Does anyone here have a newer Holley catalog that can tell me what jets came in this Dominator (list# 80586) out of the box? I got it second hand and it had 154's in the front and 188's in the rear, that seemed way off to me but I thought I'd give it a shot before changing it around.

To make a long story short (kinda) I ended up jetting up the primary a total of 14 numbers (now 168/188) and though it kept getting better to the 1/8 mile with every jet change it wouldn't run any better in the second half all night. It never helped or hurt the mph more than 1 mph over 4 runs....with 14 numbers!

My runs were:

1st pass 10.75 @ 125.7 1.528 60'

2nd pass 10.70 @ 126.0 1.524 60'

3rd pass 10.66 @ 124.9 1.494 60'

4th pass 10.62 @ 125.9 1.490 60'

Now I've always thrown fuel at it until it slows down and then had a pretty good idea what it wants, but the fact that it's lost a bunch of ET and mph over my gas combo and won't run in the back half has me baffled. Could I have a torque convertor going away or is it still way lean? I think that jetting the carb closer to square (180's?) would be a better way to go but I'd like to know what Holley had in it to begin with....it's got the same size air bleeds in it front and rear.

The car seems to run hard and doesn't nose over at all but it just won't pull in high gear, is this characteristic of a torque convertor problem? I came home today with more questions and really no answers, I'm confused....I don't want to chase the tune-up around if I need to fix something else.

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Alex Denysenko
Co-Administrator and Moderator/ non 65-66 Mustang owner sensitivity co-ordinator

Buster, I was looking at heat in the threads of the plugs. I had 3 threads of heat when I started and it's still got 3 threads of heat...the car doesn't seem to act or read much different even with moving up a bunch of jet.

From my very limited experience with alcohol, being rich with alcohol won't slow the car much, but will wash the oil off the cylinders. Being lean causes major heat, and can torch head gaskets and plug electrodes. To top it all off, knowing whether the engine is rich or lean takes a bit of experience since the fuel makes plug reading much more difficult... but you probably already know all this.

Good Luck!

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Alex Denysenko
Co-Administrator and Moderator/ non 65-66 Mustang owner sensitivity co-ordinator

Jerry and Mike, It's a little hard to tell from my limited time with alky. It doesn't heat up more than about 5 degrees during the pass, but at the same time, it's not dirty at all during the burnout like I expected and the oil's not a mess at all either. I can see heat on 3 threads of the plugs, so I tend to think it's still a little lean....but not .3 to .5 and 5+ mph lean, that's why I'm questioning the convertor. I think I'm going to square it up at .180 next time I run it, it still has a 20 number spread in it (168/188)....If square's good for gas I would think it should be good for alky. The gas carb has been sold and is gone.

Another reason that I'm thinking it has a trans/convertor problem, when we ran it at Sears Point (or whatever they call it now) 2 weeks ago it was puking trans fluid out of the vent and smoking every pass. I pulled some fluid out of it and ran it about half a quart low (it's got a deep pan) at Sac this last time out and it didn't leak out at all.

The car was slow at Sears too (on gas) but I thought it was because of having the wrong gear (3.89) in the car. But it was doing the same thing, it seemed to run pretty good to half track and then just won't pull in high gear. It's not like it's down on power, it's more like someone throws out an anchor (or a small chute) and it's just not rolling good.

I'm just not real familiar with the characteristics of a convertor going bad, I've been told that it won't mph first, then the 60' will fall off, then it quits all together. I just thought I'd bounce it off of you guys, I guess I won't know if it's bad until I have it cut open

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Butch
460 powered 1967 Comet Cyclone
10.271 @ 130.231
Butcher's Home Page
"Friends don't let friends drive Chevys"

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Alex Denysenko
Co-Administrator and Moderator/ non 65-66 Mustang owner sensitivity co-ordinator

Thanks Alex, I'll try that.

Kid's Cleveland on alchohol likes lots of timing. 40 to 42 degrees on total timing seems to work best. It also starts better with about 20 degrees of initial.

When Kid tried backing off the timing to 38, the car slowed down. Alky seems to like lots of timing and reacts fairly drastically to minor changes.

Since no mention has been made about timing here, thought it was worth a try. Doesn't take much to experiment a little.

No more water temp change than you are seeing, I'd guess its not lean. We usually would see about 10 degrees of increase with the pump running and the fans off in a pass.

As to the converter, is there any junk in the fluid? That sometimes indicates impending failure. We had a cooler plug up with aluminum shavings when a converter took a dump.

Hope this helps

The trans fluid is clean, I still need to flash the converter up like Alex said.

I'm going to get the car on a front end alignment machine also to rule out an out of whack front end. I never aligned it after I notched the shock towers the first time and this last time I had the engine out I lowered the notch another 1 1/2", I suppose the a-arm mounting point could have moved on me some and screwed up the alignment.