[72K5CSTDarkOlive]

I know of been hiatus with the updates but I've been waiting for something worthy of pics to post.

I moved out of my place that had a 1 car garage into a new place with a 2 car garage to give me more room to work with and it took some time setting up the man cave / shop.

I also needed to take a break and carefully think everything through in terms of assembling the rest of the motor and buying the right parts that will work with my application. I had to remove some parts that came with my motor and a few other items that wouldn't work either.

I'll list it out in order and then post pics..

1. Factory Air Conditioning System
.......I sent my AC components to Classic Auto Air. They refurbished my compressor and converted it to R134A. Replaced the hoses and Crimps to be compatible for R134A and refurbished my POA Valve and Expansion Valve.

The brackets that came equipped with my blazer had that big funky looking piece that almost covered the entire pass side intake. California trucks with factory air had to be equipped with the A.I.R system which is why you some times see this hideous looking bracket. I looked around and found the other "original" style and located the lower side mount bracket too.

The lower side mount bracket wouldn't fit because of those darn headers. I cut the center piece of this bracket out and made it into now, tow pieces. I used 1" spacers with a set of longer ARP style header bolts to hold this piece in place just like it would from the factory.

2. The valve covers that came with my motor are the "Tall Style" and those would not clear with A/C or the Alternator on the Driver side unless I wanted to some how use a different style set of after market brackets.. I wasn't going to even bother risking that chance so I swapped out the Tall Valve covers and put the original style ones back on.

3. The water pump was a long style and of course that wasn't going to work either. The long style throws off the alignent with all the pulleys. Ditched that part and put on the correct short style water pump.


4. Fuel Pump - I wanted to run a hard line from the pump to the carb and the only way to do that with an after market fuel pump / carb is to make your own.. I went through about 10 lines before I got it right.. I acually think there was only one way to bend it to work. The fuel inlet on the Holley 4160 is on the driver side and it makes it little more challenging and the AC doesn't help mcuh either with clearance.

5. Fuel Filter - Don't ask me why but I thought this fuel filter from holley would look cool with my setup, but it needed a compression style fitting.. Instead of using an adapter with a flarenuts, I bought a set of Summit AN - Tube fitting adapters and 6AN male to 3/8 NPT to thread into the fuel filter. This allowed me to only have to run to flare nuts... one from the carb inlet and the other to fuel pump.

6. Spark Plug Wires of course where rubbing against the headers and I got a set of these Chevy Proform Wire Loom Seperators / Brackets and I was fortunate enough that the MSD street fighter wires where long enough because most of the wire loom seperator / brackets wont work with pre-assembled spark plug wires. Usually you have to cut them to length.

7. Air cleaner spacer - I tried a couple of the off the shelf ones from AutoZone and O'reillys and of course those dont work.. The float bowl gets stuck when you release the throttle. The one made by Holley, part #17-14 has the correct cut out needed to keep it from getting stuck and if you look I barely cleared the hard line I made.. Got lucky again!

8. I lost my Trans Modulator line during the move and ordered a new one from InlineTube.. Talk about rolling the dice! This time, I ordered it in original steel material in case I needed to make a adjustments..

As much as the Stainless Steel lines look great, they are the biggest PIA to get them to fit.. They have absolutley no give to them.. If I had to do it all over I might have just gone with original steel for the brake and fuel lines.

9. Driveshafts are in as well and she's rolling nice!

I plan to use cross ventilation because my valve covers both have baffles on each of them. For the driver side I plan to run the PCV valve to the port on the front of the carb. The pass side I'm going to run the hose to the air cleaner. Brake Booster will go directly to the back of the port on the Carb and the fitting on the back of the intake will be used for the trans modulator line and AC vacumm. I spent hours of researching how to do this and why it matters.

The one thing I can't seem to figure out is if the hose going from the pass valve cover to the air cleaner requires a special filter between the grommet and the hose.. Could anybody help me out on this one?

I ordered an original temp sending unit and it's good quality (lectriclimited.com) but the cyclinder heads back in the early 70's had a 1/2 NPT thread and the newer style heads have a 3/8 NPT.. I hear all sorts of bad things about running aftermarket temp sending units with factory style gauges.. I'm going to have to figure something out again..


I promise to post pics tomorrow... I'm traveling for work and will be back in town tomorrow.