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Where did we leave off with this? I've been driving it since December or January. Did you see it at the IPD garage sale? The one with the big white air box in a white 1800 -- that's it.
Changes:
The original 4-button sintered clutch disk had to go. There are bolt holes in the aluminum flywheel where to steel friction plate attaches, and the buttons would snag -- instead of allowing some small amount of slippage, it was really on-off. Replaced with regular F&S disk and have had no problems since (this is already a HD B&B cover).
Original carbs were 45DCOE with 38mm chokes and 55mm full-radius air horns. After months of &%$#ing around trying to get them to run smoothly on the low-speed circuit, I concluded they were damaged (correct, in fact). Replaced with new 48DCO with 42mm chokes and the Weber air horns that came with them (required modifying manifolds, air box, etc). That made it clearly quicker. Just now installed Unitek flow improvement kits, which replaced those air horns with handmade 77mm full-radius horns and special barrel liners. It now finally has the total intake length it was always supposed to, and the improvement is striking.
How it runs:
This is the quickest car I've ever owned, and that includes big-block muscle cars. Without looking under the hood, no one would believe it's a 4-cyl motor. It's as smooth as a V8 and sounds much like one. No vibration in the car at all above idle, and it idles without shake at 1000 rpm. Serious power from 3000-7000, which is as high as I've revved it, although it wants to keep going. Very driveable at 2000.
It has gobs of torque. I've accidentally spun the tires on wet pavement in third gear, and without using anything like full throttle.
It runs cool with no fan at all. The electric fan has never once come on with the car moving, even on 100F days.
Driven at legal speeds, it gets better-than-stock gas mileage. It runs happily on 92 unleaded. I drove it on a 200-mile trip yesterday and there's lots of fuel left in the tank.
It's still not tuned quite right. Driving in city traffic is all about barely cracking the throttle, and there's a bit of stumble in the 2500-3200 range in those conditions. This is because I don't have the right emulsion tubes in the Webers yet after having gone through four sets. The new flow kits have actually made that worse -- but now that the horn configuration is correct, it's worthwhile hunting down those "correct" tubes. There is no problem at larger throttle openings other than not ramming the car in front.
I'm hoping to dyno-tune it within the next two months -- there really hasn't been much point before getting the physical parts of the intake as they should be. Of course I'll post the results when that happens. Meanwhile, we're busy moving to a new house in a new town, and I've got my hands full with that.
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