Took it for a long ride on Wednesday last week. Had a whistling sound from the engine bay, it kept downshifting on my when I accelerated while turning right, and exhaust was banging on the rear spring. Sounds worse than it was but still.
Thursday I got a call from the manager at Midas (where I had the exhaust made) and they asked me to come back so the mechanic can make sure everything settled OK. I didn't call them. They called me! Nice surprise!
So I took it back Saturday and on the way there I stopped at Autozone to get some oil. While there I bought a new PCV rubber donut seal (whatever it's called; mounts the PCV to the valve cover) and tried to put it in. Old one broke in half and fell into the engine. Pulled off the valve cover to get it out (while in the parking lot...) and discovered the back of my intake was about 1/4" lower than the front. Found that whistling noise! So I fixed that too. While at Autozone. In their lot.
No more whistle!
Drove it to Midas. They put it up on the lift, made some adjustments with a torch and a hammer (because I told them to not worry about it too much: I have more than enough diameter for them to dent the exhaust to clear a bit), and drove it home.
Runs really well once I get past the dang intake freezing up.
So next weekend I'll make up my heater plate and put it on, plumb it in, and run the car again. Should clear up the bogging and make it run even better.
The intake is sagging down because I had to trim the flanges around the studs to clear the Langdon headers. I'm thinking I'm going to do something a bit different with the intake/exhaust stud "nuts" and maybe make up something out of 1/4" steel that's a bit wider and can support the rear a bit better. It's gonna be fun times with a cardboard template, grinder, and a drill! I only need to do it to the rear-most stud to get the support I'm looking for. I might make up a cradle to go between the two rear-most studs instead. Not sure yet.
Overall still very happy. It sounds much better without the exhaust banging on the body. Nice and throaty.
After the cradle I'm going to dynamat the trunk and put in a liner to make it look like a modern trunk complete with carpet. The exhaust sound is reverberating back there and making the inside of the car a bit louder than I want. This should fix that because you can clearly hear the sound from the back of the car. The rest has been dynomatted already.
