Thread: Gas Price Pa

Tweet

Well the cam in my SBC 350 is basically the stock Z28 cam with 1.6 rockers so the only thing left is to put 1.5 rockers on the intake side. The rear tires are already as big as the fenders allow and I already have a 700 R4, but now I am glad I have a spare set of 1.5 ratio roller rockers. I will still leave the 1.6 rockers on the exhaust valves for a slight increase in torque. A simple ratio of my 3.55 rear gear compared to the stock Z28 and the OD gear scales the 17 mpg (highway) of a '76 Z28 to about 24 mpg in the lighter A roadster. After that the only further thing would be to install a vacuum gauge to monitor fuel usage so as others have said occasional cruising will be the limit until they can get that new oil out of Colorado/ND. Hey maybe those 882 heads from the '76 Vette are just right now?! If the price of gas ever goes down (?) I can put the 1.6 rockers back on the intake valves for a little more lift.

Confession Time Relief: A year ago when I installed the 1.6 roller rockers I "lost" two of the little rubber wedges that go under the valve cover hold downs. They popped off because I did not know they were there and although I made replacements out of inner tube rubber I was biting my nails wondering if one or both fell down an oil return hole into the block where they could plug an oil passage. This week I cleaned out the garage workshop pretty good and amazingly in the sweep-up dust there were BOTH rubber wedges on the floor! Whew! The opposite to Murphy's Law is that you can't be wrong all the time!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder