It ran, then it broke, then it ran, then it leaked, and now it runs again!

It Runs!

We finally got the car running in Dec. 2016 and got the car moved up to Washington in April of 2017. It had one hell of a dead spot just off idle and a bad trans leak, but it was here and it was running.

The trans leak ended up being a hole in the top of the transmission that didn't belong there (accidentally drilled through the floor pans? H2IK...), but was easily fixed with some epoxy (since it wasn't in a high-pressure area of the trans body.

The dead spot on the other hand, was not so easy. We played with the 4-corner idle mixture on the Barry Grant Claw 750 carb, which helped a bit. But the thing that the car really wanted was timing. We gave it 24* initial plus 12* centrifugal, which (in hindsight) was a bad idea. It was running 12 psi of boost, and 36* of timing, which did not agree with the #5 and #7 pistons.

It Broke!

The teardown begins!
I had to take the cylinder head off to inspect the damage, which confirmed the two broken pistons. So now it was time to order some parts and pull the motor.



So out came the old pistons, and the new aftermarket ones went in.

And the motor went back into the car (with a bit of help from my little mechanic).



The car needed to have the 24* of initial timing to get rid of that dead spot on idle, but I had to lock out the centrifugal advance in order to prevent the same thing from happening again.

It Runs!

So we got it back together and running again. And boy does it run! While it was apart I disassembled the wastegates and swapped out the springs to a pair of lighter ones, and now it makes a perfect 7 psi of boost. It is quite a lot of fun to drive.

But it leaks!

It was leaking from the rear-main seal. So out came the transmission and rear crossmember so I could use the home-built seal puller tool I made. The seal came out, and the new one went right back in.

It Runs Again!

It is all back together again, but I now want to install the nice billet programmable Mallory distributor we bought for the car a few years back. The problem is that the software that powers the distributor looks to have been written by a 4 year old. The first time we attempted to upload a new timing map to the distributor, it corrupted all of the memory. So I spent the better part of 4 hours disassembling Mallory's application, re-writing a large part of code, and re-compiling it again. Once I was able to upload a stable, non-corrupt base map back to the distributor, we were in business.

So now I just need to install the Mallory distributor back into the car in place of the Pertronix one that it has been running on. Then I will be able to control the entire timing curve at any given RPM point, as well as retard the timing as the boost comes up. So I will be able to make not only more power, but more reliable power as well.