vacation and some other more pressing items got in the way since my last post. As of today the engine is complete, running and ready to install aside from addressing a couple small issues.
For one, the fresh carb had major over-rich issues on startup. Checked everything several times and found no obvious issues, but the primaries were dumping fuel like showerheads.
Since I couldn't run it very long like that, we swapped to a spare carb and will send this one back to the carb shop. I bought the main body used and had it restored, but am afraid either it or the metering block has seen some race mods that we missed.
The backup carb worked great and the rest of break-in went great. Motor sounds awesome!
Here's our engine run-in stand adapted to work with the cobra radiator and
oil cooler. BTW, Speedway's pre-fab FE crossmember is too narrow to clear the Aviad
oil pan. I thought I'd save some time by buying vs. fabricating one, but ended up hacking and reinforcing Speedy Bill's piece...
here's an ironic twist - for giggles I tried to reuse the old MSD unit and a couple gauges on the test stand. The
oil temp and fuel pressure gauges cleaned up and worked great, and would you believe the MSD worked like a champ after being underwater, caked in mud, and left to sit for over a year? Guess they're sealed pretty well from the factory!! Even the old Mallory electronic distributor guts tested ok, although we'd already purchased replacements for everything.