Well, as some of you may know, I have been on a time crunch to get this engine running by Friday so the county will leave me alone. Well, I got my radiator hooked up, hoses, wiring and everything done. I go to start it up and it just cranked and cranked. Took a while to get fuel up to the pump but it got there. Somewhere in the midst I forgot to hook up the 12V switched wire for my MSD so I had no spark. Got that figured out and had a friend crank the car while I worked the throttle on the carb. Once the thing lit off let me tell you this focker is LOUD!!!! If I had to describe it the exhaust sounds snarly. The girlfriend was sitting on the couch in the house, and said that the car was making the couch vibrate. She didn't seem to mind at all . So once the county comes tomorrow to look at the car and hopefully give me the green light, I will start to mess with the timing and some other little stuff. Got some small leaks that I have to deal with but nothing major. So I am happy and excited that everything works and ther weren't any major problems. I just figured that I'd let you guys know.

 

excellent. i read your vent/rant on the appearance and detailing board and can't for the life of me figure out what the big deal is. i mean, come on! oh well, have fun with it and hope all goes well for ya!

 

I got mine fired up a few weeks ago. I finished building it late last year. When I put it into the car I had to do a bunch more modifications before I could even see if it would run. I had some minor flooding problems from a leaking o-ring in one of the needle valves. Once I fixed that, timing was close enough to get it started and the engine fired up instantly. If you think yours is loud, my BBC has a .714 lift cam, 2-1/4" primary tube and 4" collector open headers. I usually wear ear plugs when I fire it up.

I have no idea what the neighbors think but nobody has complained yet. Usually when I'm loading or unloading off the trailer, I have a small crowd coming over to watch and ask questions so I guess they like it. I'm not dumb and go out to fine tune the carbs at 10 pm or anything like that.

It's a nice feeling when the results from all your work pay off and you hear the engine fire for the first time. I just want it to stay together for a full season.

 

Great news! I didn't see your inital post about this but I do like happy endings.

Way to go!!!

 

Well, I can honestly say that I enjoyed it even though my ears were ringing for about an hour afterward. I may have overestimated my hypothetical fuel mileage though because before I fired it up, I went to the gas station and got 5 gallons of 93 octane and put it in the tank. I did the whole break in procedure, 2500 RPM for 20 minutes. And that's all I got......
After 20 minutes at 2500 RPM, the engine shut off because it ran out of gas!!!

 

I've always wanted to see what cars got for gas "mileage" w/o load just idling.... to try and find out a car's "gallons per minute" or GPM I guess... I'd be interested to see what a LT1 vs say 4 banger Honda's would be... just to see how much the load has an effect on gas mileage... find out which one has the truely better technology.

Congratz BTW