Monday afternoon I pulled the stack and cleaned all the mating surfaces.. the remflex gasket was intact but showed signs that the rear homemade dutra/stock manifold had indeed leaked out the bottom and caused a leak at the intake manifold runners... which is not an easy spot to spray when checking for a vacuum leak...
Defying the 105 temperature outside this afternoon... I cleaned off all the manifold surfaces and in no time I got it all put back together and torqued down correctly (double and rechecked...and will be paranoid and do it again after I run it and heat cycle everything).
I also put a couple of improvised hangers in place to better secure the exhaust pipes at the block end... I did not really see a good way to make a kickstand for a shorty manifold and have it attach properly to the block (unlike the long ram manifolds that have better geometry for it).
I ran out of time this evening... tomorrow when I get home I will check all the hoses to the carb, and see if it will run (gonna be another warm day so that may shoot the calibration all the heck...)
I'm going to jack up the rear on stands and run it in gear for about 15 minutes... check the fasteners, let it cool then do another check...
Then another on the stands test run and dial the in gear rpm in better...
If all that works out... I have the rest of the week and next to shake it down and see if it stays reliable... I need to get the splice pieces welded so the exhaust isn't clamped in 3 places under the car...
if so then intent will be to participate at Woodburn.
Fingers crossed, we are over the major teething issues...
