is it normal for hooker headers to smoke, and i mean ridiculous amounts of smoke., like the car is on fire.. im trying to run my engine up to temp for the first time, but i keep getting smoke to the point that it freaks me out and i shut the engine off. i dont want to blow the engine... but i need to officially break this thing in already.. i run it at approximately 12-1500 rpm's until maybe 150*, which is when the smoke starts pouring from what seems like everywhere.
on a down side, i dont have gauges hooked up, so i cannot tell oil pressure, or "exact" water temp.. i have an external gauge (voltmeter with temp probe) that i have been placing on the t-stat housing. as for the oil pressure - all that i know is oil is getting around the engine, as i can hear it (and see it when i look in the valve covers) draining back down. i plan on hooking all this up shortly (next paycheck maybe..) but before today i didnt know how to hook mechanical gauges to a 350..
(btw.. if you need to know how, this helps: http://www.chevelles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=262020)
i know all the things i need to do, but the question is still basically "is it normal"?

for the one guy thats gotta ask...: its the long hooker headers connected to SB350 4bolt main...

 

JOSH, check your dist. timing. i think you will find it is retarded. retarded dist. timing will cause exactly the problems you are describing. i hate smokey headers, been there/done that, it is always retarded timing...

 

interesting call! i did know that my timing was off.... but i wanted everything to work right so i could time it.. what an interesting turn of events

 

JOSH, i never start a fresh engine without a timing light on it. it is the first thing to check.
EXAMPLE: we started astrodokks 383 stroker a couple of weeks ago. my snap-on dial back timing light was hooked to #1 before the start. the first thing i did upon firing DOKKs engine was to check the timing (it was right on).

you could be 1 tooth off, or just not have the dist. oriented right, but i still think you have retarded timing...

 

Nevermind. I thought this thread was about something else.

 

I'm with you, I thought someone was bragging!



Regards, John McGraw

 

Me too. :o What a let down to find out it was about smokey pipes !!!

 

Hopefully your headers aren't ceramic coated. Breaking in a motor with new ceramic headers is not recommended. And you got bigger ***** than me starting a new motor without an IR gun and accurate oil pressure gauge.

larry

 

It's not my desire to sound incendiary or to be offensive but there ain't no such thing as being "one tooth off". If you don't believe me then just read some of Lars' posts on this subject. If it weren't for the location of the vacuum advance a person could close their eyes, drop their distributor in and where ever the rotor tip is pointing is the location of the #1 plug wire. This scenario assumes the #1 piston is on TDC on the compression stroke. Since this engine sounds to be brand new it makes sense that the distributor would have been installed with the #1 piston at TDC.

Honestly, you need to get a timing light and some gauges on the engine asap.

 

Though I have no firsthand knowledge, I imagine that a lot of hookers are broken in with smokey pipes...

 

if the timing is off... and the carb is lean... then you'll heat the pipes up like crazy...

if your exhaust isn't ceramic coated.. you are probably burning the paint right off them. sorry.

regarding the dist off a tooth...

this is a very confusing topic...

to get timing right... there is no such thing as "OFF A TOOTH"

however, if you are trying to index your dist and wires to be in the correct location then you can indeed be 'off a tooth'

to get your timing right, one simply has to turn the distributor enough to get the proper advance...

however, depending on your intake manifolds and whether or not you have a vacuum advance can... it is possible that you will not be able to get enough "advance" no matter where you put the plug wires, ... in this case you will have to pull the distributor out enough and rotate it so that it does 'grab' a different tooth on the cam... this is trial and error... and sometimes requiring removal of the gear on the distributor rotating it 180... since there is an odd number of teeth, 180degree rotation will put the rotor in a different location and just might be enough to get the timing spot on.

good luck

A

 

i need to turn the thingy at the bottom of the dist, if i dont, the dist wont seat properly, and when it does, it is "off" 45 or so degrees. i did know i needed to before hand, but again, i didnt know it would affect the headers so... ill be taking care of it shortly. thanks guys

 

That's the oil pump, get a long screwdriver and turn it.

 

actually, you can manipulate the oilpump without a screwdriver... using the distributor...

in fact... if you remove the holddown bracket... and while applying slight pressure on the distributor... turn the rotor counter clockwise... it will walk up the cam teeth and spin the shaft....but when it grabs the next tooth, it won't fall on to the oil pump shaft... but you have turned the pump shaft... if you keep going, you'll find that the distributor will fall down in a different position....

if will take a bunch of hand turns to get it in the correct position, but i've found this much easier to do than trying to line it up with a screwdriver or oilpump priming tool...

you'll see a pattern as you go through this and eventually, it will fall in the exact correct location...

i'd encourage you to bring your motor to TDC #1....
and from there, you can refer to the shop manual as to where the rotor should point as well as where the vaccuum can...

i've done it so many times now, as many of the guys on this forum, that I don't refer to a manual, I just know from my own reference points.. even today, I reinstalled my distributor after swapping cams in my Z.. (for the 5th time) LOL... set the distributor down exactly as follows. and the car fires up on the first revolution.

i know that at TDC< the rotor points to the valvecover bolt (the one closest to the firewall near the intake manifold) and that my vaccuum advance tube aims almost perfectly between the intake runner and the plug wire loom (on my Z - on the vette its half way between the runner and the coil bracket)

when I fired it up... putting a timing light on shows 38 degrees WOT.

i'm at the point where I don't even need to put a light on it for initial fireup...(but do just to double check)

one would thing that there might be variables in how the cam gear on the camshaft is indexed, or the exact firing point of the points or electronic ignition, but i always seem to find that it fires in almost the exact same spot... with only minor tweaking to get the timing spot on.

i'm sure there was a similiar procedure for stabbing the distrubutor at the factory... i'm sure after doing a few hundered, the line guy putting the engine electrical together had a similiar procedure that worked for him

A

 

retarded hookers?

 

You mention breaking in your motor. I hope you have a roller cam if you are trying to bring the engine up to temp by running it at 1200-1500 rpms. If it is not a roller cam and you want to keep from ruining the cam, you need to run it at 2000-2500 rpm for 20 minutes.

There is never a need to turn the oil pump shaft. Once you get the engine to TDC and you drop the dizzy in so that the rotor points to #1 plug, simply bump the engine over with the key and the dist. will drop right in place.

I don't know how turning the shaft with a screw driver got started, but it is the most unnecessary thing I have ever heard mentioned over and over.

Try it and you'll see.

BTW, I bet if you had the car in the dark, your headers would be glowing red, and I agree with everything else mentioned above. Get the right tools before you do some damage to that new engine.

 

in the above posts, aaron does seem to know his stuff. yes, you can install a dist. one tooth off and compensate, but the vac. advance can will not point right. you can also install the dist. 180 out-a big mistake!! back in my early days of wrenching i used to get the dist. gears one tooth off, the solution was to slowly pull the dist. up until the gears JUST disengaged and rotate the rotor one tooth and stab it back in. another quick trick was to drop the dist in reguardless of where the oil pump driveshaft was, if the dist. didn't drop all the way down the oil pump shaft was not lined up. one guy would push the dist. housing down while another would bump the starter, when the dist. engaged the oil pump DS the dist. would fall right down. in the old days it was easy to static time an engine with a points dist. you just set the timing you wanted (8-12 BTDC or whatever) then rotated the dist. until the points broke and the spark fired, then tighten the dist. THAT IS YOUR TIMING.

with astrodokk's car with a pertronics i didn't think i could be so accurate. we dropped the dist. in, aligned the rotor to #1 TDC and set the body of the dist. so the vacuum advance can was pointing just right. amazingly enough, the timing read 21 with the vac. advance hooked up to manifold vac. -12 for the vac. advance=9 static. DOKK was doing this--, i was doing this-- when i looked at the timing light...

 

I never heard of hookers needing to be broke in.

 

sorry to bring this back up guys... i had a death in the family and couldnt do anything for a couple of weeks...
anyways, i got everything i needed installed.. oil press gauge, temp gauge, got the timing light connected.. im at 4* BTDC.. tried to let it run for a minute.. hookers once again started smoking ridiculously........ what am i doing wrong?

 

Where is the smoke coming from? The pipe surface or out the exhaust? If it's out the exhaust, it is oil or antifreeze (water). If so, I'd pull the intake to see if the gaskets are messed up.