I have two corsa 3" cats off the vette if you want them.

Too bad its not a year older.

I had a dream about your car Ron. It was weird. I sat in it and the interior looked super squared off and outdated. Thats when you told me it was originally an 80 something fox body and you converted it to a newer model... which would be especially difficult since its a unibody, haha.

My exhaust is only 2.5 inch and the new H-pipe is already ordered. Thank you for the offer.

Roger, just seeing if I can help. I have literally piles of random car shit right now.

What difference would it make if it was a year older?

It would be OBD 1, you could buy some highflow magnaflow cats for like $60 a pop

His car is OBD-1

Oh nice, just before the cut off I take it

95 was the last year for obd1 and the high flow Magnaflow cats are what I have now. But they are now about $130 for the CA ones with an E.O. number. I also found out from the exhaust shop that the two cat H-pipe that I have now that was legal two years ago is no longer legal. He said CARB changed that and I have to have all four cats. I hate CARB. I'm so glad the F100 is smog exempt.

Great, which means I need all 4 cats too. We'll see if my car passes

The smog ref didn't say anything about it so I guess it depends on who does it. If mine had passed the tail pipe with just the two cats I would have been good.

I installed the new Magnaflow catted X-pipe this weekend and took the car this afternoon to be smogged. It passed! :dancenana:

Congrats.

Thanks.

Yeah!! May the smog gods smile fortune upon my Aveo, which is presently about as clean as an uncatted 70s Camaro. . .

I ordered a Mallory Hyfire 6A from Summit today.

Finally, no more May Suddenly Die products. I'm hoping mine lasts a bit under that passenger seat.

Yep, I had good luck with the one that on the Chevelle. It lasted around 13 years before it died.

Installed the ignition box last night. It's so nice to be able to give the car full throttle again.

My front brakes have been squeaking the passed couple weeks when I back up so I pulled all the wheels yesterday to check the pads. The rears were about 50% but the fronts were about 90% worn so I picked up some new front pads. While I had all the wheels off I decided it would be a good time to mount my M/T ET Streets to see if they would hook. With the 302 I would hold the rpms up to about 4000 and when I dropped the clutch the tire would spin about 20ft but would still move me forward at a quick pace. After beading in the pads I tried tried just taking off from idle and gave it full throttle at about 15 mph. The tires spun all the way through first but the car still pulled hard so I grabbed second and it spun all through second as well. One day I'm going to have to take it to the track and see how much quicker it is than my best with the 302 of 11.69 @ 119.

Here's the progress I've made on the heads. I only have a couple pictures of how they were stock because I had already done a little porting to the intake side.

Stock form from AFR.



First cut.


After some blending.


Short turn. These I did by hand with coarse emery cloth.


Finished.




I have the intakes on one head finished and I'm about half way finished with them on the other. I'm not sure if I'm going to touch the exhaust since that's what I spent most of my time on the last time I ported them. I'll decide after I clean them and the combustion chambers.

Did you hit the pocket under the valve seat? Smoothing that out is what gives the greatest improvements, but, if you hit the seat, guess who'll need a valve job.

I did but just to the bottom of the seat and not the seat itself so there's no bump transitioning from the port to the seat.

I got a little off track from porting the cylinder heads when it dawned on me that I can do all this work to the heads but if the intake manifold doesn't support it what's the point. So I took a look at the intake and runners 1, 4 and 5 have a pretty big dog leg where they pinch down quite a bit. Runner 1 started out at .859 in the smallest pinch and is now 1.030. The only issue is I broke through the wall and will need to have it welded. I just started on the other ports so once I have them all finished I'll take the intake to someone to have it spot welded where I break through.

Runner 1 after a little work.


Where I broke through.


Still runner 1.


Runner 2.


Runner 3.


Runner 4.

Aren't there any gnarly off the shelf intakes for the Cobra that aren't so expensive? I understand the thrill of DIY and and saving a little dough when possible, but sometimes an off the shelf is a good way to go.

Mine is actually pretty good except for the lower. If I could afford it I'd buy a Holley lower which matches up to my Saleen/Vortech upper but I can't afford one at almost $400. I can however port the lower I have to what the Holley is out of the box. Guy told me that they're all over for sale on Corral but I only saw one lower by itself for $120 that was already sold. All the others are upper and lowers together for $400-$500.

The Vortech intake is essentially the same as a Holley Systemax. You're absolutely right too, all the porting in the world on a truck lower still wont flow what an off the shelf systemax will, and when you port one of those, holy fuck do they flow.

When I looked I saw four, now I can't find them. I'll keep looking, it's not really a holy grail piece.

I got about 80% done and then took the manifold to be welded. I picked it up today and will take some pictures of how it looks now before I finish it up. I ended up going through ports 1 and 5. I also ordered all my parts to put it back together today. I still need to finish the last 20% and then finish porting the heads so that I can install the new valve seals.

Here's how the welds came out.

Port 1




Port 5

Are you going to smooth out the welded spots?

If you mean on the inside of the port then yes. If you mean on the outside then no. I still have some more work to do on all the ports and I should be able to work on it this weekend. I also got everything to put it back together and I have 2 weeks of vacation starting next week so I should have it running next week.

Yes, inside of the port.

I've been working on the intake and heads the past few days and have the intake done and the heads mostly done. I took a couple of the ports I had fixed on the intake but don't have time to upload them today because I have two basketball games tonight. I'll try to take some tomorrow if I can and post them. With shopping for Christmas still to do I probably won't be able to get back to them until after Christmas but we'll see how that goes.

I didn't have time to work on the heads today because I had to find a vibration in the front of the Explorer that I got after going wheeling a week ago. I ended up having to replace the passenger side axle U-joint and the drivers side hub assembly. I did take some pictures of the finished intake manifold and a few of the heads.

Here are the few pictures I took of the two ports I had fixed as I was cleaning them up.










Here are the finished ports.

#1


#2


#3


#4


#5


#6


#7


#8


Here's a couple of the cylinder heads.

Exhaust






Intake

Work looks great, too bad you didn't do that before the valve job though.

Why's that? I didn't touch the guides at all and I'm going to lap them after I clean all the carbon off them.

I know, but you could have gone all out, hit the pockets, seat rims, everything.

I finished porting the heads and then cleaned and lapped the valves. After that I cleaned the heads and intake manifold, installed the new valve seals and then assembled the heads. I had a couple of valves that were pitted on the seat and I wasn't sure if they were going to leak so I tested each port after I assembled them. I ended up with one intake and one exhaust that seeped. I lapped those two valves again and was able to get the intake to seal but the exhaust was still seeping so I ordered a new valve. It came in a few days ago and it is now seals.

I started installing the headers onto the heads because it's easier to install the heads with them on than it is to try and install them after but when I went to tighten the header bolts on the driver side head I pulled the threads on three holes. Now I need to drill, tap and install helicoils on it. I did get the passenger side head on and torqued down and tonight I will fix the other head so that tomorrow I can try and have it back together and running.

There's a reason why the big dollar race heads are completely helicoiled.