Hot-rod Newport progress report.
Over the past few days, I've made a lot of progress on the 4-door Mopar of DOOOOM: torqued down the headers and installed the valley pan, intake manifold, valve covers and gaskets, Boss EFI throttle unit (carburetor-thingy), lower pulley, and associated bits. Also cleaned up a bunch of minor rust and painted things up all pretty-like. Check it out:
You may recall my mentioning that every part has required customization, right? Well, last night I spent a while grinding out one of the lower-pulley bolt-holes so it would mate with the aftermarket liquid-core balancer. Today I had to ream out one of the carburetor-mounting holes on the intake, as the threads were damaged. Oh, and when I went to install the valve covers, I discovered that the passenger-side piece barely fits when the intake manifold is installed - to install or remove it requires a sort of Jenga approach. Plus the heater core cannot be plumbed. That'll be interesting when it comes time to final-adjust the rocker arms.
So I'm very close to turning the key! All that's left is wiring and plumbing it, hooking up the exhaust and radiator, and working out the inevitable leaks and bugs. Sadly, it will not be done in time to road-test prior to the drive to Colorado this week. But soon, very soon now!
Chris
You may recall my mentioning that every part has required customization, right? Well, last night I spent a while grinding out one of the lower-pulley bolt-holes so it would mate with the aftermarket liquid-core balancer. Today I had to ream out one of the carburetor-mounting holes on the intake, as the threads were damaged. Oh, and when I went to install the valve covers, I discovered that the passenger-side piece barely fits when the intake manifold is installed - to install or remove it requires a sort of Jenga approach. Plus the heater core cannot be plumbed. That'll be interesting when it comes time to final-adjust the rocker arms.
So I'm very close to turning the key! All that's left is wiring and plumbing it, hooking up the exhaust and radiator, and working out the inevitable leaks and bugs. Sadly, it will not be done in time to road-test prior to the drive to Colorado this week. But soon, very soon now!
Chris