Tonight I removed the valve covers to check valve lash and found the rocker area drenched with beads of water. I left the breathers off yesterday trying to avaoid that.

I realize that alky draws moisture, but this seemed like an awful lot. The cooling system is fine, no loss of water at all. Its got to be condensation.

My only experience with this is KVs alky carb. and it doesn't draw near this much. I've thought this motor was a bit fat but I'm not prepared to mess with that till I see exhaust temps at the track.

Speaking of exhaust temps, I was getting about 350 - 360 degrees at idle at about 1600 RPM. When I switched to gas the temps went up 500 degrees.

Is this normal? If so, I'll learn to live with it. If not, what should I check? The motor sounds great. It started right up even though the timing was a bit off, and sounded super once that was corrected.

Any comments?

Thanks

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http://home.usaa.net/~johnson403

1. I bought a leakdown tester to set the barrel valve. Much more accurate than setting it by ear. Ron's says either use the snap throttle test to set it or set it with a leak down tester. When I set it by ear and then checked it with the tester I had leakdown at 36%. Ron's says use 28-30%. Mine is currently set at 26% per some advice from the distributor I bought mine from. This helped more than anything.

2. I use the fuel shutoff as a leanout all the time. It is always pulled about 1/2 way out to the "sweet spot" when driving in the pits, staging or return road. Bypasses most of the alky back to the cell. I push it in as a leave staging to do a burnout. Pull it back out as soon as I'm off the track.

3. Mine is better when I actually run it on the track vs idle/tuning time, even if the temps are the same. I think that's due to the header evacs. I know one guy that heats his up before final shut down, pulls the v/c breathers and then sticks a shop vac hose into one side and lets it vac for 10 minutes. Says it helps. I'm gonna try it.

I did know about the leanout by pulling the fuel shut off part way. I frankly didn't think of that. I imagine that made my oil pretty contaminated. I'll avoid that mistake again.

The oil I drained didn't look too bad. Just a little milky, but almost water thin and for 10W-40 that seemed strange. Maybe all that running full rich at idle was the cause.

I'm also thinking that you don't run these things just for fun. I won't start mine now till probably Thurs. night when I load it. I need to check the timing one more time, but I can do that then.

Jerry,
Yes to the high speed. We run one off a RPM switch hooked to a N2O purge valve with a pill in it. I personally don't think much of it but automatic guys say it helps them when they are up on the convertor.

The other is high gear activated.

The high gear one seems to work for him as his car is consistently quicker and faster than similar cars with bigger motors without the bypass. He also has his injector nozzles turned around facing into the airflow.