Cadillac

[Basement Paul]

Just a little update. With the cam swap complete, and some trouble getting my times down, I found a bad vacuum leak coming from the vacuum advance canister under the distributor. After fixing that problem, the car came around to the tune of a tire spinning 13.997 with a 98.5 mph blast. So far, the cam seems worth the effort.

This is officially the quickest car I've ever had. Only my '71 Vette was faster in the quarter. It ran a 14.11 at 99.5mph with the 350 after I cammed it.

This winter I plan to pull the rear lower control arms and box them in. By Spring I hope to have the 2.5" parts of the exhaust redone with full 3" and cutouts for track duty. No other major revisions should be done. Maybe just a little more jetting to the carb.

Hopefully these things will make it a more consistent 13 second performer in street trim.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

At the end of the season the car developed a slight harmonic humming noise at idle. This past weekend I diagnosed the problem to be the water pump. After pulling it off, I saw the blades were rubbing against the timing chain cover plate (what it mounts to). So after pulling the low mileage pump off my old 472, and realizing it was cast different (slightly) than the one for the Eldorado motor (the 500), I had to go order one from Auto Zone.
One day later it showed up and I test fit it last night. It will work. So sometime this week I'll get it back together. At the same time I looked at the alternator and decided to replace it as it spins like an alternator that is cooked.

A new carb and / or exhaust work will be not too far away. Then the current carb will be donated to the Trans Am cause.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

With the garage pretty much complete, and taking up a lot of my summer, the Caddy spent most of it's time in the garage of 32v just sitting there. About a month ago I got it back home and happily in it's new home. After driving it a little (and really enjoying that) I thought I'd get a little exhaust upgrade.

When I had the dual exhaust done the first time, the H-pipe that connected the headers to the rear portion of the tailpipes was done in 2.5" for some reason, where the tailpipes and headers are 3". After hearing how good the Trans Am sounded with the X-pipe, and being concerned with the "rapping" that the Caddy made at full throttle, I knew this is what I wanted for the boat to both increase the performance and cut down on the rap.

About two weeks ago I got the new 3" xpipe installed as well as having the rest of the system done in 3" and it did a couple things to the car. I noticably increased the power (i'm guessing at least .2 in the 1/4, maybe more) and it actually made the car quieter both at idle and WOT. The biggest increase in power coming from 3500 up to redline (about 5700). My exhaust guy said the reason the car rapped was that the crossover pipe was only 2", so it wasn't doing as much as it should.

So needless to say I've been excited about racing this Saturday for quite awhile now, and hopefully the car will stay together to see if I can best my 13.99. If there's ANY traction, I'd be surprised if it doesn't run a 13.7. "Time" will tell.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

1. New Carb
So I was close to my 13.7 guesstimation with the 13.81. At the Canton swap meet I picked up a Holley 850 with center squirters. This is a square bore carb that opens all four barrels pretty much at the same time, instead of progressively. With the 3000 stall converter that's in there, I think it will work OK.

2. Modify intake
I've seen several dual plane intakes where the divinding "baffle" if you will, is cut down about a half inch in the middle three quarters of the plenum. Apparently this is supposed to help the midrange and up. Since I have more bottom end than I know what to do with, this makes sense to me, and it's free performance.

3. Align alternator.
Apparently, after throwing the belt off before what would have been my last pass of the season, I have a belt problem. It appears that the belt does not run true, so I'll have to space it out a little bit. I'm also going to try to find a slightly larger pulley for my alternator.

I'm hoping the carb and intake mods will be worth another couple tenths and make enough difference to run 100mph. Once those things are done, about the only thing left I think to do to this car would be the rearend. I will most likely do a 9" with about a 3.4-3.5 gear with some sort of limited slip. That won't happen for at least another year though...

-BP

[Basement Paul]

This weekend I installed the Holley 850 square bore, center squirt carburetor to replace the 800 spreadbore I had before. Not knowing the history of the carburetor (it was supposedly rebuilt), I was taking a chance making the necessary modifications to make a questionable carburetor work, but what the heck...
A few things I had to do> First, when I rested the carb on the intake, I found the accelerator pump was hitting the front of the manifold mounting area, so in order to set the carburetor flat, I had to grind out a little area about the width of the accelerator pump.
With the carb sitting flat, I wanted to put a double return spring on (where I previously had a real long single spring) so I had to fabricate up a bracket to hold the spring on the front end of the carb. With a little flat stock, some drilling, bending, and grinding, that problem was solved.
The feed line from the carb opened up in a different location than the carb from before, so I had to get a longer section of fuel line, and also replace the dirty fuel filter.
Since there's no opening at the base of this "new" carb for any PCV vacuum line, I removed the PCV from the passenger's side valve cover, and had to buy a breather to replace it.
Besides having to move the mounting studs for the carb outward, and making a longer air filter mounting stud, the fab was over.

The carb started the car pretty easily and without hassle, but the first time I cracked the throttle where the secondaries opened even a little, the motor started racing so I shut it off. The secondaries were POURING gas in (ie the float was stuck). I removed the rear bowl to find it was full of dirt!! Dried up, crusty dirt. So I cleaned the mud out of both the rear and front bowls and tried again.

This time it ran much smoother and I was able to adjust the idle while in neutral. I'll have to get a helper to help adjust it while in gear though, as it's still a little rough under load. It does sound good and crisp while revving though, so I'm sure it will be good.

Some pics:








-BP

[Basement Paul]

So since it was Thanksgiving, I figured I might as well work on my Cadillac to build up an appetite. So, after I put a spacer on my alternator pulley to help line things up, and replaced the alternator and power steering belts, I got to work on the carburetor a little more. I adjusted the idle and was able to take it for a drive.
I drove it to the gas station and it felt GREAT! I'm assuming another couple tenths, and it hit's like a hammer at lower RPMs. Not to mention it revs faster too. The sound under WOT is definitely more aggresive.
The only thing that's worse is drivability. The carb has very little movement under light throttle before it starts to open the secondaries, so driving at lower speeds is pretty tough, not to mention it's kind of hard to push smoothly into the secondaries. I'm going to move the throttle cable mount a little higher (different mounting hole) to try and get a little more leverage on the throttle flaps.
Either way, more performance, good idle, and easier starting with this carb gives it the green light with me. Worst case I just have to get a little more used to it.

-BP

[wxo]

It's probably not the same problem, but I had the same symptom with the mechanical secondaries on the 35 year old Holley on my truck. It turned out to be a frozen pivot point on one of the levers on the carb. To find the problem, I had to pull the carb, disconnect some linkages and operate it on the bench. It was not obvious. Once I found that and fixed it, the secondaries now open smoothly. Actually, it changed the whole character of the driving experience.

[Basement Paul]

In this case, it's just that the secondaries open RIGHT away. The primaries only open about a quarter of an inch before the secondaries open up. The secondaries open smoothly, but it's hard to drive around at 40mph on a quarter inch of primary, but when you push into the secondaries at all, you're doing 55... I'm pretty confident this really wasn't designed to be the best street carburetor, but with a little more leverage, it should at least be somewhat better than it is. I'll mess with it tomorrow.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

After rechecking to make sure there was no sticking, I moved the throttle rod to a higher position relative to the throttle blades. This helped a TON! It now seems that I can drive this car pretty much like normal. I still need to have someone look to see that I'm getting full throttle, even though I shortened up the pull when I switched the hole.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

Sadly, I really haven't had too much time to drive the Caddy this year. It's been in a couple parades for my wife's campain, and I've been out a couple other times and that's about it. Last Sunday was a nice morning and I was going to meet the Rookie for breakfast and as I drove out of my street, I could not get the car out of first gear.
I got on the main road and it would only shift into 2nd when it got to about 4600 rpms (typical of a turbo 400). So I took it back home and grabbed another ride.
Later that day, after some self deliberation (and hose sucking...go ahead and joke), I determined there were no vacuum leaks. It pretty much had to be the vacuum modulator. So I bought one last night, put it in tonight, and... TA-DA... problem solved. Auto Zone had one in stock for $13.99. It actually made my shifts better under power, and smoother when not, but it is adjustable in case I want better shifts (according to the directions). I think I'll just leave it.
I do love the Caddy, especially above 4000 rpms.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

For the first time since I got the car, the Caddy got some new shoes. When I first got the car, it still had belted tires on it, and I bought a new set of tires. That's been almost 10 years already (YIKES). Anyway, it's tough to find a white wall tire in a 235 / 75-15 passenger tire, and Kuhmo seems to make the best one I could find, and the price is good too. I bought these off Ebay for about $15 less for the set than TireRack. We installed them at MostMint's Tire Installation Depot, and I put them on Sunday. Oh, and I painted them when it still had the old tires on them.

A couple years ago I installed a RH air bag to help load up the suspension under takeoff, but never put the LH one in. Since I had the car all jacked up anyway, I stuffed the airbag in the LH side, ran the line into the trunk, and called it a day. This will give me a little more adjustability, and the car will sit more level now as it sat slightly crooked with only one bag in.

Now maybe it will stop raining so I can drive it. I think I'll try to get to the track either on Saturday the 31st or November 7th to see if I can get a 13.6x out of it (current best of 13.81).



-BP

[ttamrettus]

Is that rubber I see on the frame rail? SHAME SHAME SHAME.....

[MostMint]

The manual tire machine doesn't get much use these days, but it still works like a charm with the vintage steel wheels.

[Basement Paul]

I took my new tires on thier maiden voyage today.... to TRP. They ride nicely and handle well as they have the heavier 108T rating which apparently handles the heavy load much better. They're definitely smooth and quiet too.

The weather was pretty sweet... sunny and about 55 degrees with a slight tail wind. Traction was pretty good (good is relative when you have 500 ft lbs of torque driving one 75 series radial and a 3000 stall converter) and I was able to get my best ET and mph ever.

I got to the track around 3pm, and by the 5pm closing time, I was able to get a 13.79 on one pass, 100.04 mph on another, and a .0004 reaction time on my last pass.

I would have liked to have gone quicker, but I got a couple hundreths, and a half mph better than my best, so I'd call it a good day.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

So a couple weeks ago I jumped in the caddy to go for a quick spin to Chardon. I made it not quite a mile away when on a small downhill under decelleration I heard a pretty good bang come from under the car, and immediately following heard a kind of rubbing or squeeking noise that was directly related to speed. The slower I got, the les I heard it.
At first I thought my rear transmission mount took a crap and the driveshaft weight was rubbing on the exhaust (it was real close). That wasn't the problem.
After having the car up in the air for awhile and turning a bunch of things over, I heard some clicking from the rear of the trans so I eventually pulled the speedo gear and the governor gear out of the other side to see what I could see. It appears to me, that something may have "shifted" inside the rear of the trans and caused the governor arms to rub the outside of the opening toward the rear of the trans, and break a small piece of casting off (which, I believe, is the initial bang I heard).




Worried about other debris, I drained the pan and then pulled it down, but really didn't find anything floating or laying in the pan that was out of the ordinary. This is good at least, as no crap got into my newer converter. I'm waiting to see a picture from 32V who has a turbo 400 in his garage to see if mine is really screwed up or not. None of what I see looks normal, but I don't have anything to compare it too.
Worst case I need a new transmission. I'd rather not have to, but if I do, I think TCI and B&M make reasonably inexpensive ($800-900) replacement that should be beefier than the one I already have.

-BP