[elky] Monte Carlo final report for the day. Still not running yet, but much, much closer.

  • From: Ray Buck <rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: elky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:46:41 -0600

Final report for Friday. I was sorta caught up in a million things. The Camaro this morning, the Burb and its PS hose and the race car, the Target 550 post...and Jim had to deal with MaryAnn's car and some of his own stuff. However, we made a lotta progress this afternoon: mainly learning about Demon carbs. We had to do a buncha research just to find out which carb it is (Speed Demon 750), then find and print out the manual and go over it.


Once we did that, (we'd already set the static valve lash, but went back and checked it again, since the valve covers were still off) we did our best to set the float levels, then tried to fire it up. No luck. Not even a whimper out of it. I checked the power to the MSD box, thinking it sounded like we didn't have any spark. But that was fine. By that time, both of us were so frikkin goofy from fatigue (I was as clumsy as a left-handed monkey) that we decided to quit before we screwed something up big time.

Then I went back to work on the Target 550 post for the week and got it taken care of: http://www.target550.com/gallery/124_brakes_plumbing_dash/index.html I really suggest checking this out to see the brakes (Wilwood carbon fiber) and the motors (HUGE frikkin Whipple blower on each motor) and also the air line plumbing for at the dash board. Talk about trick...there's an air line that runs into the steering wheel for the air controls there. I'll repeat: You gotta see the motor shots. Just unreal.

Ok. Not only am I goofy from weariness, I've hurt something in my left hip and I need to let it relax for a bit, then get in the shower and let some hot water pulsate on it. (That's all I need...hot water after a day in the mid 90s with high [for us] humidity.)

As a final thought, I think I know why the motor won't fire up. We set the fuel pressure to about 2.5 psi, thinking that we had way too much. The Demon manual suggests setting it between 6 and 7.5 psi. We're MUCH lower than that. That'll be the first thing we check when we get back to it, probably tomorrow afternoon. I've gotta change the oil in the Camaro (I've got some 30 weight and a quart of ATF for the detergent in it) for a fresh filter and some plain vanilla 40 weight. I know everybody else on the face of the planet uses multi-viscosity oil, but I've been running 30w in the fall/winter/spring and 40w in the summer for years and years. I've only had 2 motor failures in the last 15 years and neither of them had anything to do with the oil viscosity. One was because of a high-volume oil pump (I'll never make that mistake again) and the other was due to an "inexperienced driver" who failed to comprehend the importance of the gauges indicating little things like temperature and oil pressure. Enough said about that.

Anyway, I'll get back to it tomorrow. I think the chances are pretty good that it'll fire up. How it runs is a totally different story that we'll have to we'll have to write as we go. Stay tuned.

r

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