Just wanted to say hello and ask for some help. I'll give the compressed version of our story and hopefully someone has a few ideas

my wife has a 73 cutlass that her grandpa put a Chevy apache body on it. It has been in her family since 85 when he pulled the truck off the side of the road with his wrecker and then he out the olds chassis and motor in it from their wrecking yard. She drove it through high school and after 17 years of sitting we have it running after some mild work to the engine. I'll list out what was done, but the overall problem is very little low end power off the line. It basically is a turd until it gets to over 2500 to 300 RPMs

73 olds 350 rebuilt by bluementhals in OKC
stock #8 heads with flat top pistons
edelbrock 1406, accelerator pump set at highest mark and the rod is even bent a little. Main jets are 98s and secondaries are 104. I think the rods in it now are 68/42 with the 8 inch springs
spectre cold air intake
summit HEI distributor and low resistance plug wires
holley red fuel pump with 3/8 line
holley pressure regulator with return line
hooker headers
2 1/4 dual exhaust with flowmaster 40s
comp high energy cam (260)
TH 350 with stock converter
2:73 gear with an open carrier
weight is about 3900 with me and a full tank of gas
its got about 12 degrees of initial timing and about 36 total, all in at about 2500rpm
her best in the 1/4 is 15.056 at 90.5 mph
i think her 60 foot time is 2.5 seconds

its just very sluggish off the line. It has, at times, felt like it is jumping off the line decently, but most off the time it's a dog. Even with a rolling start it doesn't have great throttle response under load. I have tried different jetting and rods and springs. Not sure what the true issue may be. Gears? Converter? Carb?

any help would be appreciated

jay

 

What size rear tires are on it? Tall tires will reduce the overall effective gear ratio.
Carb tuning also can have a huge impact on off the line performance.
Another thing could be cam timing. Retarded cam will result in sluggish low RPM power.

 

Has the HEI been worked on, because 12 initial and 36 total is not how they are setup?

 

That 2.73 gear is not helping.

 

they are right at 27 give or take a 1/4.

 

it was close to that out of the box. The only thing I have done is moved the distributor to change it and then checked it with a light and vacuum line plugged

 

and neither is the stock converter. However, I think I am a month progress. Without anyway to read afr I have been assuming it was running rich off the line and bogging down. On a whim I went the other direction and out in a larger primary and a thinner metering rod. Guess what, now she is getting better. Turns out I am not the car carb tuner I thought I was. The bikes I am pretty ok at, but this one had me going the wrong direction. Just goes to show the importance of what is really happening with the carb and what is happening with your mixture. Good lesson learned.

This shoiod get her in the very high 14s. I have a mini spool to put in her next week and then Friday it's out to the track. Next spring will be gears and a posi. Then I turn it back over to the wife and let her get a few tickets with it😆

Thabks guys. I look forward to tapping in to some more olds knowledge. I have a line on some 7A heads and would love some suggestions for those.

 

It's an aftermarket HEI from Summit, so those may be set up differently than the factory GM units.