Finally got my lazy *** off my chair, and got to work this afternoon. I got the rear Cylinder Head completely ready to go. Everything from gasket scraping, to installing the valves [with a LOT of grease, I may add]. I was lucky enough to get all the grease and **** off the head with just a metal wire brush on my rotary tool. Cleaned it up very nice, I might add. I don't have any pics yet.. but I will shoot some towards the beginning of the re-assembly. It seemed like 2 hours, but I spent a good 5 hours cleaning up the ports, cleaning it, then installing the valves/springs [somehow]. I still have the exhaust dropped, and it will still be dropped for the intial 9am Saturday start-up. Time to **** off el-neighbour-o . If I really work hard tomorrow, I have a good feeling that I can get the heads and engine exhaust installed.

So far everything is going smoothly. Everthing should come together at this point. My goal is to have the car driving by May 15. I don't see why I can't accomplish that.


-justin

Go little man go!

Better take video if you can with a digi cam of the first start in it'* new life.

My digicam doesn't take sound though :(. I may as well take the video, and if I ever get this **** figured out, I'll let everyone see. I have a feeling I may be driving without an exhaust for a little while. I may become attached to the noise


-justin

I doubt that you'll like how the car sounds without exhaust. I had my downpipe seperate from the cat a year or so ago. It was incredibly noisy, and not in a good v8 kind of way. It didn't sound powerful, just loud.

Then again, to each his own.

We had a V8 engine out of a 1956 Impala or something like that in our power mechanics class. We ran that sucker on its stand with nothing on the exhaust. Holy crap was it loud. At 2000 or 3000 rpm it was unbearable. You couldn't hear what someone 2 feet away from you was saying. I've always been curious what the 3800 would sound like. You will need to get something to record sound.

I'll still record it, however whether or not you guys will be able to see it, is another story.


-justin

I helped a buddy time his 69 firebird 400.

In his garage (next to the wall)

Open headers...

The 3800 does have a different sound without an exhaust. Very weird sounding. listen to this modified Rivera

http://www.rocketfast321.com/Videos/Rivrunning.WMV
rigt and save as

That Riviera sounds like it has a new cam and open headers. Nice sound.

Just thought I would update everyone.

I have all the heads done porting [still barely touched the intake.. but it'* time will come].

The heads are also all ready to go in, so the valves, valve stem seals, and springs are all in. The rockers aren't installed yet, because either Straitor'* set will come before I fire her up, or I will throw mine on temporarily. Plus they get in the way.

All gasket mating surfaces are cleaned, piston carbon cleaned off, head gasket material was all scraped off [both on block and on heads]. All the threads holes I could find were cleaned. Basically there isn't much left for me to clean. I just have to vacuum the head gasket scrapings, and give a final lookover before throwing the heads on.

The headers are about 90% ready to go on. I still need to clean up the welds, and fix the heat shields [they fell off, so I need to re-rivot them back on].

Everything seems to be going smoothly, so let'* hope everything goes well. If I am lucky, I MAY be able to start her tomorrow, but the likelihood is slim, and I really don't want to rush it. I've waited this long, you know.

Oh yeah... can't forget the final figures on the porting.

Intake: 1" wide, 2" tall
Exhaust: 1.4" wide, 1.2" tall

That is just higher [not visible, but feelable] of a size. Perfect, if you ask me


-justin