I brought it to the track and identified some problems, Which I then try to fix.
Here is one.
When you look at this pic you can see that with the amount a Capri hood can be opened, you really don't have enough space to work on anything with mine.
This is because of the engine setback, and all the ducting sticking out below it.
The hinges wont do any bigger angle, so those had to be replaced.
Doing this kind of stuff on a freshly painted car is always tricky, but you have to do what you have to do...
Tack welded the female ends of the hinges.
Taking care to keep them inline.
Welded.
Painted.
Mounted.
So now I can open the hood to the sock height.
Or open it all the way.
And by undoing one 1/4" nylock nut I can slide the hood sideways out of its hinges, and take it off completely.
And put it back on without loosing its adjustment.
My cast iron Chevy 350 was allright for what it was, a used stock engine with quite a few miles on it with some go faster goodies on it.
It was only meant to be a temporary engine to get me going.
It started to feel pretty tired after a short while, so I wanted to replace it before it blew up.
I was able to trade some work for this.
That is a all aluminum 400 cubic inch ( 6.6 Litre) Donovan short block ( a race engine based on the Small Block Chevy ), which came out of a alcohol burning outlaw sprintcar.
Because they run on alky they have a super high compression ratio, it had a very radical cam, dry sump, mechanical injection and it probably had around 800Hp at the time.
Its outdated for that class now, but it had a good steel crank and rods in it, and forged pistons.
I took it to a machineshop that does only race engines, and we made a plan for it.
The pistons had enough meat on the domes to cut them down a bit, so that meant the engine could run on racegas with big chamber heads.
We put a much milder cam in it, and I bought some Brodix heads with big chambers & ports & valves.
I had to convince the builder to go for reliability and torque instead of all out horsepower, because I thought torque was more important and because I couldn't afford to blow it up.
I had to match port my intake to the heads.
And I converted the wet sump setup of the old engine to work on the Donovan.
On the dyno it made just shy of 500Hp and 500 Ft Lb of torque ( 500Ft Lb of torque is 678Nm )
I replaced the aluminum flywheel and single plate clutch for a used 3 plate Tilton setup with new discs in it.
I modified a aluminum Quartermaster bell to work with the Tilton, while still using a stock Chevy throw out fork ( I'm not a fan of hydraulic throw out bearings )
I modified the transmission so I could put AN lines on it.
One as a vent, and two to pump transmission oil in and out.
This goes through a electric oil pump and a cooler, to get the transmission temps down. ( I also put a transmission oil temp gauge in the car, so I could keep an eye on it while I'm driving )
And I improved the shifter mechanism, by converting it to Heim Joints .
