Got the water pump and electric fan controlled by the MegaSquirt now. It seems to reliably maintain temperature between 185*F-190*F now, so my heater should work decently now. With that I attempted to change out the blower motor but failed miserably at getting the inner fender well out. I did at least manage to get the blower motor in the car to quiet up.

Found a pretty significant vacuum leak in my home made Holley throttlebody. I had cut out a port on the base and forgot to plug an opening. I knew something was up since I had the idle screw backed all the way out and it still had trouble attaining a low idle rpm. Now it'll sit fine at 550rpm with decent timing, so idle control has been improved quite a bit. I have found another, smaller, vacuum leak at the #8 injector bung. I wonder if the lower o-ring has been damaged. I'm going to ignore it for the moment, though I might be tempted to spray some kind of sealant on it and see if I can get it to plug up.

I think I found where the valves float, right about 5,800rpm =P Seems to blow oil out the dipstick tube at that speed as well though. I have the LT1 smog pump running as a vacuum pump with the breather, but it apparently isn't enough to bleed off the crank case pressure. Being as this is just a used engine of unknown conditions I put some paint on, I'm not surprised (the oil pressure at idle is pretty low too...but at least it rises decently fast).

Here is a datalog of one of the runs hitting 5,800rpm in first and second gear. It hit's 60mph at ~5400rpm in second, and with the 175HP 1bbl cam it's still a pokey 11.8 seconds based on the datalogs. Backed it up a couple times. In first gear it's pretty noticeable that at about 5,300rpm the rate of engine acceleration slows down a bit (and slightly noticeable in 2nd, I shifted into OD at 4,600/80mph), so I'm thinking the HP power peak is right around 5,300rpm. Shifting at 5,500 netted a slower 0-60, so it seems its still worth pulling the extra RPM from an acceleration point of view.

Click the link for a picture of the data log. It posts too small to see anything.
https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t31/1614483_10202570100427392_970816479_o.jpg

Last edited by TheSilverBuick; 02/23/14 11:32 PM.