The coolest part about that show was that a mobile dyno showed up. $100 for three pulls. Sign me up!
As you'll be able to hear, I was doing a test with plugs. I wanted to see if I could get away with a warmer plug and bigger gap for more MPG. As it turned out it was mostly a no. I was able to open the gap about .010" on my colder plugs, but none of it made a difference in MPG. I just had a smoother idle. I wouldn't figure that out until after dyno time, so the boost stayed at 12psi the whole time.
Despite that, I whooped my previous numbers!
I was super happy with this. I bet with good plugs and a small turn of the happy knob I'd be at 400whp, but I'd really be pushing the limits of Fel-Pro head bolts and L36 Fel-Pro gaskets.
I was happy with this so I continued to just tool around and go to shows/cruise nights. Here are some shots entering and leaving a cars and coffee I attended inside IMS.
...but the AC work wasn't thrilling enough, so I started gathering parts for the next chapter of this cars life. As you saw before my hiatus, I think I already had a cam, lifters, timing set, machined oil pump cover, and head studs. I also decided to go with a stock style L67 head gasket that's known to hold way more pressure than I'll ever make with studs. I really wanted to get a set of ported heads to make the most of my cam, but I wasn't really willing to pay the $1800 price tag.
Then I started trolling Facebook Marketplace. One boring day at work I came across a deal that seemed too good to be true. A Grand Prix Comp G with a set of Intense Stage 3 CNC ported heads was being parted out. The guy was only asking $750 for the set.
The catch was that neither of us wanted to deal with shipping iron heads, they were in Pittsburgh, I'm in Indy, and I had to pull those heads off a fully assembled W-body (WITH HEADERS) myself.
Looking back on it, I should have backed out. However, the want was very strong and I still managed to do very well in the deal. I took a half day off work, packed a bag of tools, drove over 6 hours to Pittsburgh, got to work in the gravel driveway, had the supercharger, intake, headers, and heads removed in about an hour and a half, and made it back to my house by about 1:00 AM.
I was very lucky that the guy was super cool and not a flake because there were a lot of opportunities for that trip to go sour... including the torrential downpour that arrived about 20 minutes after finishing the job.
I enjoy these kind of drives though. It was my first time ever seeing Pittsburgh and West Virginia! For $750 I not only came home with the heads, but a port matched M90 intake, a GenV M90 with a 3.0 pulley, a set of ARP studs, and a strut tower brace. I might use the intake some day, but I probably won't use anything else. Let me know if you want/need the other stuff. I'm keeping these gorgeous heads though.
Those are some smooth ports and combustion chambers! Valves are quite large too.
I soon gave them an appropriate paint job to match the car. Blue isn't my color.