Hey guys,
Haven't posted in a while and since I know this group of enthusiasts loves details, figured I'd post up a few small changes I made over the winter hoping to pick up a tenth or two.
Car ran 11.89 @ 116.23 last year. 86 GT with 190 11R heads, SM2, 1-3/4 headers, reused cam (from an old build with Cobra intake/ AFR 165 heads); otherwise the car is full weight, back seat, A/C, your family friendly street car if you will.
Changes so far - finally hacked open my Systemax 2 to see the insides and do some porting. While I didn't get any pics of the porting work like a dunce, I'm fortunate enough to live within a stone's throw of EthylCat, who welded it back up for me very nicely. Thanks for the great work, Steve!
Alongside that, I put a dial indicator on my rocker studs to see if they really flex under spring pressure when valve is open. Sure enough, they do even though it's very slight - at 6400 rpm I know it's even worse. So next purchase - Jomar one piece stud girdle:
Lastly, had to use tall valve covers to clear the girdle, and it turned out to be sort of a blessing. When marking up the spacer to see the transition of the upper to the lower, I came across some areas where the two were not aligned perfectly, to say the least:
The way I did this is set the spacer on the lower, bolted it down as if it would be when running, then took a sharpie and marked all the places I could feel a "lip" between the lower runners and the spacer. I then removed the spacer and used a rotary tool to grind away and smooth the areas, then placed it back on the lower to check alignment again. Rinse repeat until the lower transition to the spacer was perfect.
THEN I bolted the spacer to the upper to see where it was off, and that's why in the 2 pics above, you see metal on the other side of the spacer. So I took to my sharpie and marked every place metal was showing, removed spacer, ported away, put spacer back to check, rinse repeat until the transition was smooth. Note that there were also places the spacer covered an area where air would flow if the spacer wasn't there, so the spacer was bigger than the upper runner in some places, and smaller (restrictive) in others, so I had to carefully grind the spacer at an angle for the areas where it was restrictive in order to preserve the integrity of the runner, aka I don't want to just hog out the spacer to the size of the upper runner for fear of creating turbulence when air comes in and smashes against the lower intake.
In the end, the spacer now creates a nice smooth transition between upper and lower versus the restriction and turbulence that had to exist before. This, alongside using a set of Ed Curtis's thick lower intake gaskets to help out my head port to lower port alignment get to where it should be, definitely won't hurt things.
I'm also removing my EGR spacer and bolting the throttle body straight to the intake, which I ported the inlet out to 80mm to match the TB. The only change I haven't gotten to is 3" X pipe and later - 3" tailpipes and exhaust. If I picked up 2-3 tenths and 1-2mph from those changes I'd be happy.
Here is a pic to whore my car out:
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