Beemon

If the choke was stuck open and the heat pipe was missing, it was more than likely a vacuum leak issue. Something was obviously wrong in there!

Matt, take your current carb (don't dismantle!) and make two baths for it - one in hot water, and one in ice water. If you read my thread I did on my WCFB rebuild, I had the same problem. Basically I'm assuming the WCFB came off of a grandpa car where he could have gotten by with a 2-barrel because he obviously never used the 4-barrel. Anyways, dunk the carb base in the hot and cold water a few times, holding it a few seconds in each bath, trying to turn the butterflies by hand. It should free up after about 4 or 5 transitions. As for the choke, that is definitely your driveability issue. Your secondaries not working will only give you part throttle but won't kill the engine. Your choke not opening after warming up will give you a really rich condition. If the heat stove is missing, go get yourself the Edelbrock electric choke for the interim. AutoZone/O'Reilly's should have them. I should also note when using an electric choke, you have to file down the dog ear the spring rides on so it doesn't bind up. You don't have to file down much, and it's not a detrimental change. You'll also need a vacuum cap for where the heat pipe went, otherwise you'll have a vacuum leak there. Alternatively, I supposed you could just swap bases, but my idea would save you from rebuilding for now.

You gotta give them credit. Everyone talks about headers out the ventiports, but I've never actually seen it done. Obviously fake, though, the paint isn't cooked.

Also when was the last time you did an oil change?

Loosen the choke housing. At 75 degrees, rotate housing so choke just taps shut. If it's hotter, open it up when the engine is cold and vice versa for being colder (aka, put it a little past close). The choke spring may be worn after heat cycling 60 years so it could be sluggish to respond and you can buy new AFB chokes over the counter. For simplicity, I took an Edelbrock electric choke and used that. You have to flip the spring over to work, but I've had zero complaints. A lot of people don't like electric chokes, but the stove choke never worked right for me and the electric choke has always worked for me. Down in the South, I can see the choke setting not being so crucial, but up north where I drive my car year round, it can get pretty annoying when the choke never pulls off.

Check your choke, it might not be set up right and causing your bog. That's the only thing I can think of for stuttering at idle and off the gas pedal. How does timing look? Vacuum advance working correctly? Also those black walls and po-caps really give the car character!

My car is definitely not car show material, but I still go. You'd be surprised, people enjoy talking about a project more than a show queen, from my own experience.

Warmed the Buick up tonight for a late night trip to Taco Bell. Already making terrible life choices here! The road out towards that side of town gets pretty close to Greek Row, and of course being one of the nations top party schools and a 3-day weekend, there were many night walkers out tonight. Car is running good, a poor boy in his mid 90s Lexus didn't stand a chance. Kind of sad, really.

Thinking about catching some late car shows now?

I've seen worse stains in the back seat before. Nice car!

CNN was found to be faking rescue footage by onlookers. It does not surprise me, given the state of media this last year.

I would really like to think the difference between looting and the difference between survival is taking what you need, and not what you want. You can justify taking non-perishables, but when they take the flat screens and sneakers, or threaten other lives or damage property at reckless abandon... it's just really sad. At least in Texas, as far as I know, you're protected by law to protect your personal property by any means.

Curious about what your new tail pipes look like. Getting off topic, but care to share?

This is a one-off natural disaster, lifting the house is pretty extreme for inclement weather that may only happen once in 10 years or so. If this is common for your street, I apologize Doug. Funny about the modern cars... Your Buick could go through that water no problem, but the air cleaner inlet on modern cars is in the wheel well. I'll never forget, last year a street downtown from my house flooded because due to high concentration of littering, clogged the main storm water drain with garbage and debris. My sister on her way to work (and granted, she's not the smartest here - think art student in Seattle) drove through the puddle because she was going to be late. Hydrolocked my mom's 2008 Saab because the engine sucked water into the cylinders, and of course, water is non-compressible. Luckily the rods took most of the damage and she got by with a $3000 bill to have the pistons and rods replaced. I think she would do it again if given the opportunity, but then again, so does everyone else when trying to ford the rivers.

Beautiful work! I wish I had the talent to do these types of things, but I don't have the space, time, or accessibility to tooling to even think about learning. Where I live, it's also illegal to paint outside without a roller, and my neighbors were nosy and stiff. Keep up the great work! Looking forward to seeing it all back together!

Sherwood, it would probably help if you put what you're looking for in the title, too.

Be safe, there's armed looters now apparently.

Maybe 20 years ago? How many kids do you see at car shows, because every time I go I never see today's youth. I'm usually the youngest guy there and I'm 25. And this is of course excluding children.

Where did you get the sway bar from?

Probably only worth glass, stainless and engine.

With a Hilborn injector, you need to assume all the throttle plates are set up the same, and assume that air flow through the stacks are all the same. Because it's mechanically injected from the high pressure fuel block, you must also assume each cylinder is getting the same amount of fuel. Depending on if/where the MAP and IAC sensor is, it will measure from only one cylinder to create a fuel charge for that cylinder, on all 8 cylinders, which could be inaccurate. There's just too many assumptions. The whole purpose of the project is to not re-use and modify an intake, or buy another intake, but to make a brand new intake from scratch. I've been studying ram air theory, and all I can really say thus far is I'm glad I got my cam degreed. Because the intake manifold will be dry-flow, port injection, the intake runners can be tailored to allow pulsations and simulate forced induction at a specific peak curve dictated by the cam (and of course the flow of the heads). Air comes in through the throttle plate, leaves the plenum and swirls through the runners and meets the injector and goes into the valve. Valve closes and the rush of air pulsates back through the runner, rebounds off the plenum and goes back down in a rush back to the intake valve with another rush of fuel. Cam timing is important, to find where the peak curve is, and dictates how long the runners will be. At peak, you would want the pulse wave to return to the intake manifold exactly when it opens again. This can all be simulated in the program. Finding a peak RPM for power would be pretty simple I think, depending on driving habits and where, say 35-40MPH is, maybe around 2400 RPM? Lastly, crank position sensor would be in the distributor. Bernie, will like to see those equations. Thanks for offering, I'll be sending a PM. I'm reviewing my Thermodynamics book, too, to see what I can gain from heat pumps and the otto cycle.

I'm in Stephenson East Tower. It's on the edge of campus. Its a Freshman and Transfer student dorm, so despite being a Junior, I still get the short end of the stick. It's been pretty quiet, though, for a freshman dorm. I graduated in 2010 from Kent-Meridian so I'm no stranger to the area. It's been a long road, and WSU has always been my goal. I feel it better suits me than paying "premium" for UW or the lesser of the two giants, CWU. I do not recommend Green River CC, though, if community college is on the table. I got locked in there for 7 years thrown through many unnecessary ropes and once you start, the only way out is an associates degree.

I wouldn't be looking for range of flow, I'd be looking for the maximum flow so the intake runner can flow the max, if not more, air than the heads. Once I have the max flow through the intake, I can simulate air flow through the intake in the program. As I understand it with the Nailhead family, the angle between the intake and head is almost two 90 degree angles as the mixture makes the S-turn into the cylinder bore. The second limitation, of course, is the intake valve and then the cylinder head runner. After doing a bit more reading, since the setup would be a "dry flow" design, the wall of the intake manifold is regardless as the mixture starts at the injector. What would be really interesting, would be rifling the intake manifold to create a vortex into the cylinder head for added atomization. I'm sure this has been done before... my "in-depth" knowledge of automobiles internal working is limited to my Buick, and a 2002 Jeep Liberty. Always a learning experience, of course. Tomorrow I'm going to head on down to the library to retrieve as many journals on the subject as possible, if available.

The program we're using, SolidWorks, is a cad specific program that is used to first develop the part, then bench test the part given a specific material (density) and it's characteristics. You can simulate loads, fluids and actual assembled systems to see if the materials will fatigue or, in terms of fluid dynamics, flow. By imputing certain lengths as variables, these flow dynamics can be changed on the fly until a desired result is found. If laminar flow techniques are used, such as an LS intake for example, then surface friction can be reduced to almost nothing. As I understand it, wall friction in cast intake manifolds is usually where torque comes in? Where broader torque ranges are accomplished by disrupting the flow just enough until a certain RPM is reached where wall friction forces become negligible? As we get further into the unit, I would like to have some numbers to play with. I might just end up asking my sister to drop one of my spare heads off at a flow shop near home to get some data. I proposed this idea to a group on Facebook, but they're more interested in the 401/425 engine... no love for the 322. Those numbers would be a baseline charge, hopefully within +/- 10% per intake port, to determine what the exit velocity of the intake runner needs to be to achieve max flow through each port. With a type of polymer material, laminar flow can supposedly be achieved and restriction plates could be added to disrupt flow at lower RPMs, kind of like the checker pattern found in Edelbrock intake manifolds.