'73 Vega GT All Aluminum Wildcat 355 Project

Contents:
Page 1: Engine Block prep
Page 2: Head mods
Page 3: Induction
Page 4: Engine Assembly
Page 5: Front Suspension Mods
Page 6: Rear Suspension/Weight Transfer Mods
Page 7: Rust Repair and Undercarriage prep
Page 8: Frame Rail fabrication/Unibody support
Page 9: Body Mods
Page 10: Transmission Mods
Page 11: BMW Radiator Swap

Induction:

I had to make a new page for the induction for my engine. I had planned on building an EFI system (MegaSquirt) using a modified Rover intake but I changed my mind for a couple reasons: I was having trouble figuring out how to control injection of alcohol blends like E40-E60, I really needed to simplify my project so I could get it on the road. I a little tired of building and building and not getting to try it out SO I decided to build an old school induction system with a well tuned carb.

After some research I landed on the Q-jet. I may change my mind on this if I can't maintain enough vacuum but I found this carb to be very tunable and a really great design. I like the CFM variability of the design especially. I downloaded a few tech papers on tuning them and was really hooked. I think this is the best designed carb ever. OK here's the caveat: It is really vacuum dependent. My cam specs are:

Crower 50232 with an intake lift of 0.488", an exhaust lift of 0.490", Duration 276º, Duration at 0.05": intake 214 degrees, exhaust 218 degrees. Lobe separation angle: 112 degrees.

I may be ok as this is more warm than HOT. So that may kibosh my whole plan and I'll have to use the Holley design. I really don't like that it but it's simple enough to have more vacuum tolerance.

I found a Q-jet from a '68 327 Malibu and went for it. I got it for $75! They usually go for around $120ish or more. I'm not really sure why this one didn't go for more. It's clean and just needs some work. It's a 750cfm. The smallest I could get. I'll be recording my tuning process below.

After I received the Q-jet I immediately slapped it on my Edelbrock performer 3.5 intake. It was pretty clear that this wasn't going to work with out some frankly major modification. I thought I'd look around to see if I could find a spread-bore intake I could use. As I was searching different intake manufacturers for the ROver I found this one: in an online ad by Triumph Rover Spears in South Australia.

I was pretty keyed up because I had never seen a spread-bore intake for my engine before. I quickly figured it was somehow modified from the original Harcourt intake. It came and here you can see it was modified by drilling and tapping the standard flange for the Q-jet flange.

The flange was then recessed to make room for the barrels. Here's a pic of the Q-jet sitting atop the intake.

As you can see it sits right on top with no problems. There is still some clearancing to do to clear the massive Q-jet secondaries but there is still about 1/4" to either side of the widest part of the secondaries to make it happen. I will likely get my machine shop to deck the flange for straightness.

Here you can see it sits pretty high. I'm not sure what clearance issues I might come up with in my car... There was also a simple coolent plenum heater fabbed into it. The braided lines are just for show. I'm not sure if it will work or just leak yet. I'll keep you posted.

Really the last feature of note is the water housing. It is different from the standard Harcourt in that they came with no coolent housing like this. They usually just have to ports cast into the intake port flange. This must have been welded on from a different unit...