TireSmoke.org

The first one I got the injectors were wrecked because that guy got water in the fuel lines which hopelessly blocked them up.

The second one had been sitting and the injectors were pretty weak and it barely ran. it had been sitting for quite a while but not nearly as dire as the first one.

Yours I suspect was sitting less but still a lot of sitting. It'll be interesting to see if you can get them in order with some heavy duty cleaner. I'm quite sure this is costing a lot of power too.

The dumb thing is that it feels strong. Hopefully whatever the cure, it will make it stronger? Not sure. My '87 Firebird with TPI used to get dirty injectors with regularity, and I drove it A LOT. Never any detonation, just a bit of a rough idle though like this Vette has.

-BP

Maybe from another direction -- is the knock sensor + module working? The sensor is usually in one of the block coolant drains.

-Dave

It's brand new. I replaced it when I had everything apart, cuz I knew it was pinging before. Do I know if it's working otherwise? No I don't. The harness looked good otherwise.

-BP

Today we got the new PowerStop front brake pads installed. Probably the easiest pad slap I've ever done. If I would guess, this is what they call a floating caliper. So simple. While we had the wheels off and the parts on hand, we replaced the original Z52 Bilstein shocks with brand new Z51 versions. Apparently there's a difference and we wanted the stiffer shock.
We also put an ohm meter on all eight fuel injectors and they all came up at 16.2. Which is basically perfect.
During the week dad put one can of Chevron Techron injector cleaner in the near empty tank and drove it some. Then he topped off the tank with good 93 octane and put another can in there too. Somewhere between the good cleaner and the fresh gas, our detonation is gone! At a later date, we'll see if we can get away with a couple more degrees of timing, but it's pretty peppy the way it is.
I noticed a small clunk under the car and suspect a bad transmission mount, so I'll order one of those up this week.
After that, it's off to the drags! Unfortunately the track is closed for two weeks. But this will give us time to burn off some of that gas.

-BP

It's been a while since I looked under there but I don't think there is a transmission mount - no cross member to bolt it to. There is a u channel bracket that attaches the transmission to the differential.

Ok. I'll have to take a look at it. There is a slight clunk when you go from no throttle to full throttle. When it's loaded up a little and I romp on it there's no noise.

-BP

Be sure to check carefully for evidence of movement at the front and rear attachment points of the C beam that Andy just mentioned. It's not uncommon on C4s, for the two ends of the C beam to loosen a little over time.

Based on what I'm reading, everyone hears a clunk like this at some point, but nobody has a definitive answer. So I'll basically check what you said, and pretty much everything else too. I know the bushings are all going to need replaced at some point anyway, so as long as things are tight and safe, I'm not going to get too worked up about it for now.

-BP

Saturday was a short day, but we got the car weighed and put new wiper blades on it. The weights shown are with almost a full tank of gas, so at least 18 gallons in there. With less than a half tank, it should be closer to the 3000lb mark. Then over the winter I think we'll attempt to lighten the load, but keep it completely stock looking inside. Gutting the interior on the Firebird was fun, but ultimately put us in some race car class at the autocross. So we'll have to be more selective in what we do now.

-BP

This morning we got the new Baer sport brake pads installed on the rear, and installed the new Bilstein Z51 rear shocks. What a difference the shocks made to flatten the car out! The brakes feel better again too. I'm guessing the pads we replaced, although only half wore, were 20 yrs old and generic parts store junk.
Now that the brakes are showing some life, I'm going to order a stainless braided hose kit for the brakes to replace the original stuff, and will also be replacing the 37 year old brake fluid with DOT4 at the same time. I expect to have a much better feeling pedal after that.
But as it sits I'm calling it drag ready.

-BP

Saturday we messed with the timing a little with bumps to 10 degrees, and then back to 8, and ended back up at 6 degrees as it will still detonate at those higher levels. It's definitely stronger at 10 degrees, but not worth hurting the motor running it with the pinging. We washed it up so it looks nice and hopefully the weather holds out for racing on Wed.

-BP

This is just so I have all the info somewhere. NOTE: on the brakes

-BP

On Saturday we got the driver's side rear wheel hub replaced, and today we got the passenger's side one done. I struggled on Saturday getting the new hub inside the parking brake assembly and ended up dismantling all of it. I did this because the new Moog hub is made slightly more material than the stock hub that basically just fell out. The problem is not dismantling, it's reinstalling all the parts with the hub in the way. After lots of cursing and aggravation, we got it back together and installed.
Today I showed up with a different outlook on how to handle the problem and within five minutes I had the new, bigger hub installed inside the brake parts with no dismantling. Just like on regular drum brakes, there are springs and some movement available so I got a tiny pry bar and was able to literally shoehorn the hub in. This job went WAY faster the second time around. We also took the spare tire holder assembly out of the car completely. Probably about 10lbs worth.
Tomorrow I'll recheck the oil (and probably add some) and I'll be off to the track again.

-BP

Today we got the four stainless steel flexible Russell brake hoses installed. We also flushed out the old, brown, probably original DOT3 brake fluid and sucked out and wiped the brown/black crud out of the reservoir and then put DOT4 in and made sure that at each corner we pumped the old fluid out until clean fluid appeared.
We didn't get to drive it because of rain, but the pedal in the garage with the car running was hard as a rock and now right up top. I can't wait to drive it and wack the brakes now.

-BP