Big progress today. Main jets were 54's (forgotten i put those in). Put in the 9.5 power valve, seemed to help slightly. Went to the machine shop, guys came out with timing lights and help. Timing is 8BTDC with premium gas. Max timing is 40BTDC. Smoother, but still sluggish in lower RPM. Discovered exhaust leak, shop put it up and found one nut disappeared! The replaced it, tightened it all up with air wrench and amazingly, it's not nearly as sluggish as it was. Wow, not having proper back-pressure really surprised me as to the effect.
Another problem though. I had used some sort of sealer (liquid metal?) on the intake header to seal up the Offenhauser water plugs. Those are ever so slighly leaking.
Now that the intake is on the car and I'm reluctant to remove, what are your recommendations to repair? Guys tell me to pop out the plug, thread it for pipe threads and put in a plug. Just looks super hard for the front plug, just really hard for the back plug. Suggestions?
Thanks!
