Reciently, I swapped out the old carb set up on my 79 with an older style intake and DFEV 32/36 Webber. As many here may well know, that involves plugging up the read valves in the head. Anyway, with the help of a few people on this site; the swap went fine and my car has been running great ever since. So, last Friday I was driving home from work when I noticed a shutter comming from somewhere. Immediatly, I shut off the radio and realized that the shutter was more of a noise comming from the engine compartment. With a few quick diagnostic throttle pumps, I simply wrote it off thinking that the spider's new exhaust pipe had sprung a leak and any worry associated with the noise emminating from the engine compartment could wait untill I got home before further investigative measures were needed. This is when I noticed that my spider had a little more pickup. Sure the noise was horrible but, she just seemed to have a little more giddy up. Now, normally I would agree that the absence of the cat and other obstructive exhaust issues would amount to the increase in HP I was experiencing but, I had already had a new pipe welded in that did away with the cat. In fact, my little car has virtally nothing more than a straight pipe leading to a simple muffler. Yet, dispite the noise, she just seemed to slip into gears a bit faster and zip down the road with a bit more enthusiam. Ten enjoyable miles later, I arrived at my driveway, shut her off and popped the hood for the initial look-see. Immediatly, I noticed that the read valve plug had come out and was lying right in the valley next to the hole in the head it was previously employed to plug. I left everything as is, went in the house, changed, opened a cold frosty one and went out to see if everything had cooled off enought to put the plug back in. Still a little warm, the valve plug went back in easy enough and I gave it just a bit more tork than the hand tight torkness I initially deemed appropriate for the task. A few moments later, I tossed the open end adjustable on the passinger's seat, leaned over and turned the key. The spider fired up and the noise, allong with the previously mentioned extra giddy-up was gone. Problem solved - or is it
?? Do the read valves ability to breath really create more HP or was I just immagining the extra zip I enjoyed on the way home? I would appreciate your thoughts on the subject. On the lighter side of things, I caught Clint Eastwood in "The Enforcer" this weekend on Encore HD and guess what I saw in the background right after the bomb scen on the police department - A brand spanking new early 70's red spider. Immediatly after that scen, a yellow X-19 can also be seen in the background and it looked dealer fresh as well.
