ecu???

Novaderrick, have you ever thought about painting them semigloss or satin black? It would look close enough to stock that most wouldn't even notice. Oh & did you hunt down a factory dual snorkel air cleaner assembly or did you fabricate one? Seems like the factory duals are getting hard to find.

I'm not sure what size he's running right now, but 14" diameter is almost a requirement. 10" & smaller air cleaners cork up performance in my experience. I once used an 8" cleaner & couldn't believe the power it robbed. Besides, you can never go too big with an air cleaner even on a stock motor .

also, when you get to the dist, get a curve kit, about 10.00, use the heaver weights an light springs. maybe advance that timing up a few degrees at a time. that is a seat of the pants feel you will notice. little more pep from the git and some mid range power. also, try capping off your vaccum advance, see how it acts. do the curxe kit first, then the timing. remember: spark knock is BAD. test an retest. dont go to far on the timing. you might even have to richen it up a smidge. do a plug check before you start, then beat on it after you think your good. recheck plugs for color. med to a med dark is wjere you want to be. white is BAD lean NO GOOD. let us know!!

mally i will include the drop base for the air (if i still have it ) no charge bro, wont need it with two carbs

Rago wrote:Novaderrick, have you ever thought about painting them semigloss or satin black? It would look close enough to stock that most wouldn't even notice. Oh & did you hunt down a factory dual snorkel air cleaner assembly or did you fabricate one? Seems like the factory duals are getting hard to find.

I'm not sure what size he's running right now, but 14" diameter is almost a requirement. 10" & smaller air cleaners cork up performance in my experience. I once used an 8" cleaner & couldn't believe the power it robbed. Besides, you can never go too big with an air cleaner even on a stock motor .

i tried painting the shiny dryer ductwork on my Nova, and the paint didn't stick. it flexes too much. i used to always run black dryer duct, but i can only find it in bling bling or white any more.
but i've got a really cool idea in my mind that involves stock cold air flexible ducting and some air ducts out of either a Fox body Mustang or 90's Chev/GMC pickup that go out thru the inner fenderwells in front of the wheel and out right behind the front bumper, and maybe put those grilles in the front bumper to use feeding cold high pressure air into the air cleaner. it will look stock to people that don't know any better.
and it is not a factory dual snorkel air cleaner- i made my own. it's not that hard to do. i've made 4 or 5 of them over the years.

kennebell.com
don' waste time piece'n one together they have a Grand National kit that can be adapted to our car's

a lil bit more more expensive but very very well worth it

it bolts right to bottom of bumper under turn signals

it's http://www.kennebell.net/

i'm kind of weird- i'd rather spend $20 and a weekend making junkyard parts work than spend $200 on brand new parts and need to spend a whole weekend making it work.
fabrication is a part of the hobby for me, and has been since i started out helping my dad and grandpa work on their stuff when i was a kid back in the 70's.. being broke is also part of the hobby for me.

amen brother!

Ok heres my 2 cents on this ordeal.

If you want to make sure your buddies dont keep up for $500 bucks go spend the money on an adjustable nitrous plate kit. NX and ZEX are supposed to be good and NX warrenties their soleinoids. Start with 75 shot but on a stock 400 I wouldnt go much more than 125-150 DONT get addicted or youll start blowing your motor up. Since your running stock fuel system I would get a 1 gallon fuel cell and a holley pump of some sort to use with the nitrous kit. Fill the cell with Race Gas and that will help keep your motor alive longer. 1 gallon will go for a while but ALWAYS check it before a run.

If you dont want to go that way and want to stay slow.
Bolts ons are your friend as well as weigh reduction. Lose the AC get a set of NON AC pulleys that will free up some HP (smaller crank pulley, larger everything else)
Electric Fan will free up alot of HP.
Long Tube headers, you can find a set fairly cheap used that just need some cleaning and painting.
With the HEI get the MSD or knock off pro comp electronic conversion, good wires (i recommend taylor) timing set to 38 total with advance reduced some to increase intial timing.
Everyone has their choice and opinion but I recommend a holley carb.
A matched up stall convertor and the tranny shifts firmed up with some gear (3.43-3.73)

On the Air filter get a good 14" Cleanable that is the tallest you can fit under the hood. The Air filter Lids have been dyno proven to cause problems and restrict air flow.

Other than that, your gonna be tearing into the motor.
Cam, heads, pistons, valves, roller rockers, etc
www.competitionproducts.com has good cheap cam combos. MAKE SURE to get matched springs to your cam. keep the lobe seperation tight like 109 or 110 to keep cylinder pressures up.
Getting the cam timing right as well will help even with a stock cam. Get a TRUE ROLLER timing chain set not just a double roller. Gear drives are not good, they rob horse power.

Gonna have to debate with you on this one Black. Gear drives are more accurate & maintain horsepower. When your timing chain wears out, it stretches which causes timing to bounce around & you lose potential power.

Nitrous is a good cheap way to make budget power if his motor is in decent condition. If not, well..... pretty easy to figure out. MallyMal, listen to the man. He has some decent advice on a budget nitrous set up. NX is likely to be the affordable one in this case.

Hell yeah Taylor wires are the only wires to run! I dealt with too much MSD junk in the past to ever go back to their products though. My dizzy stays with Accel or possibly Pertronix if I decide to go a different route.

Nitrous kit on a stock motor with cast pistons? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Should be fun for a couple runs, but not much more. Aside from that, a properly installed nitrous setup will cost you.

What about fuel and oil pressure Hobbs switches? If either one of them drop, you want the nitrous solenoid to shut off.

And what about your timing? If you want the car to run its best while not on the bottle, you'll ping like crazy when you hit the button. Say goodbye to that motor. Or you can get a timing retard control module to insure there's no issue. I suppose you could get your timing gun and wrench out each time you plan to hit the button, but who is going to do that???

You could always save the $100 here and $200 there and save your pennies for a proper motor build. If you can live with how your car currently drives, save every dime you would have spent on misc parts, you'll get to your magic $$ figure faster than you might think.

BlackChevelleSS wrote:

If you dont want to go that way and want to stay slow.
Bolts ons are your friend as well as weigh reduction. Lose the AC get a set of NON AC pulleys that will free up some HP (smaller crank pulley, larger everything else)
Electric Fan will free up alot of HP.
Long Tube headers, you can find a set fairly cheap used that just need some cleaning and painting.
With the HEI get the MSD or knock off pro comp electronic conversion, good wires (i recommend taylor) timing set to 38 total with advance reduced some to increase intial timing.
Everyone has their choice and opinion but I recommend a holley carb.
A matched up stall convertor and the tranny shifts firmed up with some gear (3.43-3.73)

On the Air filter get a good 14" Cleanable that is the tallest you can fit under the hood. The Air filter Lids have been dyno proven to cause problems and restrict air flow.

i'll try to go thru these one point at a time, based on my experiences over the years:

i've never seen a set of "non ac" pulleys for a long water pump- all the non ac cars and trucks i've ever seen have always had what looked like the very same crank and water pump pulleys as the AC equipped vehicles- only without a belt running in that extra groove. as far as weight reduction, the 40 pounds taken off the car by removing the AC setup won't make much difference in a 4000 pound car. but i guess it's a start.
electric fans do NOT free up a "lot of power" compared to a properly functioning clutch fan. it still takes engine power to run the fans, ony instead of turning a fan mounted to the water pump, you are turning an alternator that has to work harder. i've checked this myself on different cars- i've never seen a noticable difference in power or fuel economy after switching to an electric fan. but electrics do open the engine bay up and make it easier to work on the front of the motor. altho my 92 Caprice did have to work really, really hard when the fan clutch went bad and kept the HD 7 blade fan locked up-made a lot of noise, too. sounded like a jet from in front of the car.
long tube headers are a good idea, but there is no need for anything bigger than 1 5/8" primaries on anything making less than 400hp. good dual exhaust with an X pipe is also a good thing.
you don't need an MSD distributor or wires to make power. a junkyard distributor with new stock replacement guts will do the job.
Holley carbs are good for people that like to play with their carb every time the weather changes- i'm a quadrajet man, myself, but this guy has a Carter/Edelbrock, which is my second choice.
small blocks do like a 3.42 gear.
air filter- another area where i did back to back testing with my 71 Nova with about 400hp under the hood. i ran several different air cleaners on that car- old style single snorkel with the 1" or so intake tube, later single snorkel with ram air hose hooked up, home made dual snorkel with ram air hoses, 14"X3 open element, 14X4 open element. the only one that made a difference in noticeable power was the stock single snorkel with no ram air. i never ran that one at the track, but on one night i did back to back to back to back runs over a 1/2 hour period at a "street race grudge night" on a 1/8 mile track with all of the other setups, and my mph was the same for all of them. so i chose to stay with the one that gave me 2 more miles per gallon every day- the dual snorkel ram air setup.

electric fans help alot, ive changed from wornout clutch fans (like worn out so bad that the fan didnt turn much at idle) to electrics and the gain was noticeable. Even on the 302 cougar it freed up enough power to get it to spin the tire from a dead stop as it wouldnt before.

Im not a small block guy but their is a difference between non ac pulleys and ac pulleys on a big block. The import guys call them "under drive pulleys" the big block guys call them non ac pulleys. what ever they are called they do help.

Im still running stock guts HEI in my chevelle but we have done testing and the MSD module helped slightly but the biggest plus, especially with nitrous was the rev limiter, it will help save your motor if something goes wrong.

I have ran a holley 750dp on my car since ive had it. Only once I tried an edelbrock 750 dp. Even after being tuned it never ran as good as my holley. Ive got a modified 830 dp on it now and I can go fire it up everyday with one pump of the throttle, let it warm up for a minute then itll idle all day long even with my lathargic motor and big cam. Minor adjustments needed through out the year.

Nitrous is the best bang for the buck. stock motor with cast pistons will be fine as long as its less than 125 shot. Cast pistons are more forgiving than hyperutectic and ive been running a 150 shot on my KB hypers for a while with no problems. Hell my 95hp 1.6L GEO will take a 50shot with the stock motor and cast pistons. Fast and the Fucked made nitrous out to be a killer, its not if it is properly setup, yes your car maybe down a few HP without the bottle but with it, youll have more power than any $500 bolt ons will get you.

Gear drives and hold their time very well but they do rob horse power to turn compared to a True Roller timing chain set. My 396 has a cheap cloyles double roller in it with 15000 miles and it hadnt stretched. I run a cloyles true roller with thrust torrington bearing machined in with a roller thrust botton on the 454, only has a couple thousand miles on it and its doing well but i havent had it apart to check anything yet.

that is a great point. NOS on cast pistons is not good. and if you run it lean, BOOM.. thats a lot to get moving. gears by far with give a seat of the pants feel right from the gate. you will FEEL that.gonna shift quicker, so get a whoa nelly kit. play with the timing. get carb set up. maybe a small converter, 2500 2800. get um cheep. got mine for 200.00, and LOVE it. spend your five on that. then if you want to give the NOS a shot, have another five, to do it RIGHT! AND SAFE! it'ii live for a while with a hundy shot, but it WILL shorten the life span, alot. ask how i know!!!

I disagree about cast pistons being stronger than hypereutectic ones. The hypereutectic pistons are much stronger than cast, it's the fact that they tent to shatter rather than just crack or break like cast. Either way, you're screwed if it happens.

Nitrous is definitely the cheapest way to go for horsepower, but you need to be smart. Installing it on a daily driver could prove to be pretty expensive though. Once you hit that button, you're going to want to hit it all the time. You start driving around with the bottle open, or install a remote opener on it so you can turn it on anytime... Filling bottles adds up quick.

I've seen stock motors run nitrous & survive. It's all about being conservative (or owning an import, lol JK). Sure, if you use nitrous every time you go out driving your motor won't last too long. If you only have it as a back up for when some punk is handing you your A$$, then it shouldn't be too bad. Of course in reality, speed is an addiction & knowing you can up your power by changing jet sizes becomes too tempting. Before you know it, you're pumping 250hp through a stock motor & blowing your head gaskets. In most cases, you're gonna blow a 30 year old gasket before you even get the chance to smoke a piston.

Yes it is crucial to retard your timing or you will go boom. Although the switches & controllers are a good idea, they aren't really budget minded. A good kill switch for the entire system could work for the time being & running your car retarded at all times isn't as bad as it sounds. Other than that, if you are running 100 shot & melting a piston that just means you over ran your mouth & put yourself in a race with someone that's out of your league so you juiced it too long trying to keep up.

Here is an article to check out. Keep in mind this was written by a magazine so take everything with a grain of salt:
http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/116_0406_nitrous_350_chevy/index.html
Notice that it supposedly took 400hp to blow the pistons. Even then blowing a ring land isn't bad enough to keep the motor from running & you could likely limp home after this.

My case in point about mag articles, read this & you tell me:
http://www.chevyhiperformance.com/techarticles/148_0303_small_block_nitrous_blow_up/index.html
Different mags, different stories, same 1975 motor from the same place?

Here's some good reading:
http://www.nitroussupply.com/faq.php

i think im going to hold off on nos and just learn how to do the timing or have my shop do it for me...possibly even show me. i also think im going to purchase rockers and pushrods today. then 3.55 gears (ring and pinion?) then headers. this should be over a 2 week span, tops

im asking the guy about the brand as we speak but if they're a good brand do you think these will fit in my 75 laguna on my 40sbc??? its said to fit on camaros from 70-81

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/pts/1287708942.html

Are you going full roller, roller tipped, or stock replacement rocker arms? 1.5, 1.52, or 1.6? Just curious.

Instead of buying push rods now, think about having your pressed in studs removed & getting screw in studs. If you go with full roller rockers, you want this anyways to keep the studs from pulling out at high RPMs. Buy push rods after you get a cam so you don't end up having to buy a second set if the new cam requires a different length.

Sounds like you're starting to get a good plan laid out. Glad to hear you sorted through all of our rambling & chose the route you want to take. One more suggestion is to buy some sort of rear traction aid like a locker or limited slip when you get the gears swapped. Then show us a vid of you smoking off the new tires, lol.

Looks like you posted again while I was replying. Yes those should fit, but see if he also has the part number available. PNs can tell you every vehicle they will fit on. Depending on what brand they are, these could be a good deal.

haha yea sorry bout that but im gonna go full 1.6 rollers. oh and i definately will show off a bit on youtube

ok i'll call him tonight for the brand and part number. think they're hookers? i doubt for that price but im hoping

ps. how do i know the stud size i need? 3/8 or 7/16

You can have either installed. If you really plan to stick with stock press-in studs, they are 3/8. I still recommend getting some screw in studs installed, especially with full roller rockers.

They could be Hooker, IDK. Some people will sell stuff at dirt cheap prices if it's in the way.

You really think he's going to pull a stud out of the head with a stock cam and springs? I figured rockers would be an easy item to carry over whenever new heads are the item of the day...

Jesus... we are all going to have this poor guyd head spinning in no time.

Here's the last piece of advice I'll give on the matter... Step One: Go buy any smallblock book by Smokey and stop listening to us.

I doubt he will, but it can & has happened. It's true that rockers are an easy part to transfer over, but am I not correct in saying screw in studs are a good safety measure for $50-60 compared to buying a set of pushrods for $100 that might end up being useless when he upgrades the cam?

I suggested a good book by David Vizard, which he said he has ordered. If he reads that book, he should start to get a decent understanding. As far as I know, Smokey only wrote one performance book titled, "Smokey Yunick's Power Secrets" which costs $50-60 when & if you can find it. He also had "The Best Damn Garage in Town" which will run you almost $100, but it's mostly an autobiography & history of racing. If the "Power Secrets" book can be found cheaper, let me know. I lost my copy years ago & would love to have another .

lol a lot of things do fly over my head but i do catch things here and there and what i dont know i either search teh web or ask someone online or in person. yes the book is going to help a lot but the next best thing than an acyual mechanic showing me the ropes are you guys. books only go so far and arent too interactive. im sorry that im such a noob, just trying to utilize every tool i can.

i really do appreciate the time and patience you guys hand over, even if it seems like you guys are throwing it into a bottomless pit lol. believe it or not i am learning knowledge wise. i just need some hands on experience, then things will start to click even more