427Hotrod

Just a quick update on some of what I've been up to lately.

If you recall I pulled my 540 a while back to look it over and it all still looked great despite my proclivity for 7500 RPM shift points!

I went ahead and freshened the motor into a 555" with some Mahle pistons and a set of Oliver rods as well as a valve job and new springs on my S.A.M. ported Brodix 2Xtra's.

I spent two days on the dyno last week swapping carbs, cams, heads, intakes etc to see what would do what. I'll cover all of that in some upcoming posts plus it will all be the subject on a magazine article in Corvette Enthusiast.

I also got to work with Doug Flynn from Holley to test their new EFI system and I have to tell you it's amazing stuff!

After I got the motor home I thrashed on Saturday to put it in the version I wanted for this trip and got it in the car by midnight.

Spent Sunday and Monday fabbing lots of little stuff....like water pump spacers to clear the new Jesel Belt Drive, pulley spacers to accomodate the crank trigger for the EFI, spacing P/S pump and stuff out to accomodate all those changes, installing 02 sensors in some new pipes I made to connect to headers, mounting ECU, re-doing fuel plumbing, chasing parts etc etc.

I then picked up the editor of Corvette Enthusiast at the airport on Tuesday afternoon who flew out to make this trip with me. I had to admit to him I didn't have it running in the car yet!!

I put him to work and we fired it up at 3am! Got a little sleep and headed out Wed morning with not even a drive around the block on the entire new combo! Packed all of our stuff in the back of the Vette and off we went!

We drove to Texarkana from my house north of Ft Worth and had lunch. Then we went through some pretty violent storms in Arkansas with horizontal rain and hail. We made it to Memphis last night and headed straight to Bealle St. to enjoy some Blues Music and BBQ! We took some great shots of the Vette on the roof of a parking garage and on the main streets and even managed to get the Police to allow us to pull the car into the middle of Bealle St. (cars aren't allowed..just Bikes on certain nights) to take some pics of it sitting crossways in the street! That was a little dicey I can tell you!

Today we drove from Memphis to Scottsboro Alabama down past Huntsville. Tomorrow we are heading back into TN to the Jack Daniels Distillery and some great mountain back road driving with the top down on the way to a car show in North Carolina. We have a few buddies from Houston in Vette's that met us here tonight and will continue on with us. I'll head back home on Sunday.

So anyway,,,,here we have a solid roller (.788 lift) 555" on a road trip to see how it fares. The new Holley EFI is working great and has pretty much self tuned itself along the way. I'm using a 1 to 1 throttle body off of S.A.M.'s 1000HP LS Camaro. I've got two others with progressive linkage to test to see how they act on driveability.

The editor drove all day today and really had a blast! Took a new friend I met tonight for a spirited ride in the 7000 RPM range through 4th gear tonight....no lack of power!!

Only issue so far has been when I ran over a tire tread carcass yesterday that disconected an 02 sensor. Fixed that pretty quickly this morning.

On the way home I'm going to work on EFI fuel mileage tuning. That ought to be interesting!!

Wish us luck....I hate to walk!


JIM

bluzman2004

Doug Flynn is a good guy. He's worked very hard on the getting their new line of EFI out. I can't believe you were here in Memphis and didn't stop my us here at Compcams! Shame!

Sounds like you go the car back to what you like...extremely brutal, but streetable.

Gordonm

Jim. Love to hear these stories. That has to be a wild ride and FI to boot now.

Mako72

Amazing! EFI tames the beast.

0Road-Race Vette

You are the man. Truly a hardcore car dude!!!!!!

gkull

You lucky dog! I'll enjoy the mag. article If they need to test a big roller cammed 434 small block send them my way I've been waiting out EFI until they they get it more perfected.

The only true freebe I ever got was Kerker & dyno jet wanted to aquire a new honda road racing bike that was going to be released to the United States. So I bought the bike sight unseen and had it shipped to the US. They used it as a test mule to design headers, air box, jettting.... So they were ready when the first 250 showed up in America.

Does this mean that you will forget how a Holley carb works?

zwede

I never thought I'd see the day when Jim switched to EFI!!! The apocalypse is surely near!

I too will be interested in what kind of fuel economy you get. I remember your best with the dominator was around 12mpg highway.

Rebelrob

Sounds like a lot of fun. Looking forward to hearing more about the trip and the engine or course.
Keep up the good work....:c ool:

tshort

I'm so envious that me and VooDoo aren't with you guys. And I SOOO need a vacation right now. You guys have fun and report back soon with some PICTURES.

ajrothm

Best of luck to you on the trip Jim!

That's what I am talkin about...a fast as hell street car that actually gets driven......awesome....

lakebumm

Lookin forward to checking your car out tomorrow!!

BILL SR

SmokedTires

Texarkana hey that's where the Bandit picked up his 400 cases of Coors

Sounds like your having fun as always with that beast Jim, good luck with the trip

Eddie 70

East Bound and Down.............Load the editor up on JD.
EFI gonna do what they say can't be done.

jordan89

I too love stories like these. Thanks for sharing.

Ray Y

Jim-
Glad to hear you are up and running on the new 555! I've dropping you several PM's lately but your box is over flowing so they bounced back. I'm finally ready to lite up my 555 tomorrow morning that you inspired from the original Bruiser article series. Keep us posted on your trip and the new motor!

69ttop502

Good stuff Jim and keep the updates coming. What roller lifters are you running?


Bill

Bullshark

Hey Jim, Sounds like a real grudge match unfolding. What's Doug have up his sleeve to counter?? Are we going to have to wait till next year for the results? Ha Ha

Bullshark

c5_droptop

Updates, updates, updates... those of us stranded at home want updates...

Dave

PS To how many decimal places are you taking your MPG calculations?

Dave (and Katy)

427Hotrod

Well...we had another great day today. We cruised some incredible twisties to the Jack Daniels Distillery and took the tour. I figure this TX crowd has sponsored enough of their product over the years that we really needed to pay our respects to old Jack's place!

From there we went through Chattanooga and then into Winchester TN for lunch and then to Maggie Valley NC. Heading to the Vette show tomorrow.

Need to do a little cleaning...Ok...a LOT of cleaning.....we have quite a few species of critters plastered all over the car!

Car ran great today...hit some more thunderstorms and stuff....but all went well. Haven't had a chance to do any serious tuning on the EFI...but actually it's been running well. We've even been stuck in several very long traffic jams where we sat parked and idling and it has handled it well.

The roller lifters are Lunati pressurized type. I'll check the valves this weekend..but they sound fine so far.


You get quite a lot of attention when my car rumbles up...followed by Snowman (Doug) driving his C-5 with the Maggie Blower.....then a yellow 427 4 speed *survivor* C-3....then a red C-3 with complete LS power...then of course another C-6 and a C-6. We have a father son team as well as a mother son team along for the trip! How cool is that??

So far we've driven this thing 1200 miles!

More updates to come!!

JIM

Clams Canino

I'm loving this more than a french fry.... keep posting please.

-W