martybose

You will probably still want to put a sealer of some sort (I prefer Gasgacinch, YMMV) on the copper side of the gasket. If the machined surface is good you should not need any on the Teflon (blue) side. And make darn sure that every bolt that goes into either the head or the block is well sealed up with something like a pipe thread sealing paste, as they will leak otherwise! That includes the waterpump bolts (been there, done that .......) Marty

My problem was that too many of us were in college in California, so it didn't matter what your draft status was. I was taking 18 units at a Junior College when the draft board invited me to come in for a physical exam; I decided that it was a good time to join the Navy Reserve! I ultimately spent two years on active duty, including one deployment to Yankee Station, but never got within 40 miles of anyone shooting anything, so mission accomplished. Marty

Mostly because with no vacuum advance at all I'm still getting the slightest audible pinging at full throttle in second gear; adding another 15 or 20 degrees of advance would probably blow the head gasket out of it! Marty

I decided to actually find out what this Langdon HEI distributor was doing, while being fully aware of the adage about being careful about what you ask for. First, disconnect the vacuum and confirm static timing. Warmed up the motor, slowed the idle to just over 600 RPM, checked timing. It's off by over 10 degrees! Mystified, I set the timing back to 12 degrees initial. Then I decide to check the centrifugal advance. Rev the motor up, timing barely changes. Rev it up a few more times, and notice that it isn't moving much, but it also isn't returning to the same initial setting every time. Pull the distributor cap and unbolt the rotor (standard Chebby), check the advance weights. They seem clean and move freely, so go to put the rotor back on. I'm holding the rotor as I tighten the 2 bolts, and notice as the bolts tighten it starts to sound different. Take the rotor off again, and find that the no-name original rotor has a raised pin in the very center of the underside that was bottoming out before the bolts tightened, and was jamming the advance! Shortened the pin, put it back together, sounded better. Fired the engine, reset initial timing again, then revved the motor. Found that the centrifugal advance starts at about 2000 RPM and comes in fast, and now always returns to the same initial setting. So far so good. With a 12 degree initial, got up to 35 degrees fully advanced. Was a little surprised that it was that much, might want to limit it a bit. Food for thought later. Now back to vacuum advance. With engine running, try all three of the connections on my Carter-Webers. I find that the ported vacuum worked as advertised; no advance at idle, then more advance as the throttle is opened up. Free revving at partial throttle and about 3000 RPM gave about 45 degrees of advance; Oh Boy! Then tried the other 2 connections; both gave me no advance under any condition! Conclusion: I have one ported vacuum connection only, maybe the other two are emissions related somehow. If I want to try manifold vacuum, I'll have to add my own connection in the manifold or the carb adapters. Bummer, because I would have to take the carb off to drill and tap a hole in the adapters. I can't even imagine drilling a hole in my Edmunds manifold, thank you! So to anyone with a Langdon HEI; you might want to confirm that your centrifugal advance actually works; if it doesn't check the underside of the rotor. Further testing will wait until I feel like adding the manifold vacuum connection; for now I'll run with centrifugal only, but might back it down a few more degrees to something like 8 degrees. Marty

Being none the wiser, when I received my rebuilt 802 I just went down to Radio Shack, bought a new permanent magnet speaker, wired it up to the two wires in the OEM connector and it worked just fine! Marty

If the tires aren't sealing due to a rough wheel surface, powdercoating is unlikely to improve the situation. It usually deposits a very even coating over whatever surface is there, and doesn't appreciable fill in depressions. Marty

Actually, at a small throttle opening you would probably get about the same amount of vacuum-based advance from either connection; the difference would only be what happens when you step on the gas. With ported the signal might go up, with manifold it would go down. Most hotrodded motors do better with less advance at high throttle openings, compared with what they can take at reduced throttle for increased efficiency and economy. Marty

Okay, I'll admit ignorance on this one. My original 218 had the vacuum advance connected to the manifold, and I've always run both the 218 and my 247 (bored out 230) that way. Does anyone know for sure that the B&B carb on a 218 actually supplied a ported vacuum connection in the OEM configuration? I didn't think they had this until emissions reared its ugly head. Marty

I had always had the impression that ported vacuum was primarily there to enable you to have some advance while driving but not have it at idle to cut down on the NOX emissions. But maybe not. To answer the earlier question about why the distributor change requires a different initial setting than an OEM distributor, I suspect that the Chebby distributor doesn't have anywhere near as much centrifugal advance as the stocker, so you need more initial timing to get the desired total timing at speed. Anyway, tried the next experiment tonight. I left the initial timing (16 degrees) alone, but switched from ported to manifold vacuum, then went for a drive. My observations; (1) pinging significantly reduced, although not quite eliminated. (2) Idle speed was higher. (3) The engine hesitated while starting. The combination of the three suggest (to my way of thinking) that the harder starting was because of the combination of initial and vacuum advance while cranking, the idle speed was higher due to the same higher amount of advance, and the reduced pinging was because of the reduction of advance at partial throttle from the manifold versus the ported vacuum signal. My conclusion: Take out a few degrees of initial time (say back from 16 to 12 degrees), which should (1) reduce/eliminate pinging some more, (2) reduce idle speed, and (3) reduce/eliminate starting kickback. I won't have time to try this Tuesday, but shoud be able to get to it Wednesday. Marty

Thanks for the info, Pete. The thing about advance is this: We have a centrifugal advance to add advance as RPM goes up, and many times the vacuum advance simply adds advance under light load conditions. If you use manifold vacuum, then the extra advance will be removed as you open the throttle to put the engine under more load. I honestly don't quite understand the use of ported vacuum for advance, as (if I understand it correctly) there is no vacuum at idle, but there is some a smaller throttle openings? Marty

I finally finished installing my Langdon HEI today and fired it up this afternoon. The instructions suggested from 10-18 degrees initial timing without vacuum, and suggested using ported vacuum for the advance with mild cams and manifold vacuum for performance cam motors. For no particular reason I started with 16 degrees and ported vacuum. It ran just fine until it completely warmed up, then started pinging badly at half throttle under load, so obviously I need to back down the timing. I'm also thinking that maybe I should run manifold vacuum, since I'm running about 9 to 1 compression, a mild cam, dual carbs and headers, and dropping timing as I crack the throttle seems like a good idea. I'm curious; those of you that have done this conversion, what initial timing and vacuum source did you wind up with? Marty

It's my understanding that Fatman is the manufacturer of the dropped spindles, as they make a number of different ones for various cars. Marty

A great looking motor; I hadn't seen one with this much chrome, looks nice! I might be a little concerned with the fuel line, as it could crack from vibration; might want to change it to steel tubing sometime in the future. You can get chrome plated steel fuel tubing, so it would look right! I'm interested that the carb spacing on the Offy manifold is apparently slightly larger than my Edmunds manifold. Using the same carbs on the Edmunds resulted in the front carb electric choke connector overlapping and in front of the rear carb accelerator pump housing; had to go through all sorts of fiddling to get them apart from one another! Marty

I used them on my radiator with no problems. Marty

A few years ago I was able to buy new ones from Atlas Obsolete in southern California. Marty

Unfortunately I can confirm that you won't get an original radio working using a convertor; I have an 802 that worked fine on 6V, but has resisted every effort to get it working on the convertor after I changed over to 12V. I can hear the vibrator start up for a few seconds, then it quits again. I'm now waffling over whether to get it converted to be a 12V tube radio, or commit the sacrilege of having it gutted and put a modern AM/FM radio inside. At this point I'm more inclined to leave it a tube AM radio, as there are enough AM stations still in the Bay Area. Marty

I had a set of 97's on an Offy manifold we modified. It ran real well at moderate throttle, but I couldn't get it to work at full throttle without getting into detonation. I then switched to an Edmunds manifold with dual Carter-Webers, and that setup works exceptionally well at all throttle positions. I'm sure that someone more familiar with 97's could make them work as well, but that isn't me! Anyone want to give it a try; I still have the entire 97 setup; manifold, carbs, air cleaners, throttle linkage, even the fuel pump and fuel hard lines. Marty

An interesting treatment of the front grill. It looks like the small bars might still be there, but painted a body color perhaps? Marty

Interestingly, sometime in the early 50's Mopar sold a retrofit driveshaft with new style U-joints for our cars. One came up on eBay about 8 years ago, and I got it. It came complete with adapters for both the tranny and rearend flanges and a splined section to take care of length movements. Definitely an improvement over the original! Marty

My 230 is overbored a bit, has an Edmunds aluminum head and about 9 to 1 compression. My mechanic told me that I should always run high octane gas in it, as the old flatheads were sort of prone to detonation anyway. Marty

The problem is that we're talking relative high amperage here, so it would have to be a damn big resistor! Let's see: 12V x 20A = 240W!!!!! Marty

I've got an OD unit intalled in my Bizzy coupe, but haven't actually wired it up yet. Instead of a longer speedo cable I got a 6 inch extender cable with the gearbox that corrects my speedo to read correctly with my shorter tires, and that worked just fine. I've got the Radio Shack relay wiring diagram (thanks!), but have been hesitant to wire it up on my 12V car, having heard that the 6V solenoids tend to burn out on 12V. The only solution that I have found so far is a custom rebuilt solenoid by 5th Avenue Garage that is both pricy and has a long lead time. Are there any other solutions? Marty

Oh I don't know if that's a fair characterization. If someone told me that tomorrow our gas price would go up 50 cents per gallon, but the entire 50 cents would go towards road repairs and upgrades, I'd consider it money well spent. Marty

They're supposed to have a wave; that's what softens the takeup when you're letting out the clutch. You would not like a clutch without the Marcel spring! Marty

There are a lot of us running dual 2 barrel carbs, usually by using adapters to dual single barrel manifolds. I'm running Carter-Webers, many others are running Holley-Webers. Marty