Tuning and testing is a lost art....

This past Hot August Nights I saw a bunch of musclecars that were definitely all show and no go. I've touched on it before-but I'm amazed at the number of cars I see with $5,000 paint jobs and $2,000 worth of tires and wheels that can't pull 5,000 rpm in low gear!  The owners will tell you how much money they have in the car, but they can't tell you the last time they changed the points and plugs and wires, or the fuel filter!!  Even on a bone-stock engine-bad tuning or simple neglect can cost you 40-50 hp. I see it all the time guys will have a supposedly frame-off restoration. Yet-the engine idles rough-and the car won't run properly-because the points are closing up,the vacuum advance is unplugged or inoperable, the timing is way too advanced or way too slow, the carburator is way too rich or too lean. I had a guy come into my shop once with a 396 powered '65 Impala SS that couldn't spin the tires on dry pavement. Because-I kid you not-he had all the above mentioned problems and more. I replaced the points, condenser,rotor, cap and plugs and wires. I put a new vacuum advance canister on it, and hooked it up properly. I set the timing for factory specs. He had a Carter AFB 4bbl on it-and I set the float at the proper level and leaned out the jetting ( it was way too rich ). He also had a sticky throttle linkage that wasn't allowing the 4bbl to fully open. I cleaned and re-adjusted the throttle linkage. His kick-down linkage wasn't working either-and I fixed that. When he picked up the car he was flabbergasted. Now it would literally spin the tires as long as you wanted to stay on the throttle. It would lay 30 feet of rubber on the 1-2 shift. "What the hell did you do?" he asked "Put a whole new engine in it?"  "No." I said and laughed. "I just made the one you had run the way it should." He was esctatic and tipped me 50 bucks over the price I'd quoted him and took a bunch of my cards to give to his friends. In the '80's a couple of friends-one had an LB9 IROC-Z Camaro and the other had an L98 Tuned Port Injected Corvette. They both had the same problem. The cars ran great when they were dead cold. When they got up to operating tempurature they would cough and spit, and stumble under full-throttle load. The Chevy dealer couldn't ( or wouldn't ) do anything about it under warranty. They brought the cars to me. I figures out the problem quickly. The cars had a 195 degree thermostat from the factory, and the electric fan didn't come on until 225!!  This is the way the cars were set up for smog. But they were practically vapor-locking becuase they were running so hot. I hosed down the radiators and put wet towels on the intake manifold, and then went for another drive. Cold engine-rocket ship. Hot engine-slug. Now I knew what to do. I installed a 160 degree thermostat and changed the fan switch to one that would kick the fan on at 185. No more stumbles-now they would rocket off the line-and lay 10-15 feet of rubber when the 700R4 snapped off its 1-2 shift! With the engine running at 180 instead of 220-the cooler, denser fuel charge it was now getting vastly increased performance. Another guy with a carburated L69 Trans-Am had the same problem. Same fix-change the thermostat and the fan switch-and instead of stumbling under load it now pulled hard to 5,500 rpm. I've spoken several times how changing from AC R46SZ plugs ( an .080 gap ) to R45S ( one range colder and a .040 gap ) caused my 403 Olds powered Trans-Am that previously ran out of wind at 4,700 rpm to pull hard to 5,400. A gain of 700 rpm on the top end!  So here's some advice on how to get top performance from your musclecar, even if it's stock. # 1. Do a compression test. Even an 8:1 "smog" motor will have 120 psi or so of comprssion. Higher performance engines will have 150 psi or more. The main thing is the readings should be uniform on all 8 cylinders-within 5-10 psi of each other. If one or more cylinders only has 80 psi-you could have bad rings, or burned valves or a blown head gasket. You'd be amazed at the number of musclecars limping around on 6 or 7 cylinders. # 2. Make sure you've got good wires, the timing set properly and no vacuum leaks. # 3. This is the number one offender here. Guy spends a ton of money building a killer motor. But he's so damned afraid of blowing it up that he drives it like grandma on prozac. I mean the car literally never sees the high side of 3,000 rpm. Then the second it fouls a spark plug-he starts screwing around with the carburator(s ). Pretty soon it won't even start. Here's the cure-like the GTO song says-once in a while you gotta "Turn it on, wind it up, blow it out". I'm not saying powershift at 7 grand and risk a picture window in the side of a numbers-matching block. But occasionaly running it full-throttle up a freeway on-ramp, or running it up through the gears to say 4,500 rpm once in a while-will keep carbon from building up and keep you from fouling plugs. The other option if you insist on driving like my grandmother-is go a range or two hotter on the plugs. They won't foul as quickly in low-speed driving. If you decide to take a road trip or go to the drags-changing to the colder plugs is an easy thing to do. # 4. If the car is an automatic-make sure its full of fluid-clean fluid. Make sure the vacuum modulator is hooked up and working properly. Make sure the kickdown linkage is hooked up and working properly. # 5. If it's a stick-make sure the clutch is working properly and that the shift linkage isn't binding up. These simple things can make a HUGE difference in a car's performance. Mastermind