Vacuum Secondary Conversion

Newbomb Turk said
Not really. It’s more about unlearning and relearning.

You have to change the way you think. And not you as in you personally but as in the general sense of you. I had to do it.

I heard all the same crap that you probably have. Like the fuel is garbage (lol it is but it’s no worse today than it was in 1980 except the reformulation for EFI and the lower grades of fuel have even looser standards than they did back then) and you’ll have to take timing out and that will kill your power, junk like that.

I put the cooling system first because that’s where you MUST start if you want to be successful with higher than orthodox compression ratios.

If you can’t keep your coolant at 160 degrees you have no business trying to get much over 11:1. I think that’s what will stop me from getting to 13:1 on pump gas. I can keep the engine at 140 degrees but I won’t have a defrost. So that’s no bueno.

And, keeping the engine cool like that brings in a whole different set of things you have to do differently.

That’s where I started as well. I installed a duel fan aluminum radiator with shroud and no heater or defrost. I live in AZ which is my first up hill challenge. Also running a 160 degree thermostat. I successfully tuned my set up for no audible detonation however I am on the line with no margin. My bottom end is what it is for now. I could throw money into aluminum heads but am trying to buy margin. If my duel plane (which is at the machine shop STILL!) helps me add a degree or so of timing I believe I can add a very small amount of margin to staving off any detonation on the corner cases ie excessive heat days or under heavy loads. If a VS can help eek out a bit more timing then it would be worth trying that as thats not an expensive thing to try out.
gain this is more for improving on what I had done prior to my restoration work.
Heres a pic.