Glowing headers
The engine shop I hang out at breaks in a couple of engines every week. I've been hanging out with those guys for 20 years now and I've never seen headers glow during break in. In fact, I've never seen headers glow at all except on a magazine cover. Guess I must live a boring life.
Heck, let me pick yer parts, I can make em glow! :)
My first experience with glowing headers was many years ago. John Zorian built a 440 for a friend of mine and when we installed it and fired it up the headers were glowing bright red! I don't recall what carb was on it. But a mentor of mine went over the specs and in the end said here take this 850 DP and try it. That fixed every thing and the engine temp came down also.
Me and my bud was thinking lean, you should of seen my dumb *** scurrying around opening the idle screws more trying to richen it up.:wtf: then I realized hey...
I bought a new holley 750 and was going to swap it to my 340 and use its 770 on the 440, did not, and figured the 750 would be ok for break in. guess not?
Your timing numbers "don't sound" too bad, BUT IS IT ACTUALLY advancing? Have you checked total timing advance? maybe the distributor advance is stuck/ worn/ etc
And yeh, lean otherwise.
I had my bud hold the throttle about 800 and it read 14, so I figured good and wound it up to 2+k and was checking for leaks, keeping an eye on temp gauge and did`nt get a chance to check it at the higher rpms, Thinking man this can`t be right with the headers cherry red.
Strange the water temp never went over 190, but has 180 stat.
Any more thoughts are welcome after this included info. If you need more details please ask.
This engine has been a long time coming and I`d hate to hurt it.
I may have got 8-10 min. breakin before it got ugly.
I pulled all plugs and they looked like they were never run?
basics--
TF heads
lunati .494 in. .513 ex. dur. 226 in. 234 ex. advertised 271-279 110 lobe sep.
installed dot to dot degreed good to specs. hyd. flat tappet, hughes roller rockers, .080 preload
homemade 1-3/4 ss headers not quite equal length directly to 2.5 complete exhaust. No collector
72 primary on the holley 750
Factory 72 electr. dist. with the lightest springs in a spring kit, with limiter, all new parts.
engine barked to life immediately. My bud, thinks I got a lot of ticking, valvetrain, I did`nt think it sounded too bad, seems there would be little with that kind of preload.
Sure would like a test schematic for dual ballast ign. so I could wire this up without the questionable harness I have.
thanks fellas
