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Hey all. I just wanted to chime in to say my car has been working better then expected after installing my V15 cam. Some have throught that it would lower gas mileage, and also distroy my idle smoothness. I am glad to say that these thigns have not happened. My idle has actually become more steady, with just the occasional "kick" of a 4cyl volvo engine. Might be a slightly dirty plug doing is thing every so often. With the gas mileage issue, it goes both ways. I can suck up so much gas on one of my fun days and almost bring the car down to 200 miles a tank, and on others, I can creep past 320 miles. The gas mileage for city has averaged out to about 21-22 miles, but if you play it really easy, and keep the vacuum up above 10" all the time, I was able to get 28.4 MPG city (This was before my m46 conversion and with the AW70). That was conducted one night when I was really bored, and kept the speed from 20-40 mph. The highway mileage has only went down a little bit. On my trip from WI to Cape Cod last summer, I averaged 25.6 mpg going 75 MPH with the car fully loaded with luggage and tools. After swapping the cam, I went down to 23.2 mpg averaging about 75 mph. This was recouped though after converting to a s80 t6 electric fan. My mileage on my most recent trip up to MN was 26.4 MPH highway. This again was still before my transmission swap.
At the time of swapping in teh new cam, after running the engine for about 30-50 miles, I decieded it would be best to flush teh system and go to full synthetic oil. My engine had 150k at this time. The first batch of oil was AMSOIL 10w30. After I topped off the oil from changing the oil filter and crankcase, I probably only burned about 1/8 a qt in the next 6000 miles. Soon around this time I sprung a massive leak, (about 1 qt a day) and was thought that the synthetic oil had cleaned off my rear main and found itself a place to piss out under my car. After some looking though, I found out that the bushing that adapts the oil pressure sender to my b230f block was loose. Once that was taken care of and the engine was cleaned off, I had no further leaks. Even though the leak was taken care of, from all the oil that leaked out and replaced with Castrol 10w30 GTX...(think i am crazy to put in more syn with it pumping out like that) I was pretty much running on full dino oil again till my transmission swap took place, where I am currently testing out a better product, LubroMoly 5w40 engine oil.
Now to get to the transmission swap. What a MAJOR PITA. The car was out of commision for about 1 month form the time I started the mechanical things under the car, to when the car was again driveable. I had already done the interior items like the pedals, so it was just left to the transmission and those things. The swap is not for the light hearted. I had my parents money to spend on tools I needed ASAP to finish the job :-) I had to pick up a few special tools during the procedure to take off thigns like the torque convertor bolts, and pickup a engine crane to rip out the engine and tranns from our donor car. The largest delay came when I found out the driveshaft from my donor car was rusted to hell and had a bad "tick" to it from bad ujoints. It was about another week added sourcing out a better driveshaft, which was just installed yesterday. The car seems much more lively on the road now, and I feel the car is working less while doing so. The sounds that I thought were cold piston slap before are completely gone now, and I am wondering if that was something in the transmission.
Kevin O'Brien
P.S. If anything blows up... it was err.... the tranny's fault ;)
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