had "modified" it by putting a sheet metal screw in the vacuum secondary linkage. I removed the screw before I did the rebuild but didn't make any adjustments to any of the other settings. The guy had also bent the linkage bar that prevents the secondary system from opening. The extra fuel for the fast idle was coming from the secondary idle circuit. The guy had ran the screw that controls the idle position of the secondary butterflies in so far that they were exposing the transfer slots all the way to the top. I now have a nice steady 700 RPM idle. If I back the idle set screw out it will go down to ~500 RPM in park. Now I’ve noticed an intermittent problem with the accelerator pump. Occasionally, the pump will hydraulically lock and compress the actuator arms spring when you work the throttle. Either a passage in the circuit is getting intermittently plugged or the needle valve under the squirter nozzle is getting stuck. More fun, lol…

There was a problem with the distributor mechanical advance. With the lightest set of springs the full advance wasn’t coming in until ~ 2800 RPM. I thought that was a little odd but let it slide. After rechecking the initial timing I could see that part of the mechanical advance was still in at idle, hmm… I pulled the rotor off to make sure nothing was binding and saw rub marks on the ribs of the rotor. After a little trimming, the advance is now all in by 2400 RPM and all out at idle. It’s also giving me the full advertised advance of 23 deg, so I might have to back the initial timing back a couple degrees.

I pulled it out onto a public road for the first time since 2005. My sole intention was to see how the trans shifted, so I was only going a 1/4 mile up the street and back. When I pulled in to turn around I heard a clunking sound from the front end and felt a little vibration. Doh… Loose lug nuts. The trans shifted fine and I limped it back home and pulled it into the garage. Time for a beer

It still needs exhaust before it can really hit the road.

[stage169]

If it wasn't so early I would drink one too! I'm glad that wheel didn't come off. Brian

[res0o7eb]

Time for a beer

OK.

[Hawk231]

Lol, it's 5 o'clock somewhere.

Thankfully the wheel wasn't that loose. When I put together the traveling tool box I'm going to make sure I have a breaker bar and proper sockets for just such an emergency.

[Hawk231]

Been a long time between updates.

Ok, here's the first part. Maybe I can get in another before bedtime.

There is a poly motor mount from H&R Parts on the driver’s side now. I managed to get it to fit although it has slightly different offsets than the factory mount. The h-bodies weren’t listed among the applications. I may end up switching back to the rubber mount due to the noticeable amount of vibration that gets transferred to the body.


It has exhaust out to the rear bumper now. I'd originally wanted to go with dual 2" pipes all the way but it didn't work out. It now has 2" pipes to the catalytic converter and a single 2-1/2" pipe to the rear. On the up side the catalytic converter has a bung for an oxygen sensor, that's helped with the tuning a bunch. The generic 2-1/2" pipe is made for a 95-99 dodge neon. It worked out pretty well after I took a section out between the bends. I needed to make a slight turn in that area anyway. The muffler is a walker dynomax and the catalytic converter is a replacement made for a ford lightning or some such. I know the converter will flow well enough for my little v6.

[Hawk231]

I forgot to mention in the previous post that the muffler is located in the stock position and is using the factory hanger. I'll try to get a shot of the system in one of the next updates. It's not much to behold visually but it beats the sound of open headers.

One thing I noticed once the engine was quieted was that there was a rubbing sound coming from the rear end. This was no doubt a consequence of using the slightly shorter S10 axels to convert to 5 lug. it turns out that I needed to do some trimming on the backing plates and drums. Here's were I ground a little off the drums. I didn't get a shot of the backing plates but I'll try to do that the next time I have a wheel off.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get the used e-bay carburetor to work right. I ended up buying a Holley 470CFM Avenger carburetor. With the help of the oxygen sensor, I’ve been tuning the air fuel ratio with much better success. I had to take the primary jets down three sizes from #57 to #54. I’ve taken the secondaries down three sizes so far, also from #57 to #54. I can proudly say that I no longer smell like the cracking tower at a refinery when I take the car for a drive.

I think I’ve put about 250 miles on it since the exhaust was installed. It’s running better all the time. I still have a slight stumble just off idle if I ease into the throttle. Nail the throttle and everything works fine. The transmission has been working great. Even with the old carburetor any 1-2 shift over 2500 rpm would break the tires loose. I’ve been trying to limit myself to 5000 rpm redline so I don’t blow it up before it gets dialed in. I can tell that the engine really wants to rev though, it could easily use a 3.42 or 3.73 gear.

I'm still playing with the timing. If I'm reading the spark plugs correctly it has a little too much timing advance. I backed the static timing off a couple degrees and it seemed to help the off idle stumble. This is definitely still a work in progress.

[Hawk231]

I was so thrilled to pull it into a gas station under its own power for the first time in three years. That wore off pretty quick when I made the second trip and put $40 in it and didn't fill it. Even though I didn't make it to any of the buick, or h-body, gatherings this year I'm pretty pleased that I've gotten to drive the car around some. There shouldn't be such a long gap between future updates.

[stage169]

Sounds good sounds fun! I bet if you check your gas mileage it won't be that bad. You have to let me know what Buick shows you go to so I can try and make it too. Brian

[Hawk231]

Sounds good sounds fun! I bet if you check your gas mileage it won't be that bad. You have to let me know what Buick shows you go to so I can try and make it too. Brian

No way, lol... If you bring yours mine will look bad. I won't be making it to any this year for sure. Next year is also a question mark. There's a new deadline since we've got number 2 in the making. He/She is due at the end of January. I'll make sure I post when/if I get to go to one.

Mileage? What's that... I can't keep my foot out of it long enough to calculate it.