Thanks, I knew the screws attached to the headlight "cups". But didn't know why. Since I removed the adjuster screws I assume I'm gonna have to dial my lights in again.... ohh well. Also thanks a lot for showing me that headlight header !!! Now I'm gonna have to buy one. lol. On a more serious note, those do look like a great deal. And for the price I think the paint and fiberglass stuff to fix the old one, it might be cheaper to buy the new one.

 

Yeah that is really cheap I've got to admit. I was gonna tell you what those springs were for but I was too busy babbling on so I forgot lol. And hey if you wanna build up your 305 some just keep in mind that everything you add to it will swap over to the 350 when you finally are able to get one.

 

I admit I was worried about buying one at first because of the price. But after the local junkyard was going to charge me 40 for one (and that's after talking him down) I figured I had nothing to lose. I was impressed with it when I had mine shipped to me (I think it was even from the same ebay company). Just remember to remove all the bolt and screw clips from the old one before you throw it away.

 

Yeah, I'll make sure to get all the bolts off of it. I didn't know that 305 and 350 parts were interchangable. Does that mean if I buy a 350 that needs a cam and car, I can just swap the old 305 ones to the 350? Hey Intrepid, or anybody for that matter, we all should get together when I get this thing done at a car show somwhere in Indiana. Hopefully before I'm done with this thread we'll pick up even more Hoosier F-body guys, and maybe form a kinda club, were we could meet at shows every now and again.

 

Indeed. 305 heads give 350's better compression IIRC (I may be wrong) and I have a 305 cam in my 355 and it'll scream and it works great at least until I get a nicer cam for it. And I'd be all for a bunch of us meeting up somewhere but not till I get my maro painted it looks disgraceful right now lol

 

lol well that's fine, we can wait for you to get your maro painted. One other question about the 305 and 350. Could my 85 computered carb work on a engine made before computered cars were around.

 

Yes it can but you'll have to a non computer controlled distributor so it'll advance correctly.

 

What? No way!

If you use a computerized carb, you need to use the entire system, including the computerized distributor.

The computer related stuff is mostly on the intake manifold, unless you have a system with knock sensor, and even that screws into a water jacket drain that has been there since 1955.

 

So can I just use the distributor from my 305?

 

Why do you have to use all that? Why wouldn't it work just like any other carb?

 

Alright boys,
Been a while since I posted, but IT'S SQUIRL SEASON IN INDIANA!!!! So here is the work I've got done since I last posted.
First of all, I decided I wanted my iroc wheels to be polished. I couldn't see myself leaving them unpolished. Because this is the most perfect example of a good project for this car.... it's cheap, but it looks awsome and is overlooked only because of the time it takes to do, so to sum it up, It's a project that looks high dollar but not because it is but becuase of the hard work it took to get there. So here is how I did what I did below. I sanded the machining grooves down with 100 grit, then wet sanded from 320 through to 1500, and polished with mothers mag polish.
So here I go, this is what my other wheel looks like.
Camaro 56.JPG
And here is one in the process of being sanded. Can you tell the one spoke that's been sanded compared to the others?
Camaro 57.JPG
Here she is polished, the black was sanded and unpainted. I will do this later, I only have enough jack stands to do a wheel at a time, so they get polished then put back on, and it's off to the next one. If you look closley there is still mothers wheel polish in the spokes, no big deal, I'll get rid of that when I paint.
Camaro 58.JPG

 

Ofcourse if yall know me ya know that's not all. So here we go. Here is my center consol, and you guys wont' belive this but I went over it with 409 then a microfiber cloth loaded with baby oil. I will go over the rivots with black paint later. I think that will give it a real nice finished look.
Camaro 59.JPG
Here is another good project for this car. I don't have a before unfortunetley, but basically when the mooron who painted this car painted it he didn't even bother with taping off the head lights, so there was overspray of red on it. There lights are throw aways as most of you know, but being the spirit of this restoration, I just took some laquer thinner and cleaned em all up, good as new!
Camaro 60.JPG
Here is a question for yall. I start my engine and idle it for maybe 5 minutes, and some light smoke comes out of the hole in the head shiel around the headers. The hole that looks like a pipe coming out of the headers. If anyone knows, or could test theirs for me, I just need to know if this is normal or if it's a product of running to lean or rich.
Camaro 61.JPG

 

Here is a quick last little thing. I decided to get my steering wheel going, so I sanded it down, but first I took some mothers leather rejuvinator polisher stuff, and cleaned the leather wrapping, I just let it soak in then polished it off with a microfiber cloth. I haven't painted it yet, because I'm toying with making it a carbon fiber look to match the a/c, radio, and soon to be CB pannel. I am going to make my own panel out of steel, and so I think it would either look good, or stupid and odd, in the 80's style interior, any ideas would be appciated. I also might paint my steering wheel black, and the steel pannel with some krinkle paint.
Camaro 62.JPG

 

Looks pretty nice! I need to polish my wheels pretty bad...Oh and theres supposed to be some flex pipe on that little hole that goes up and hooks into your air filter lid thingy lol. It helps heat the car up faster with the heat coming off the exhaust. You don't need it though.

 

OOhh, ok, So will this help with cold winter starts?

Thanks, DacMan

 

No it wouldn't help with cold starts, it would just warm up the air that goes into the intake so the car would warm up faster. When you start the car the manifolds would still be cold so regular cold air would come up and it would be just as hard to start with it on as it would with it off.

 

Ohh, Gotcha. I have a wedding this weekend, so unfortunatley looks like it'll be while before I get going again.

 

Lol it isn't yours is it?? Haha jk But I hope you get it in working order soon!

 

No it's not mine, but it is one heck of a budget buster. Uhhhh. Ohh well, hopefully my brother will only do it once.

 

Yeah, I'd rather spend that budget on my carI wish there were jobs around here, I'm really tired of 11% unemployment rates and me being a statistic. It's annoying.

 

Man that does suck. I hate this resession. Hopefully it will be over soon. Or so much for filling my gas tank. lol

 

Yeah, I'd say the same but my 355 gets 26 mpg! Isn't that crazy??? Hey you wouldn't happen to know anyone around where you live with parts camaro's would you? I need an air damn for mine, it gets kinda warm without one...

 

26 MPG !!!! Wow. Are you driving only highway? Man I hope I get that kinda mileage. As far as parts cars no. I have been looking really hard for one though, so I'll make sure to tell you if I find one. I have been going to junk yards more than any place, but most of the f-bodies there aren't worth shaking a stick at. lol.

 

I know! I was like 250 miles on 9.6 gallons of gas...wait that can't be right..it gets better gas mileage than any other car that I've had! It was mostly highway miles but geez thats good for a V8. Theres actually 2 or 3 3rd gens in the yards here, where are you from?

 

I'm in Zionsville (home of the stuck up prics) lol. When I first lived here it was just a small farm town... not any longer lol.

 

Ah I've never been there. I'm not even really sure where its at lol

 

I am trying to get as much of the emissions SH** off of my engine before I remove it, however I don't know what all I can remover. I know about all threads, but I have been looking for two days and havn't found a thread that was actually a good how to thread. So if anyone know of one I would really appreciate it.

 

Hey intrepid, do any of those junk yard third gens have decent front bumpers? I can't seem to find any in my area.

 

Also (don't mean to double stack the Q's lol) I can't get the intake off my engine. I belive all the bolts are out. It looks like a liquid gasket might have been used to seal it, and I'm worried it'll take way too much force to remove it. Anyone got any ideas?



Thanks, DacMan

 

Anybody out there????? lol. I got the intake off and man is there some serious carbon build up. Never seen anything like this . I have a new question however. Considering the degree in which tere is carbon, should I remove the heads and de-carbon. I would like to avoid this cause I don't want to buy new exhaust and head gaskets. Also do I need to get my valve guides replaced? I am blowing blue smoke, but is this just becuase of the valve seals, or is there a strong possiblity that it could be the valve guides as well. Also anyone know how much a good valve guide job should cost? I'll get pics of this carbon SH** tonight.


Thanks, DacMan

 

Yeah there are bumpers in the yards around here actually. As for the carbon I wanna see pics of that, you should my motor its so clean and the oil is so brown like it should be it makes me proud If you think you can get the exhaust off without snapping any bolts I'd go ahead and do it and buy some new bolts, clean your motor up, and get new seals and gaskets it surely couldn't hurt any...

 

Your Oil is brown like it should be... ! Support at it's finest . The more I think about taking it off the more I don't want to, becuase of the hole, snapping bolts thing, and the $100 in gaskets it's gonna cost me just to take the heads off. I removed the dirstritbutor, shaft and all, and am now worried about putting it back in properly, as long as the engine doesn't turn over I'm alirght right?

 

Okay as far as carbon goes, you could try and clean it off. Any engine shop worth anything can acid dip parts for you. I like to get all my parts and hardware dipped, its easy and fast that and my guy back home only charged me $20 to do it. And it pays off big time on reassembly. Dirty head bolts are bad bolts PERIOD. Your torque readings can show up prematurely, meaning the crap on the bolt threads is showing the friction that the bolt threads themselves should be making. Over time that crap can displace and viola your headbolt is out of spec. Not to mention your head bolts keep coolant out of your engine meaning they need a perfect seal to do the job. Keep that in mind.

I just tore my L98 down to shortblock and brought it back up and I spent a wee bit more than $100 in various crap along the way. So if your on a budget, that may not be the best thing for you right now. I think I spent like $250.

Now your also talking about blue smoke, well man that might not just be your valve seals. A worn piston bore will make the engine puff blue smoke. So your 305 may be kaput. You need a compression checker to figure that out.

Now for your distributer problem, I used a method on my car to try and avoid having the timing going out of wack. When/If you take your heads off your going to take the tension off the valve springs by releasing the rocker arm bolts. And when you reinstall the heads your are going to need to turn the engine over to set the rocker arm valve lash back up.

My method was this: I made a line down the distributer shaft over the clamp and onto the intake manifold showing thier relationship to each other. Then I made a line on the cap that pointed to a mark on the firewall. Then I removed the cap and made a mark on the distributer to show the alignment of the rotor. With all this done I went on to do my work on the engine w/o turning it over and when it came time to do the lash I reinstalled the intake manifold and distributer. Did the work to set the lash and then remade the mark that had changed.

That is one method you can use.

If your confident in yourself you dont need to do that. You can just set it up the old fashoned way. By setting the #1 piston to TDC and installing the distributer in position to where it would be firing on #1.

I would also recommend taking a ton of pictures of every little thing along the way. It will help, TRUST ME.

Are you still going to take the heads off?

 

First of all, Thank you. That was a very informative post and I really appreciate it. I can't decide, I mean I could just run seafoam through it and try to forget about it right? As far as compression goes I have a tester but the engine is already apart. I heard that valve seals are a common issue on these engines, and considering I have 130,000 I think that it's probably not compression. I hope. I don't know what these engines will last to before they run out of good compression. Honestly the distributor thing confused me, and not because of the way you explained it but because I am a very visual and kinestetic learner, and have a tough time reading somthing and figuring it out. This is the first engine I've ever worked on that had more than one cylinder lol. I don't have the money to do a $250 head rebuild, unless I HAVE TO! I wish I have a bigger budget but I just don't. So what I'm thinking is I'll clean the carbon out of the intake valleye, and reasemble with new valve seals installed, and if that doesn't work, then I'll probably live with a oil burner for a while. I could just throw on some junkyard vortec heads, or some higher combustion heads right? Maybe put some new valve seals in and hope they have good valve guides. Certainly used heads like these at a pull it yourself place can't cost too much. Right?

Thanks, DacMan

 

Yeah there are things that I can't do myself so I can't help you out in those areas. Those things would be
1.Distributor timing - I've never done this. I really want to learn how so I guess I'll ask my old man in a week or 2, its definitely something I need to know.
2.Valve lash - Yeah, I've tried it and I think I did ok but I did it with the motor running and its an oily mess.
I think thats about it honestly. I think I could strip a motor down and put it all back together well, but tune it properly? Thats what I don't understand yet. Honestly Dac instead of putting all this work into your 305 you really should look into that 350 since everything swaps and you'll have alot more power. I have a 87 maro with a 305 and my 88's 355 has its way with it AND gets insanely good gas mileage somehow

 

It's interesting that you say that because I was begining to think the same thing. I am going to have a lot of money in this engine when I'm done, so maybe the 350 is the way to go. I know of one for $175, that needs a carb and cam. I could probably sell the rebuilt carb I have and get a decent carb, and then maybe throw the cam from my 305 in, and sell the old 305.

 

Now you're talking. And in order to install that cam you're gonna have to do the same things you've got going on with your 305 right now, as in taking off the intake. And as for the carb I have an edelbrock 600cfm on mine that IIRC only cost $150 and it has electric choke which is nice.

 

Man that's a really good deal on a carb! I think that's what I want to do. Now I've gotta get my friend to come over and pull the old sucker. I have another friend that's going to get me paint because he works for a auto paint company and he can get loads of pint paint samples. So I might end up with a free dupont viper red paint job!

 

DacMan, keep up the good work. Don't be discouraged by the lack of response, people are reading the thread but there isn't much of a real reason to respond so they don't. Another guy is doing a high dollar rebuild, but along the same lines as yours and he asked the same thing about people not responding.

 

Yeah I began to realize that after a few weeks after I made that post. Thanks for the encouragement.

 

Alright, so I got a bit done today, finally got some good pics for yall. Here is that nasty carbon I found under my intake... YUCK!
Camaro 65.JPG
Here is my steering wheel. I decided I really didn't like how it looke with the cap on. Like this.
Camaro 66.JPG
So I decided since I thought being able to see the mounting screws would look cools so I just welded a back to were the cap would go and It looks sweet.
Camaro 67.JPG
I'll post more later tonight but dinner is on!

 

Yeah that carbons not really too bad. I saw someone pull a 2.8 from an S-10 on another forum and the whole deck under the intake was absolutely covered from bottom to top in carbon I'd never seen anything so bad in my life..and as for the free paint job I say woot! I wanna get a sprayer and paint my S-10 a couple times so I can get some practice in before I do my car lol. I love free stuff. The steering wheel doesn't look too bad either post some pics when you get it finished.

 

Yeah, I could paint my car, but it wouldn't look near as good as when this guy paints it. He could paint my car with **** and it'd look sweet. . That's pretty crazy about that S10 carbon build up... that would suck. I can't decide wether to bondo over the center of the steering wheel to make it look smooth or keep it the way it is. The paint job I'm going to give the steering wheel should look pretty sweet. I did get one other thing done today, previously I showed a small interior peice I had painted black with krylon black. Well I did a big peice today so here it is.
Camaro 68.JPG
Also the guy who sold me the car gave me this.
Camaro 69.JPG
He said it is a super shocker or somthing, except it wasn't called that, it's a name brand. Anyway I don't know what all I need for it to work properly, but I have the cap and some other parts.

 

That panel looks great Dac! Like really great....wanna do mine?

 

Thanks Man. It looks a little spotty in the sun, but ohh well. (you better get on yours if we're going to meet at a show in the spring) I am going to talk to that guy about the paint this week. He says he thinks he can help me. The problem is I need to do a engine swap and paint in about three weeks . So I might end up throwing some valve seals at the 305, and a new intake gasket set. And do the swap in the spring. Not ideal, but that's what happens when you try to do a resto in three months. lol.

 

Lol I can't do anything to mine without money. I have parts bookmarked all over the place that are fairly cheap, new shocks/struts, subframe connectors, door hinge pins, a new hood, new rims, and all kinds of other stuff but I can't even afford the cheapest of them. It's quite frustrating. Can you tow your car to the paint guy instead of driving it to him?

 

I could, but it'd cost me about as much money to get 305 running as it would to rent a trailer. If the guy I'm getting the paint from has a booth I can use, then I can do the 350 swap in 5 weeks. And use the booth instead of the garage I'm in right now. I looked at colors last night. I like house of kolors kandy organic green, and this presimins red orange color they had as well. Hopefully I can use house of kolor, but dupont and ppg would be fine with me as well.

 

I found a 79 corvetter 350, which I belive means it's a high performance 350... ooooo baby. $400 obo, it's apart but that's not a problem. Anyone here have any thoughts?

 

Get some pictures so we can see if it needs rebuilt or bored out or anything. I'd get it if I were you, throw a nice cam in there and port and polish the heads and gets some headers and that should help you in the power dept.

 

I havn't seen any pics yet but I'll get em up when I do