It's alive. Started it tonight and let it run long enough for the thermostat to open up so I can get the air out of the cooling system before I drive it. Gonna go drive it and break it in tomorrow night for about 50 miles then bring it back and top off the trans fluid and change the oil and filter and hook the oil cooler and remote filter back up.
It's definitely quieter and idles better with the stock cam profile back in. Less rocker noise too with the floating rockers taken out. The exhaust note at idle is certainly less mean sounding, but I can live with it for now to have something that drives well. Got more vacuum now (obviously from the cam) at 18in/Hg instead of the 14-16 I used to get, and it holds rpm steadier. Fuel pressure at idle dropped 2 psi because of the vacuum drop, but I'll probably leave it alone since my fuel trim is -16 right now. Kind of odd since I'm using the same injector value as last time I ran 42lb'ers. I think the O2 probably got jacked from the junk dumped in the exhaust when the head gaskets blew though, so I have a new one ordered and I'll see what it does with the fuel trims after I swap it in.
Only weird thing I noticed was the oil pressure was kind of high. Like 55-60 psi at idle! The oil probably wasn't fully warmed up yet and I'm using 10w-30 conventional oil right now since that's what the shop recommended for during break in. I wouldn't think it would make that much difference though. I used to get 22-25 psi at cold idle and around 18 psi fully hot. I know in the manual it has the oil pressure two places. One says only 15 psi at 1100 rpm and another says something like 20 or 22 psi at 1100 rpm. My dad thought both of those sounded too low, and since I found the oil pump gears where worn I decided to replace it.
I got a melling pump instead of the OEM one, but they have two part numbers. One for normal and one for the high volume unit. The one I picked up had the part number for the normal one on the box, but I'm wondering if I got the wrong one by accident? After the initial break in I'm changing the oil to a 5w-30 conventional so I guess I'll see what the pressure is after that and maybe call melling and see what they say the pressure should be. I can't think of anything else that I changed that would have made the pressure change that much. Just the pump and oil weight. Only other possibility is maybe the gauge sending unit was blocked before, or is going bad? No clue at this point.
It's definitely quieter and idles better with the stock cam profile back in. Less rocker noise too with the floating rockers taken out. The exhaust note at idle is certainly less mean sounding, but I can live with it for now to have something that drives well. Got more vacuum now (obviously from the cam) at 18in/Hg instead of the 14-16 I used to get, and it holds rpm steadier. Fuel pressure at idle dropped 2 psi because of the vacuum drop, but I'll probably leave it alone since my fuel trim is -16 right now. Kind of odd since I'm using the same injector value as last time I ran 42lb'ers. I think the O2 probably got jacked from the junk dumped in the exhaust when the head gaskets blew though, so I have a new one ordered and I'll see what it does with the fuel trims after I swap it in.
Only weird thing I noticed was the oil pressure was kind of high. Like 55-60 psi at idle! The oil probably wasn't fully warmed up yet and I'm using 10w-30 conventional oil right now since that's what the shop recommended for during break in. I wouldn't think it would make that much difference though. I used to get 22-25 psi at cold idle and around 18 psi fully hot. I know in the manual it has the oil pressure two places. One says only 15 psi at 1100 rpm and another says something like 20 or 22 psi at 1100 rpm. My dad thought both of those sounded too low, and since I found the oil pump gears where worn I decided to replace it.
I got a melling pump instead of the OEM one, but they have two part numbers. One for normal and one for the high volume unit. The one I picked up had the part number for the normal one on the box, but I'm wondering if I got the wrong one by accident? After the initial break in I'm changing the oil to a 5w-30 conventional so I guess I'll see what the pressure is after that and maybe call melling and see what they say the pressure should be. I can't think of anything else that I changed that would have made the pressure change that much. Just the pump and oil weight. Only other possibility is maybe the gauge sending unit was blocked before, or is going bad? No clue at this point.
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