1970 Duster, Trans-Am-inspired "Pro Touring" build
Decided to give another update here... I've been in Georgia since March of this year and this month finally got to the point where I can work on stuff in my garage. I still need to find/build a place to store my extra parts, engines, transmissions, tools and such as half the garage is taken up by those currently.
Anyway the Duster is running great now after I retuned it for this elevation. Heck it ran pretty good before I tuned it. Due to the extra fuel demands though I have started approaching the limits of the Street Demon carb. At some point I will be swapping on a 750 cfm double pumper as this carb just isn't as tunable as I'd like. It gradually leans out as the RPMs increase but the air bleeds are not replaceable. I swapped the anti-pullover accelerator pump nozzle for a regular one which helped slightly but the AFRs are still not quite where I'd like them to be.
I still need to change the gear oil as the new 3.55 gear set has passed 500 miles. I'm going to measure the R&P backlash while the 3rd member is out and if it's less than .010" I'm going to increase it by 2-3 thou as it still makes a bit of noise. Iirc the instructions for the gears spec'd .010-.012" backlash and I think I set it a little tighter than that.
The current project is swapping the front brakes to the Doctor Diff Stage 2 kit. Earlier this month I flew to Jordan for a week to visit family and the day before I left (go figure) I decided to take the Duster for a quick spin. The passenger side caliper had always given me trouble with dragging ever since I converted to '73-up front discs, even after replacing the piston seal. Well it finally decided to seize on that last drive; on my way to the local supermarket I was smelling burning brakes and when I arrived there was smoke coming out of that side. I babied it back home and by the time I was pulling into my neighborhood it was locking up so tight the car was pulling HARD to the right and taking a good bit of extra throttle to keep moving. Got home and left it parked in my driveway for the next 3 hours or so just so it would cool off and not fill my garage with nasty brake fumes. It was smoking like crazy and the inside pad had what looked like glowing embers around the edges.