Thread: For Don Shilady

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Originally Posted by Don Shillady

36 Sedan and NTFDAY,
. NTFDAY I note you have a 1976 Corvette and wonder if you have a heat shield on the starter since my SBC is from a '76 Corvette.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Your engine should have had a factory installed heat shield over the solenoid as mine did. I eliminated mine in favor of a wrap which covers both the solenoid and the starter and is secured with velcro. I purchased mine from O'Reilly's and it was a tad wide so it was modified for a better fit.
Since the battery in my Vette is mounted behind the drivers seat it came from the factory with 0 gauge battery cables which in my opinion you should be running as your engine compartment is small and if your hood sides are not louvered you're going to continue to have heat related problems. In the summertime you might want to consider running without the hood sides.

36 Sedan,

Thanks for the encouragement. Over and over I try to believe my hobby car is just like my daily commuter car and I can just put gas in and go anywhere but then some problem crops up, usually due to my own installation of the wiring. Maybe I will eventually get it all sorted out and now it is time to go back to my 42 mile test circuit up to Bowling Green on Route 2 and returning on Route 1. While my car was in Orlandi's shop (briefly because he is so efficient) there was another beautiful street rod in there, a '32 three window coupe kit car with a chopped top and 350 SBC including air conditioning and open hood sides. It is painted a beautiful metallic green with an orange pin stripe and appropriate round Pontiac tail lights including blue dots. The point is that even this top-of-the-line kit car build is in the shop for what might be brake rotors installed upside down. As good as many rodders are for many things it is difficult to build a complete kit car and get everything right yourself even with a lot of help from this Forum. I am glad I found Bruce Orlandi nearby as an efficient mechanic as well as nearby kit car builder John York who builds turnkey Cobra kits. Both have been helpful friends as well as knowledgeable mechanics in the expensive "car sickness conspiracy" called rodding.

Don Shillady

Keep plugging away, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I was under the impression that you used a kit to wire your car and if so it surprises me that you had a wiring problem from the neutral safety switch.

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

36 Sedan,
"car sickness conspiracy" called rodding.

LOL! Had the illness since I was young lad, never seem to get completely well..
Glad to see you have found nearby friends to help!

Well it is hard to believe that I was the one who spliced that wire when I removed a Gennie Shifter and replaced it with a Lokar unit. That required a longer wire relative to the hole through the floor. I now have much more respect for the effects of vibration, heat and corrosion on the wiring and I have already gone through a lot of the connections to add star washers on one side of threaded connectors with an added hex nut and another star washer on the back side. Even so I missed the spliced wire under the floor.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Just a minor update,

The new (Chinese) starter is advertised as able to handle up to 18:1 compression ratio engines so my 9:1 SBC now starts easily with a turn of the key! I took it for a short test drive and found the brakes were dragging. Then I found the brake pedal return spring had broken off one end hook. I checked the Internet for experience of others and one site suggested a set of assorted springs available at O'Riley's and at the same time I ordered the $5.05 spring kit from Bratton's Model A shop. Surprisingly my son helped me this time doing the under frame work. We tried two different springs and found the Model A spring from Bratton's to be better. Evidently with a power brake set up and no spring there is enough vacuum to partially apply the brakes upon decelerating! Another test run showed the problem is solved for now.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

As you put more miles on your ride you will probably encounter other problems like this one. Hopefully they will be small and easily corrected.

Congrats on the test ride Don. Good deal having the son give you a hand on the repair too!!

UPDATE Part A

Last Thursday I got my annual Virginia Inspection for just $20 with no corrections needed at 2015 miles! That is the first time I obtained State Inspection without some expensive modifications so maybe, just maybe my car is "finished", nah probably not.

Part B CAFE Seminar

Yesterday I attended a final seminar for an M.S. degree by an employee of Afton Lubrication on reducing friction through advanced motor oil additives and learned some new things! The CAFE study shows that in 1977 the national average mpg was 17 and that agrees with the 1977 Camaro Z28 as well as my 355 SBC with ported 882 heads, headers, 9:1 CR and Edelbrock 4 barrel carburetor. Modern Camaros and Dodge Hellcats get well over 30 mpg despite much higher power. For a while I thought these improvements were due to fuel injection and multi-gear automatic transmissions (the Hellcat has an 8-speed auto) but the seminar yesterday said that as much as 50% of fuel energy goes to overcome FRICTION and there is hope that an additional 25% improvement can be obtained by improving motor oil. To be sure the projected improvement still includes ZDDP additive although at too low a concentration for flat tappet cams. The idea is that some additional organic agents can be added to react with an iron surface and the ZDDP (Zinc ditho diphosphate) to form a coating of steel/iron parts with less friction than with ZDDP alone. Of course that is great that such scientific research is going on (nearby to my home just north of Richmond, VA) and offers better mpg. However it was mentioned that it is anticipated that in the near future the CAFE standard will be raised further to about 54 mpg! Is that possible? I recall there used to be contests to maximize mpg using high pressure tires and slow driving with coasting to achieve more than 100 mpg but those driving practices are impractical. This is alarming to me and it would seem that auto engineers have already done major improvements to transmissions and fuel systems so perhaps 40 mpg is reasonable to expect due to improved motor oil but 54 mpg seems to me as an unreasonable goal set by idealistic politicians? All of this development of improved motor oil will still not help those with flat tappet cams but the "game" seems to be to just meet the conditions for "next year's model" so the lubrication engineers really have a challenge here! Meanwhile I expect to still use AMS-oil ZROD 10W-30 for my flat tappet cam setup in a 1976 SBC 350 block but even though my replica A-roadster weighs only about 2600 pounds and has a 700R4 OD I still can get only 17 mpg at best using a carburetor. I am appreciative that AMS-oil still offers the ZROD series with higher ZDDP content for flat tappet cams. Just some interesting news that shows developments in auto lubrication.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Hey, LOOK! it's Don Shilady!! Long time no see.

Nice to hear the "A" is still running well and you seem to be having fun with it.

I also attended a similar conference regarding lubricating oils. They quoted the same basic information about fuel economy vs. horsepower. When they asked for questions I asked how they were compensating for the difference in horsepower considering the ratings systems changed at the end of the 70's , so if they weren't compensating/converting - then theeir results were skewed and misguided.

They had no decent reply for me and seemed confused that horsepower could be measured multiple ways and questioned my accuracy.
I told them to google it and get their info right before making boastful statements.

Hi 34-40!

The data I saw got around that problem by starting the graph at 1977 but I thought it was amazing that the national average was 17 mpg then in the time of carburetors. Right after my B.S. I worked for a summer at Socony on synthesizing those malodorous ZDDP copounds and I always wondered about what was really happening on the metal surface. The new studies use more sophisticated methods and can actually analyze the elemental content of the coating and it does contain some iron as well as Zn, S and P so there is some sort of chemical reaction between ZDDP and iron surfaces. The new surface testing methods are possibly more sensitive than the old 4-ball test, but I saw enough data to believe the AMS-oil four ball tests.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Good Stuff there Don. I just find it amusing that the presentors weren't as familiar with their data and facts as they needed to be.

Originally Posted by 34_40

Good Stuff there Don. I just find it amusing that the presentors weren't as familiar with their data and facts as they needed to be.

While I knew that there was a change in methods of deriving HP back in the '70's I'd never really read the whole story as it's listed here - Understanding Gross Versus Net Horsepower Ratings - Ate Up With Motor One thing that was amazing to me as I read through the article is that the Corporate bosses dictated a "not more than 1HP/10 Pounds" rule, so the exact same engine was listed at 325HP on a Firebird, but 360HP on a GTO. Interesting stuff!

Lots of the battle over hp back then came from insurance companies-they wanted to use hp numbers for setting rates vs driving records-also was demise of 4 speed cars

I remember reading the Taxable Horsepower Ratings back in the Mid Seventies too!

I forget which name brand manual it was in. But they were all around the shop I was working in.