Next I spent some time looking through my parts collection trying to figure out what route I wanted to go as far as carburation. My friend warned me that the carb that was on the engine was running pretty rich and that he had worked on it several times and was unable to resolve it. After pulling the plugs I could see he was right. On a side note, the engine had between 150 and 170#'s of compression on every cylinder.
I've got several Rochester's here and there and even a couple I tried to rebuild with no success. Really hate to go that route. Then I started looking at the 2 Barrel Carter/Weber that I'm running 3 of on my 1/2 ton trucks engine. I really like these carbs, I bought them brand new, put them all on the engine and they ran like a dream right outta the box. I think one of them would be sufficient and an improvement over the stock carb. (Plus I can buy a brand new one for about $70) Then I started looking through my intake collection hanging on the wall of my garage, I've got an old Offenhauser dual carb intake that I could rig up with a couple 2-1 adapters like on my 3 Carb setup and run two of the Carter/Webers, but that intake is ment for the earlier babbot 216/235 motors and the intake ports are smaller so I'd be looking at making (or buying) some adapter rings to hook it to the 261 or having a machine shop open the holes up to match the later engine, either way not something I want to mess with at this junction on this project.
Then I noticed the polished out Clifford 4 barrel intake I had bought off ebay at some point cheap. It needed some work but I've always wanted to try running one of them with a small 4 barrel, and it would be a good choice with the Fenton headers. From what I've read on Inliners and other sites, they run great if you water heat them and that Clifford intake flows a lot better to get the fuel more evenly distributed out to the #1 and #6 cylinders. So the next question is what carb, I don't have any 4 barrels laying around so I'll have to procure one. It sounds like the Holley 390 is the preferred carb for this setup and it runs great on non cammed up engines, the only down side I can see is the best deal I can find on one is just over 3 bill$ so unless I can find a good used one. (Hint, Hint...) That's gonna have to wait a month or so for me to save up. But It's gonna take that long to get the engine in anyway.
Pic I really want to maximize the power from this engine the best I can being that the truck is HUGE on it's own and I hope to have enough power to get down the road with something up on the back at some point. It is supposed to be a recovery rig after all.
another Anyway I started this post about a week ago and never did get it posted, last weekend I got the old engine pulled out so I'm a little closer.
I need to do a quick engine compartment degrease and cleanup.
While pulling the engine I noticed that all the covering on the under hood wiring was hard, and cracked as I moved it. I knew that a lot of the under dash wiring was at or close to that so I think for the sake of not wanting to see the truck on fire at some point, I'm gonna go ahead and put a new harness in it. This is typical for any of these projects as most of you guy's know. they always snowball.
More later..
MONGO
