Airbox off again

Overheating cat means unburned fuel so the next thing to do is to check and adjust the mixture. Originally, this car had 55 size idle jets and 120 mains. I fiddled with different sizes before settling on 57/125. Figuring that the cats added more exhaust backpressure, I decided to lean out the mixture to see what would happen. As it turns out, I was able return to my original jetting with no popping or hesitation. However, even though it's running much leaner, I'm still getting an intermittent 1-4 slow down.

While I had the airbox off again, I remembered an FChat post talking about how restrictive the US carb airbox is. At the inlet, there is a bunch of wire mesh tack welded to the inside of the airbox and a bunch of fiberglass insulation. I decided to go ahead and remove it to try and improve inlet airflow as well as remove the sound insulation so I could hear the carbs better.







I used a hammer, chisel and snips to pry out the mesh. As you can see, this opened up the inlet quite a bit and you can actually hear the carbs better. I'd say this was a pretty good modification!

One thing which has really bugged me are the air intake ducts on the sides of the car. The guy who did the paint did not mask off the black intake ducts and there was a lot of red overspray. It just made it look like bad cheapo paint job.



I pulled the intake ducts from both sides, cleaned them up and sprayed them with some VHT high temp flat black. I'm really happy with the way they turned out and it makes the outside of the car look much cleaner.