[njsteve]

It's been an eventful couple of days here! Nothing seems to be easy lately. DAMN GREMLINS!

After I did the jet and rod swap, I reinstalled the carb and took it for a ride: it felt good but started popping at 4,000 rpm. Thought it was a jetting issue until I got home and sat there idling and it then idled down to zero and wouldn't restart, just cranked with no spark.

Typical! So I swapped in a brand new extra set of Accel points since the ones in the distributor looked fried...again. (Unfortunately, I had previously reinstalled that damn Pertronix coil which I had swapped back in after noticing the original Delco coil was leaking oil last week. I am beginning to think that that Pertronix coil is supposed to have its own ballast resister, even though the box said it didn't need one.)

Anyway, I couldn't get the damn thing to spark! So last night I bought a new coil at the local Napa store, still no spark. So then came the ignition parts replacement with known good parts to try to work through what went bad. Points, condensors, rotor, cap. Even tried a new primary lead wire from the neg coil terminal to the points since I have seen those break internally, before.

Turns out the brand new Accel points that I had swapped in, were defective. They were brand new in the box, but for some reason wouldn't work - looked like the rubbing block was too short. Swapped in another condensor, still no spark. Finally, I filed down an old set of used points, installed them and it miraculously fired up. Oh, that was after I installed the rotor backwards (yes, it is possible) and almost blew the roof off of the garage. (Lucky, the car has a shaker hole in the hood, otherwise it would have one now!) All in all, a very long day, yesterday. Bought a new set of Napa points this morning and replaced the old set. Started up fine once the dwell was set.

So, the end result is that I put in the #74 jets and the #44 metering rods which were almost an exact 10% jet/rod size increase in richness, along with the red power piston spring, all from Lloyd-TX, a 455HO fanatic on the Performance Years website. This replaced the factory 71 jets and 43 rods. BE secondary metering rods, replacing the leaner stock CR rods. Accelerator pump and spring from Cliff Ruggles. Timing set at 8 degrees initial at the moment. Running with the vacuum advance routed directly to the manifold vacuum nipple off the back of the carb, separate from the TCS system.

Whoa Nelly! That really woke this thing up. She definitely screams now. No more fading, pulsing or flat spots in the mid and top range. She just keeps pulling. I chickened out at around 5,000 rpm, since I was running out of highway rapidly - but she was still pulling. I would estimate it was a good 30 horsepower difference between the stock super lean setup and Lloyd's recipe. Very seemless transition to the secondaries. The car's nose just rises up off the ground immediately. Oh, and the spark plugs actually have a little color on them now, from the super lean, bright white, porcelain, before.

By the way did I mention that this car gets really bad gas mileage? or is it my driving technique? I went through half a tank and only went 35 miles.