11/20/06

I went and did it; I bought Kevin's truck. I've decided to call it Cave-In. See, I usually name vehicles after the person it was bought from, and since I'm finally caving-in and using a small-block Chevy, I thought that would be appropriate on two levels. So it looks like Barbecue Bob will have a 350 instead of a 305. I'm told that the 350 is the engine I actually want doo-doo the “fact” that it should have four-bolt mains and better breathing heads. My newest concern is whether the 600 cfm carburetor will be enough to feed this beast at 6,000+ rpm. Well, carburetors are cheap enough. We’ll see. I can hardly wait to yank that engine and get to work “rebuilding” it. I'm not really going to rebuild it per se, I'm going to replace the cam, lifters, valve springs, timing set, intake, and exhaust manifolds. There has been discussion afoot as to whether or not I should go with the throttle body fuel injection. I don’t think I am. I have a hard time believing that the rudimentary program in that thing will be smart enough to keep up with the big-assed cam I'm planning on running. The cam was chosen because it matches the intake manifold and whereas it is possible to adapt the two-barrel throttle body injection to it, I don’t see it providing either the air or fuel the four-barrel carburetor will. No, I think I'm going to go old school and run a carburetor. Besides, the one item that sparked this whole project, that distributor, won’t work with the fuel injection. Sorry, I just noticed that bad pun there. It was unintentional I assure you. Well, it is now noon so I think I'm going to shut down and go have lunch. Be back in a bit. And I'm back. Upon further inspection of the truck, I'm not sure it is going to be worth trying to sell. I'll probably part it out piecemeal and haul the shell to the crusher. It does have one or two possible items of value that I'm not interested in. The wheels are Chevy Suburban 15” aluminum rims that might net me a hundred bucks, if I'm lucky. The fuel injection stuff might bring another hundred or two. The transmission should be worth two hundred I'd think. Factor in $35.00 a ton at the crusher and I might just get the engine for free. We’ll see. Well, I've just about had enough of this for today. I think I'm going to quit and go home. I'll talk to you again tomorrow since there is squat going on out here at the railroad.