Okay, after spending 4 hours under my hood, I pulled the head on the drivers side and besides now knowing for sure I have 1.94/1.50's and slightly dished pistons, I noticed the exhaust valves are very white. Why would they be this way? Is this normal? The plugs were fine, is the motor running lean? Other problems found with the motor were the water pump, valve springs, and a broken valve top. Im confused, am I safe to bolt and go as is?

Oh the current heads are going back on, and next winter im pulling the motor, rebuilding it with forged pistons, stroking it, and going to supercharge it later on. I figure why not just wait and do it right instead of half assing it in pieces. It will still be driveable and reasonably fast with the current heads, and my wallet will be heavier in the long run.

 

Its a judgement call whats bad and whats not. Just a guess without a picture, I'd say it was running too lean. Generally, exhaust valves are a light color, should look like coffee with cream or similar.

 

Right. White is normally lean. If you've got cooling problems, that could worsen it.

 

The motor would run hot in the summer, along the lines of 220-230. A new water pump is going on, the old one spins way to freely compared to my new one. If i spin it it will spin for 3 or 4 seconds. My father said lean, how do I tune it to not be so lean? Its got a CCC, and I have richer secondary metering rods, but I doubt that makes a difference in normal driving (although the secondaries are called upon a lot. It has DR rods and a B hangar). the old manifold was an old holley z manifold, which was a single plane, which i heard contributed to leanness. A dual plane ZZ4 is going on when it goes back together.

Is it bad to run lean? I was almost going to nitrous or boost the motor, maybe this was a blessing by finding out it runs lean this way instead of grenading the motor

 

If your running the computer controlled carb on that engine with the stock computer then there is your lean problem, it's giving you fuel for a stock 305 and you have a modified 350, it needs a lot more fuel. You may be able to rejet the primaries to get it close to where it needs to be.

 

Would a new computer chip help this? If so, what kind should I get. The car was originally an LG4. Im really pretty clueless as to how work this, I thought the computer didnt care what was under the carb