lars

Some of you may have followed a thread posted earlier by “swag” titled, “This hole shouldn't be there, right?” Forum member, Greg, had a very nice ’68 small block Vette that was missing a few parts off the aftermarket Holley carb, so he brought the car by so I could install some missing parts and to give it a quick superficial tuning.

While tuning, we also noticed that he was missing the expansion tank on the cooling system, the radiator was leaking, and his distributor was an aftermarket Mallory UniLite tach drive without vacuum advance.

So after fixing the carb and setting the timing up as well as possible, we sent Greg off on a quest to get a new radiator and all the parts for his expansion tank system.

Here is Greg and his son, with the old radiator and the Mallory UniLite distributor clearly visible:


So Greg rebuilt his entire cooling system with new parts from DeWitts (nice stuff), and Forum member Big2Bird (Jeff) offered up a shelled-out GM tach drive distributor:


A nice rebuild with new mainshaft, crossgear and tune-up parts got it looking like this:




This distributor was set up with an advance curve that allowed initial timing at 12 degrees, with centrifugal advance starting to come in at 800 rpm. Full advance of 36 degrees (24 degrees of centrifugal) was set to come in at 2800 rpm. The vacuum advance was custom tailored to provide 11 degrees at 11 inches of vacuum.

So Greg stopped by over the weekend and we swapped out the aftermarket Mallory with the custom setup Delco “stock” distributor. We installed the distributor in the GM Service Bulletin clocking position with the vacuum advance pointing straight out towards the passenger side of the engine – this is done to keep the tach drive cable straight, improving both cable and crossgear life. Timing was set statically with an ohm meter prior to starting the engine, which ensured that the engine fired instantly after installing the distributor. A quick verification and tweak got the timing right on the setup specs.

Test drive showed the car to have excellent off-idle throttle response, and very smooth driveability. Nailing the throttle caught rubber through 3rd gear, with smooth, strong power – much better than the car had ever run with the aftermarket system.

Reports Greg:
Bottom line: The stock parts on these cars can be set up to produce an outstanding level of power and reliability. You don’t need fancy aftermarket stuff to make a near-stock street car run extremely well, and those aftermarket “race” parts will often make the car run worse than it should with the stock parts. Before you swap out your “crappy” GM parts, take the time to fix them and set them up right – it’s the best bang for the buck you can ever get out of your Vette!

Lars

blue427

thank you for helping that corvette owner,you are a true asset to this forum and the covette hobby

swag

Thanks for your help! You helped me with one of my biggest "ToDo" items for the car. I would have never been able to come close to what you did to my car. I would have probably put in aftermarket parts thinking that was the way to go.

After your enhancements, I can see several changes. My car is so much more fun to drive. For example, when I start the engine it is ready to go and I don't have the rough idle. I thought the rough idle was a Corvette thing. Acceleration is so much better too. I am very impressed with all the magic Lars has done with my car. Overall, the car feels so much more responsive. Anyone who is looking to improve their car should reach out to Lars. He definitely is the master of what he does.

Also feel lucky with my purchase. So much more could have been wrong. Piece by piece I am getting my car back to mostly original. It's got a good solid engine and body. Just been reversing out previous owners mistakes. Must be that they didn't have this forum or a manual because some of the stuff they did I am scratching my head wondering why they fixed things the way they did.

My "ToDo" is getting shorter and shorter.

Just wanted to also thank everyone for all the support on this forum.
You all have really have helped me on several issues I've had!

Thanks

Greg