More on "If it isn't broken, don't fix it".....

Here's some more good advice for first-time restorers. Before you start tearing the car apart, fix the little crap and see where you really are. I've said it before, but it's worth revisiting. I've seen cars with $5,000 paint jobs and $2,000 worth of tires and wheels that can't smoke the tires on dry pavement or pull 5,000 rpm in low gear. You'd be amazed at the number of cars running around with the timing way too slow or way too advanced, the vacuum advance broken or unplugged, with bad plug wires,the points closing up, the carburator way too rich or too lean,the throttle linkage not opening all the way, the automatic trans kickdown not hooked up, the vacuum modulator not hooked up, and other stupid stuff I can't think of off the top of my head. I spoke in an earlier post about a 396 Impala I worked on. The guy brought it in fully expecting me to sell him a new engine, or offer to rebuild the one he had. I did a compression test, and the engine was sound, it didn't have a blown head gasket or a flat cam. It did however-have most of the problems I just listed. After replacing the points and condenser, rotor, distributor cap and wires, and hooking up the vacuum advance and setting the timing to proper specs, I leaned out the carburator, and cleaned and adjusted the throttle linkage so it opened fully. The guy was amazed. It would now fry the tires off the line and lay 10-15 feet of rubber on the 1-2 shift. He was so happy he tipped me $100 over the bill I charged him. The point I'm making is yes,before I looked at it, for a big-block Chevy his car ran like total shit. It didn't have the power of my mom's 305 powered '86 Caprice. But it was just suffering from major neglect. Once I fixed the little problems-we realized there wasn't a big one-like he didn't need his engine rebuilt!!  A similar thing happened with another customer of mine. He had a '78 Trans-Am with the 400 Pontiac / TH350 powertrain. He brought it to me to get a 2nd opinion because another shop told him he needed a new transmission. I drove the car, and it did shift poorly, sometimes not at all-literally sticking in low gear, and then violently shifting to 2nd about 4,000 rpm. Sometimes. If you did get it into high gear-then it wouldn't kick down into 2nd under load. I did some investigation and found multiple problems. 1st off, it was 2 quarts low on fluid. Secondly-the kickdown linkage was completely unhooked. Third, and most importantly-the vacuum modulator was not hooked up and was spewing fluid. I changed the fluid and the filter, and hooked up the kickdown linkage. I also replaced the vacuum modulator and made sure it was hooked up with a new vacuum line. ( The old one was horribly oil-soaked,probably from the fluid leak of the broken modulator.) I took it out for a post-repair test drive. After making sure there were no men in blue around, I punched it when the light turned green. The T/A lit up the tires all the way across the intersection. As the tach swept past 4,500 rpm and neared 5,000, it snapped off a quick 1-2 shift and the tires gave a nice little "rubber in 2nd" screech. I kept my foot in it, and it pulled hard in 2nd and snapped off a crisp 2-3 shift about 4,800 rpm. I slowed down to about 50 mph, and punched it again. It dropped into 2nd easily and accelerated hard. I aired it out a couple more times-now shifting manually. This T/A was bone-stock, and with the 400's tractor-like torque curve I found the car ran quickest if I shifted manually at 4,900 rpm ( 1-2 ) and 4,400 ( 2-3 ). I could hold the tranny in any gear up to 5,400 if I wanted to-but I was just beating up the valve springs. He needed an Edelbrock Performer intake ( or a factory '68-74 unit ) to make any real power. The '75-79 intakes have such a restrictive throttle opening that power above 3,500-4,000 rpm is severely compromised. Anyway-the transmission now worked as it should. The owner was esctatic that he only had to pay me a couple hundred for a couple hours work instead of spending $1,500 or more for a new tranny!!  The point I'm making is-sometimes something that looks like a big expensive problem, is a much smaller, less expensive problem if you do some checking.  The other thing that gripes my ass is magazines always build every engine from scratch. Like I said in the last post-if the engine in the car runs fine, doesn't smoke, doesn't use any oil, has good compression and has good oil pressure-why in the hell would you pull it, tear it down and rebuild it?  If you want more power-then add an aftermarket carb and intake, or headers or a cam, or whatever you want. The other problem I have is magazines have to bore every block .030 or .060 over and replace every single part. I remember back in the '60's and '70's people used to replace "rings& bearings" and the oil pump and consider the engine freshened!! If it needed it-they'd sometimes grind the valves, but not always. I've done it myself, and I've done it for customers. I'd tear an engine down-and nothing would really be wrong with it, it just had 100,000 or more miles on it and needed freshening. You know what I'd do? Polish the crank lightly,replace the rod and main bearings, and the piston rings, and put the pistons back in the same holes. ( They've already got a wear pattern, it'll work fine ). If one of the main or rod journals was damaged-we'd go to a machine shop and have the crank turned .010 over, get .010 over bearings, have the rods re-sized, ( here's a good time to add chrome-moly rod bolts. Even in racing engines 95% of rod failure occurs at the bolt, so this is good insurance ). Replace the oil pump, the cam and lifters and timing chain-do the heads if necessary-button it up and drive it another 50,000-100,000 miles!!  The point I'm making is EVERY single engine doesn't have to be bored .030 over, have a new crank,rods and pistons, and new everything. The 400 in my brother's GTO came out of a '74 Gran Prix. We put one piston in it, rings and bearings and an oil pump, and a set of 6X heads off one of my wrecked T/A's. It also has an Edelbrock Torker II intake and matching cam kit and Hooker Headers. A 750 Edelbrock carb and an MSD HEI distributor. It cost $1,900 to build, and dyno'd at 381 hp and 430 lbs of torque. It's ran 9 years without a problem, uses a quart of oil every 1,200 miles, and will literally spin it's tires as long as he wants to stay on the throttle. One of the buff magazines rebuilt a 455 and were jumping up and down because they made 440 hp and 460 lbs of torque for "only" $4,400. If my brother wanted another 59 hp and 30 lbs of torque, I'm pretty sure we could get it for a lot less than another $2,500!!  Everyone espouses the virtues of "Vortec" heads for small-block Chevys. Iron "Vortecs" cost $700 on up and aluminum ones are well over $1,000. On a tight budget, using junkyard parts?  Did you know that '81-'86 305 "smog" heads will give a 350 a huge power boost?  Huh?  Most 350's have 76cc combustion chambers and 1.94 / 1.50 valves. 305 heads have 58cc combustion chambers and 1.84 / 1.50 valves. The smaller combustion chambers will bump compression from 8.2:1 to about 9.6:1. The power and torque boost from the added compression will more than offset the slight loss of airflow from the smaller intake valves. And any machine shop can install the 1.94 valves if you want to. "Old Standbys" become "Old Standbys" because they just flat work. Here's a couple of examples. Unless your building something really radical-if you've got a 383, 400 or 440 Mopar-the factory 440 Magnum cam is damnded hard to beat. It has great low-end and mid-range torque, and is really long-legged-it'll pull all the way up to 6,000 rpm. It's perfect for an automatic and very pleasant with a 4-speed. Mopar Perfromance sells this cam to this day, and Crane and Lunati offer exact replicas. Aftermarket ones may make more peak hp-but your trading quite a bit of low-end and mid-range torque for top-end rush. Ditto for the small-block Chevy L46 / L82 cam-the "350 hp 350" cam. It idles smooth, makes 15 inches of vacuum at idle and pulls hard to 6,000 rpm. Same for the old "068" Pontiac Ram Air cam. It's really sweet in a 400 and makes gobs of torque in a 455. Even with an automatic and 3.08:1 gears-your Poncho will pull hard up to 5,500 rpm. The original Z/28 / LT1 small-block Chevy manifold makes power from idle-7,200 rpm. GMPP sells both aluminum and iron ( for stock-class racers where an iron manifold is required ). versions of this intake. I'm not slamming Edelbrock or Weiand or Holley intakes-their great-but this one is damded hard to beat for mild or wild engines. What I'm saying is-do some research and you may be able to save yourself quite a bit of money and time and grief. Throwing money at a project isn't always the answer.  Mastermind