Cascade Crew

[fiveoformula]

I'm up in tacoma visiting a buddy of mine, were trying to get his 83 hurst olds with new 350 olds 280H comp cam running right. Its got an accel dizzy with a curve kit and an edelbrock 1406 carb (I know Aaron, it sucks) lol. Anyways all the plugs are consistantly wet and black smelling like fuel. The mixture screws are adjusted mostly on the rich side but it seems to act lean (kinda surging and revs go down quite a bit when coming to a stop). Was wondering if you guys had some input or it would be really cool if anyone in the area had time to take a peak at it. Thanks!

[Alphius]

I had that same cam in my 350 once upon a time and it suuuucked. Way too big, no torque down low and my heads didn't flow enough up high to spin it to the powerband. It sounded pretty good though.

Do you have an Edelbrock jet kit? I bet you will need to change the jets.

[chevymad]

You might check to make sure Accell used an oldsmobile ignition pickup and coil. They're different then the chevy ones. Chevy will work but cause odd problems.

[fiveoformula]

he says he does have some bigger jets, should we try the next step up or something? I know what you mean it sounds killer but I'm not impressed with the power yet. Lol

[fiveoformula]

Interesting, do you know how to tell the difference between olds and chev HEI parts? I had no idea they were different.

[chevymad]

The wire colors are different. I'd have to search google or an olds forum for specifics. Basically polarity is different.

[chevymad]

http://www.chevelles.com/techref/techref5.html

Look at photo 25.



So, for the “traditional” V-8 engines, Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Olds Toronado use the yellow-coded pickup coil, and because they use the yellow pickup coil, they use the red and yellow ignition coil. Put another way, the yellow coils are a matched set. Buick, and Oldsmobile except Toronado, use the blue/black pickup coil, and therefore use the red and white ignition coil. Pontiac uses the clear coded pickup coil. It is wound the same way as the blue/black coil, but has longer leads to physically fit in the Pontiac version of the HEI distributor. Therefore it, too, uses the red and white ignition coil. Many parts catalogs indicate the wrong pickup and ignition coils for Olds Toronados. The Delco service information I’ve paraphrased here can be found at: http://fiedlerh.home.att.net/HEI.pdf

[fiveoformula]

Well after looking at those wires, this oldsmobile accel distributor has both a chevy pickup coil and ignition coil. He has another coil that was on the car years ago with the olds wiring. So we can try that and also get the right pickup coil and see what happens there.

[chevymad]

I had a feeling Accell would do that.

It may or may not change much. But GM did find they had a problem and used these different parts.

[fiveoformula]

That's very interesting. If it does make a difference well be happy. This car has always just run "ok" never great, then he decided to put this cam in a new motor with some pre '73 heads.

[Twilightoptics]

Jets shouldn't change the idle.

Where's the timing at? Big cam needs like 28ish deg at idle. PLUS, atleast on a holley, needs more air than the idle circuit can deliver. Hense the drilling of small holes in the butterflies.


When I was doing this regularly, I built an attachment that I would put inline with the brake booster. I had it tapped for holley jets. I'd put jets in, and size up (Creating a vacuum leak) until I found the jet/hole size that made it idle right. Then I'd divide the area and drill one hole in each front butterfly.

[aaron_sK]

Derick, you got a PM.

[chevymad]

Cool idea Paul.

Qjet's actually have a built in air bypass passage so throttle plates dont need to be drilled. Only the passage sized. Interesting tidbit I found from a book on tuning them.

Do edlebrocks have a way to crack the secondary butterflies open further like the holley does?

[aaron_sK]

[fiveoformula]

There is a holley here in the garage that's in the process of going back together if your more interested in that Aaron. Lol. Its a 600cfm vacuum secondary.

[fiveoformula]

Well Aaron came over to lend some skills and we got the timing pretty dialed in. We found that this distributor has about 9* of mechanical advance, so we set the base timing up to 20* from 12* then figured out that the vacuum advance was cranking it up another 20*, since that was adjustable, we dialed that back quite a bit aswell. The end result is that it now idles pretty damn well and no longer acts like its going to stall when you drop it in gear. Pretty good progress for sure! Thanks a lot Aaron!

[aaron_sK]

Hell yeah.

All the right parts were in place, I just put it together. I would say that it probably could use a little more mechanical, and maybe sort out whether the correct pickup coil is in it.

He also might consider stepping up to a proper fuel regulator from the silly dial-a-pressure POS.

Nice car, though. Good t-top g-body cruiser.

[fiveoformula]

I tried to post some pics of the car for everyone but my camera went whack... I don't know what to say about fuel pressure dial thing... or about how he wanted to build a torque monster but went with a 280 cam... but its a cool car, sure don't see many out there.

[Al Hasse]

[fiveoformula]

That sounds cool, was the motor from a TransAm or some big oldsmobile? Was it quick?