What Are You Doing To/With Your Car Today?

I found my intake leak... the tips of the manifold were hanging up on the "Chinese wall" aka end rails! With .055" milled off the heads (and the intake surfaces also milled, naturally) whatever clearance might have been there was now interference... I shoulda thought of that. :realcrazy:
A few minutes with a die grinder and it dropped right on. Still running lean and lower vacuum, but at least when warm it will idle without tickling the throttle now!
I'd set the lash cold to .012" so it should be .018" hot, which Schneider Cams said was the new lash for my slightly reground Mini-Express. I now have to measure the actual clearance with the engine hot, on at least one cylinder, to see if the rule-of-thumb (.006" tight cold) is correct for my engine. I used to have 8-9" Hg. and 13.5-14:1 AFR at idle, now it's 6-7" and showing more like 16:1 on the gauge! If the lash turns out to be correct, I think I will loosen them a bit from the specified .018". What's a little sewing-machine noise between hot-rodders :D

Big step at the rail
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The valley pan there looks like it was put in a sheet metal brake :rolleyes:

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But two minutes with a die grinder and it fits properly :thumbsup:20230416_172628.jpg