I'm soo happy ... after sitting for 10 months while various work was performed, Alexandria (my Zed) is finally alive! I put some fresh 91-octane into her, borrowed the battery from my friend's truck, and she fired right over. Well, not quite ... I had the 3rd and 4th plug wires crossed, but that aside, she fired right up.

As a birthday present to myself, I built a "Race Pipe" ... $15 worth of tubing from AutoZone, and a trip to my auto class for some welding, and voila! A 2.5" side-exit pipe. I wanted to street that after she passed inspection, but she's so loud ... to put it bluntly, she'd make Jeff Gordon's ears bleed.

I've noticed when I started her, I had to keep my foot on the throttle a lot, and there was a lot of backfiring and hesitation. It took 5 seconds to rev from idle to 5000 rpm ... not good. Usually I have to keep my foot on it until the temp gauge moves past 120. She's also running pig-rich. My question is, is my timing a tooth off or something? I've checked all my wires and connections, but she still runs like ****. I don't have a timing light readily at hand, and I can't start the car in my neighborhood without getting fined, so ... Just as a side note, she ran like hell when my brother drove her ... barely passed emissions.

81 Red, how did your Zed run with it a tooth off? I'm curious, I don't think my Zed should be this damn lazy.

So anywho, yeah. I've got pics of the pipe I'll post in a bit ...

-Dave-O

 

it'll run a tooth off, but it'll run like total ****. My Z was the same way when I did my head gasket swap, I didn't know that there was a way to put it in. My distributor rod was 180 degrees out, so that when I actually got it to run, it ran like utter ****. I'd check to make sure that the distributor rod is at the angle it should be when the motor is at tdc, and to make sure that the punch mark on the rod is at the same position as on the oil pump.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll take a look at that today.

 

Okay, so I found the problem ... seems the plug wire for cylinder 4 was corroded through inside the boot on the distributor, and there was a severe amount of carbon buildup inside the cap. New cap, rotor, and wires will run me about $45. Damn. Still sounds good running on 5 cylinders though.

 

Yeah that is how my '82 sounds like. He has a burnt valve in number 5. I need a valve job done on the head. Hopefully not the case with yours.

 

If you haven't already, make sure all your injectors are working.