Thought I would share some pictures of the restoration of our timing cover. I painted the water pump and timing cover to match, both in the original Pontiac Blue color. Very excited at how well these pieces were able to be restored for use on our high performance motor. I am still putting the attachments on it like the fuel pump cover, the new crank snout seal and some of the other little pieces. I’ll try to remember to post a picture of the final result of the timing cover once all accessories have been added and detailed.
Tags: Engine
Some of you may be aware that we are having some alignment and suspension issues. For my own investigation, I am finding pictures of the car in a fully loaded state (half way down the track) so I can take measurements for what state the suspension is in when under acceleration. So that is what this gallery is all about.
Tags: suspension
I spent a few minutes in the garage over the weekend – I am working on the new engine. Most of my time was spent finding a flywheel that we use to degree our cam and then getting it installed on the engine. I’m going to fabricate a pointer that will be based off the distributor bolt hole. I like using the flywheel (its actually an OEM flexplate) as our degree wheel because the diameter is so large that it has superior accuracy to the traditional degree wheel available for purchase. Also – there is no question about where TDC (top dead center) is located because the bolt holes for the plate force it to be positioned correctly. The only bummer is that you have to look at the back of the engine while turning it over but this is a small bummer 
Anyway – I was going to try to set my cam timing and degree the cam with the high performance, high pressure valve springs in tact but it is too hard to get the engine to turn over without meeting alot of resistance so I pulled the head and am going to replace the spring with a light one. This will also allow me to use the adjustable pushrod that we have to take an accurate measurement there. I found a set of Buick pushrods that are 9.378 and the length seems just about perfect but I need a stronger pushrod and finding one at that exact length hasn’t been easy so I am going to look for what range (a min and max) length will be acceptable to promote proper valve train geometry.
On April 7th we got to take the car out to the track for the first time this season. I was able to talk my family into recording some of the runs on our new video camera and we were able to put a camera inside the car at the same time. So if you look carefully, this video has a small “Picture-in-Picture” in the bottom right corner that is the “In car cam” shot.
I love how you can hear the engine in this one and you can see how hard it was to keep the car straight too.
In the next few weeks I am hoping to put together a new video about valvetrain geometry so be on the look out for that!
Looking forward to getting home in a few hours and opening my box of goodies. I’ll try to film the box opening because I always wanted to show one of those for our YouTube Channel. Anyway, here is what we are expecting to arrive today:
- Cometic Head Gaskets
- PRW Stainless Steel 1.5 Rocker Arms
- Aluminum Valley Pan
- ARP Head Bolts for Edelbrock Performer RPM O-port heads
Not a ton – but definitely a significant investment. With these, I can start to assemble the valve train and get to where I can actually figure out the correct geometry and determine the length of pushrods to buy. The next order will be pushrods and harmonic balancer so I can effectively set the cam timing check and perform a clearance check on valve to piston clearances. Looking forward to the next few steps of development of the new engine.
Tags: 455, Engine, jim butler performance