Glad you nailed it Randy! Sometimes these old engines have a mind of their own. You methodically diagnosed it and nailed it. Way to go now get that thing together and have some fun! Better to have a problem now than after the car is together! Good on ya Randy! Lippy
In this case with a new engine(little or no HC in the crankcase) and the traditional breather in the right valve cover it's uncompensated air(lean) and all going to that runner. I buy it,makes sence now that he knows what it is. Your correct that a pcv shouldnt cause a miss and plumbed right now it won't.
And how! I figured it was something off the wall and would be free to fix, just had one of those feelings about the problem. I mean, the compression was good, all the electrics were cooperating and you did have an adequate fuel supply, what else could you need? Maybe a PCV valve that played well with others, lol. Bob
Well,,, aparently thats not true shes hitting on all 8 now, it was like flicking a light switch i believe it had alot to do with the location of the feed port
Ha..dont feel bad, I got the same issue now Im going to try and pull out of the center , like from the center carb low on the base and see how that works. im sure that would be better than pulling from an area too close to one runner or one end of the intake
Just last Friday I drilled and tapped a hole near the rear of the intake on pass side pretty close to where the vacuum advance on the dist is and then I drilled and tapped a hole in the riser on the back carb. Waiting on a pcv valve to show up from NAPA so I can pick it up and try to hard pipe it in, and after what you just went through I might have to end up pulling the center carb riser off and swap it with the back one. I don't know we will see. Keep me informed as to how your turns out.
Not so long ago I had the exact same issue with initial start up on a SBF with aftermarket heads. We had a dead cylinder I found with a temp gun just like you. I assumed I had a valve too tight, I "reset" the valves over, and over, and over, finally pulled the intake and sure enough the gasket had slipped just enough on the oversize ports to cause a vac leak into the crankcase.
watch that one on the rear , might play with your #8 cyl..maybe my problem might also have been the size..3/8" hose typ pcv line size..but it was just a but too much for where it was..possibly a smaller set up for dist. vac. might not be a big issue? it also could have been from the design of the intake and the placement and size of the vac. line too. like a combination of equipment that added up to one big PITA.. i think im going to use ported vac for the distributor..little better that way no dive on the vac when you stomp on it..
The way my carb setup is I have to use the manifold vac for distributor. According to Dickster the carb vacuum ports were blocked because the old holleys needed a special vac signal from a certain distributor and mine would work better hooked to intake vacuum. I tapped the holes in the intake and riser with 1/4" npt but I guess I could use any size piping, but the pcv valve that is coming also had 1/4" threads on both ends so details, details, details, they are killing me one after the other. Soon as I get the pcv figured out I can fire it up and see what happens. I just hope the tri-power set I got from Dickster works okay because I sure don't know anything about these 94's I have.
Im sure that will be fine..your vac. advance will work more like a load compensator than how ported vac works, but if you can get enough innitial timming in it, you'll be fine. im going to try and un cork one of my ported vac. from off the center carb, and see if that works ok, if not,,, back to block below the butterflies