I parked my GN back at the end of 2014 and did not drive it again. The primary reason I parked it was due to it smoking like a mosquito fogging truck. It was down right embarrassing. The alky system died about the same time and I dented the hood due to personal stupidity so all the roads led to parking it.
My diagnosis on the smoking seemed to point to the valve seals or guides being gone. I did not have any significant blowby.
William has been bugging me to let him come down and work on it but I did not want to spend the money-especially not with the local machine-shop bandits. A couple of months ago, I decided to try to fix it and decided to buy a new set of Champion iron heads but I could not bring myself to spend $1500 for iron heads.
I talked to Billy Anderson and he had a set of ported irons in the shop with 500 miles on them with T&D rockers, and the Champion valve covers, and gaskets so I made a deal with him. He cleaned the heads and lapped the valves. They already had roller cam springs on them.
I started stripping it down and William came down last month and we swapped them. The old heads had a single GM shim under them and were about 20 years old...they were still in good condition in spite of seeing 30 psi a couple of times. He brought a replacement hood with him.
We went back with 0.040" Cometics which cost me a little compression but it runs well.
The old heads showed the seals popped off and a bunch of shattered dampers. I guess those times when I over revved it past 6000 rpm with a big pop did not do them any good?
At any rate, cranking it up showed we got rid of the smoke altho the turbo seems to be spitting a little oil out the exhaust every once in a while.
When I went to get it inspected, they argued with me about the drag radials being too worn to pass as they were right on the no pass line. They finally let it go and then found out the brake lights were not working. Turned out the switch on the pedal was stuck closed and I pulled one off the other regal and got it inspected.
The tires on the front were from the '90's and made me nervous even tho they still had some tread so that is on my list of to do's.
The drivers side window stopped working and the gear in the drive was stripped. Put a new motor in. Now, I need to replace the rotten window fuzzies. They crumbled when the door panels came off. I am staring at them laying on my work table hoping they will install themselves.
In the mean time, the converter was too tight to stall the T66 and the 911 I had put on it once grenaded so I was back to a tight converter. Few years back, I took a chance on buying a Vigilante on FB. Got it swapped last week. Someone had written 3500 stall on it but it was turning the rear tires around 3000 when the boost started to come up. I discovered that when I used the tranny lock, it would take off and head to 3500 where I lost my nerve.
It is loose enuf that the engine does not die when dropping it into gear when it's cold and is not too loose to feel sloppy when easing into the gas.
At any rate, I got back to worrying about front tires. I have the GTA wheels and they don't offer much for 16" rims (or 15" either). I ended up buying BFG G-Force Comp 2 A/S and got them put on Saturday. I was going to put them on the rear as well but the car is running so well that I wonder if I should stick with DR's, but it is not much fun out here to get caught in a thunderstorm on DR's and they don't always like to stop on a dusty road in my experience. The current DR's (Nittos) are not very sticky anymore as they are quite a few years old as well but at least, I think, they are from this century
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