350 miles round trip to Dewey Ok for the Stray Kat 500. Did great! 16 MPG running 75, turning 2800 ish rpm. TH400 still a little overfull as it pushes ATF out the vent when I was running it pretty hard trying to catch up with another hot rod. The secondary air door in the Q-jet still needs a little adjustment, haven’t found the sweet spot yet. If it opens too fast it’s a lean bog, too slow and it falls on its face rich. Kinda hard to tell which one is happening, so some more trial and error. My middle daughter took a nap in the trunk like I used to do in this car when I was her age.
Good to see you this weekend Dan, even if was only briefly. The car looked great and the chrome reversed look awesome on it!!!! Was cool to get to see it again in person this year
I found someone's home movie on YouTube of the OKC 1986 nationals, not a close up, but you can see my car twice in the first 30 seconds of this video.. I know that's it because it's parked where dad always liked parking at the OKC Fairgrounds..
I was there, did you see me? It used to be a great time. I haven't been since they pulled out of OKC. It cracked me up when he was filming and "oblivious guy" just parked himself in front of him, he tried to do some creative panning to get the **** out of his shot....
I didn't see ya... I was 9 in the summer of 86, so I probably looked at cars for 10 minutes then whined about the heat and snacked under a tree the rest of the day.
Well I graduated in 84, remember those juniors in high school on your first freshman day, yeah that was me.
That’s an awesome find Dan! Now all yall got me feeling old…except for ****…you made me feel young again.
It did awesome going to the ROC this last weekend.... except for the profuse ATF leak that persists. This time when I crawled under it after a hard run on the freeway, I could see ATF leaking from the hole in the flywheel inspection cover. The front pump seal is probably bad. Makes sense because I disturbed it when I had the engine out. In moving the trans around the shop on a dolly the torque converter fell off the shaft. I just put it back on, didn't occur to me a 40+ year old seal probably needed replacing. So now that the trans probably needs dropped, should I put in this fresh 700r4 I have in stock? It would require a different trans mount. There's about 5 inches difference between the TH400 and 700 tailmount location. Not a huge deal, but definitely not a quick swap. Also, the front springs are too long... it bottoms the upper control arms on the crossmember on the rebound of a hard bump. I probably need to cut a coil off. After I got home from the ROC, I went to the ER with abdominal pain and had my gallbladder removed on Tuesday, so all of this wrenching will have to wait a while. In the meantime, here's my video of the ROC
hey dan.i say go for the fresh 700r4 and do the mods.make sure you get the tv cable set up correct. and enjoy
Damn bud, hope you're feeling better, you'll be back 100% in no time. I vote to go with the 700R4 as well. You'll probably like the way that the TH400 shifts better, but the OD totally transforms the manners of the car on the highway. If you like to drive long distances and on the highway, there is nothing that beats it. I also concur about the TV cable. Pricey lesson learned by me as well.
My plan is to buy a quality TV cable bracket for a quadrajet, read a lot and watch YouTube videos about cable setup. Any advice other than that?
Give Bowler Transmission a call. They have cables that are not universal fit ones but rather have permanant ends on them.
It's less an issue of the quality of the bracket per se and more about just making sure the geometry of the cable is right. I'm sure they make premade setups for the quadrajet that remove the guess-work like they do for a Holley or Edelbrock. Beyond that, it seems the best way to get a rough adjustment is to hang the throttle wide open, then with the throttle maxed out, pull the TV cable all the way as far as it will go. This will be your best rough adjustment. Essentially, the correct adjustment is set off of 100% travel, ie maximum WOT equates to maximum TV cable travel for maximum line pressure. What confused me is that the TV cable will not return to "zero" when you're at idle on the throttle shaft, the scale is not linear. What I'm trying to say is that if you had a scale of travel of your throttle of 100-0 with 100 being WOT and 0 being idle, and you had a scale of TV cable travel with 100 being it pulled to max line pressure and 0 being no tension on it, 100% WOT would equal 100% TV cable travel, but 0% throttle would not equal 0% TV cable travel. The TV cable would be somewhere around like 25%. If you want to take all of the guess work out of it, you can actually see the TV linkage move the plunger that adjusts line pressure. You'd just have to remove the pan and have someone watch the plunger while adjusting the TV cable to make sure it's touching at idle. This video explains it better than I can. The 700R4 has a real deep OD gear as well, so having a 3.55/3.73 rear is optimal. My car has a 3.08 and it's almost too steep on the highway. The car wants to GO and by the time the engine is in the power band at 2200 rpm, I'm literally doing 85 mph. However, it will sit in the pocket at 2000 all day, rolling at 80 mph, quiet, cool, getting 23 mpg. It makes for a nice highway ride, even if it could use a little more gear to slow it down a bit. You also don't need lockup, though it is nice. I put mine on a switch. I leave it unlocked virtually all of the time, unless I get on the highway and I'm going to be on a long run, when I'll hit the switch. That drops my engine rpm by about 250 rpm, and acts like a 5th gear.
@57JoeFoMoPar Thank you for all of that! I’ll study up on it, mine has 3.08 as well, so I’d like to do a 3.55 probably.
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