Finally I am happy with the windshield molding. The Windshield install company is sending their installer over tomorrow morning to inspect to see if they feel it is ready. I believe it is, but their word is what I am looking forward to.
If it is ready, I will be making the appointment to install the new windshield as soon as they get the parts in and they are available to do the work.
On another note, as I continue to get the body ready for paint, I decided to make another change, preferable before I go to paint, and I started ordering some of the parts today.
I have been having problems with the carburator. It runs fine both in town and on the highway on the primaries, but when I cut in the secondaries, I get a lot of poping and a
LOT of hesitation and bogging down. I talked with Edelbrock and they feel the carburator (Edelbrock Performer 1406 series, 600 cfm) is too small for the engine. It can handle the primaries, but when kicking in the secondaries, it cannot provide enough fuel and gets real lean, which is why I am having the problems. It is not lean on the primaries, so re-jetting will probably not be the answer. They say I can play around with the metering rod springs and jets, but they are not confident I will be able to get that carb to work well with the engine.
So instead of doing all of that or buying another carb, I started making the conversion over to fuel injection. Many things went into that decision. FI gets FAR better mileage, runs smoother, no transitions between low and high loads, no transitions between idle and running engine speeds, no cutting in of the secondaties, no need for accerator pumps, humidity, altitude, air temp, fuel temp, etc are not programmable with a carb and are all adjusted automatically by the FI control unit. The O2 sensor detemines if you are giving the cylinders too much or too little fuel and adjusts for that, and there is no need for chokes on a cold startup.
I looked into both Throttle Body, Multi Port and Sequential FI, and I will probably go with the throttle body. It will work well with my existing distributor and intake manifold and can be programmed just like the Multi Port and Sequential units. Because I can keep my existing dual plane intake manifold, I will keep more of the engines existing bottom end torque. The MPFI and SFI uses a single plane manifold and looses some bottom end torque. Other than that, very little difference if I am not racing the car, except for about $1500 more for MP or SFI once I am done. Also, to really fine tune the SFI, you need to put it on a dyno. That's all well and fine, but the dyno tuning adds another $800 to the bill.
Decission not finalized yet, but I am looking at the FiTech EFI 600 unit, which is good up to 600 HP. Extremely high ratings on line and lots of reall good videos on YOu Tube. I talked with Fi Tech's product support and my local speed shop (which not only handles FiTech, but also Holley, Edelbrock, FAST, EZ EFI, Sniper, and a few others), and while they recommend the FiTeck unit, they are not comfortable with the FiTech 400 hp unit on my engine. My engine is far too close to that units upper limit, as my engine is estimated to be between 380 and 400 hp, which is why they all recommended going with the FiTech 600 HP unit.
Here is a video of an FiTech 400 hp unit in a 1978 Corvette 350:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3QTQIu-j2g&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3f-Q0Y4s-8
and a video of the 600 hp unit in a Nova:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzT3WKJDojM
Today I ordered the replacement fuel tank. It is made for FI systems in that it has an internal high pressure fuel pump, baffles and the fuel return connections. The cam in my engine is already programmed for FI, so I am good there. Looking forward to how it will run, but if it is anything close to the way the 350 LT1 in our 95 Vette runs and accelerates, WOW.
I'll post more as it happens.
