Between the time we completed the installation on the 1970 Olds and the writing of this chapter, 30 days have passed. This time has afforded the opportunity to assess the system’s performance. In that time the Holley Dominator system has performed … [Click here to read more...]
Muscle Car Interior Restoration: Dashboard Guide
As mentioned earlier, the interior is about 95 percent of what you’ll see of your muscle car while driving it. Most of the interior that you’ll see while driving is right in front of you: dashboard, instrument cluster, center stack, and console. Your … [Click here to read more...]
Engine Balancing 101: Everything You Need To Know
A properly balanced engine operates more smoothly and with less dynamic strain. The results can include slightly better fuel economy, smoother operation throughout the RPM band, and most important, less life-draining and power-robbing harmonic … [Click here to read more...]
Holley Carburetor Full Power Circuit Calibration Guide
Strange as it may seem, the main jet on a Holley carb is not what you should be using to calibrate the WOT mixture delivered to the engine. That job is the function of the power valve and the PVRC. The main jet, however, is the most often changed … [Click here to read more...]
The Tools and Equipment Guide for Engine Math Procedures and Measurements
Many of the formulas in this book require precision measurements to ensure accuracy. This chapter familiarizes you with the tools required to gather these measurements and some strategies for organizing and storing them for future reference. Most of … [Click here to read more...]
Automotive Horsepower Guide: Exhaust Headers
British engineer and author Philip H. Smith wrote a 250-page book entirely on intake and exhaust systems because the subject warranted it. We don’t have space here to do that, so you are going to get the hands-on basics of an important and complex … [Click here to read more...]
Manual Transmission Clutch Basics
Although the focus of this book is manual transmissions, a transmission can be rendered useless without proper clutch performance. The premature failure of most synchronizers usually stems from some sort of clutch-related … [Click here to read more...]
Interesting Ford Muscle Car Facts
Fact 1: Bruce Springsteen loves to sing about cars and despite some occasional technical boo-boos (see Fact #17), most efforts are spot-on. A great example is the song “Ramrod” from his 1980 album The River. The Boss describes taking “Dolly” out … [Click here to read more...]
How to Tune Your Engine’s Idle Speed
Now that the engine has been mapped under most stable operating conditions, it is possible to move on to a less stable condition: idle. Because of the slow engine speed, there is a relatively long time between possible corrections the PCM can make at … [Click here to read more...]
Abandoned Dragstrips: The Wild West
Believe it or not, there was once a time when a guy on the East Coast didn’t have direct access to the best speed parts of the era. There was no Internet, no lightningfast shipping capabilities, and no parts warehouses with millions of components on … [Click here to read more...]