[79 Phoenix]

Exhaust was installed yesterday. They did a great job and fit everything in very neatly. It's a combination of mostly 2.5" but some 2 1/4" pipe. The mufflers are identical to Flowmaster 40's made in an old Flowmaster factory in Mexico. It seems that when Flowmaster moved their manufacturing to China, a Mexican company bought the factory and makes these. They call them Street Flows. Everything is stainless steel. Pipes are compression bent. Splitter tips are PYPES stainless steel.

It's a bit louder than I expected but it sounds wonderful! Has a noticable lope to it. I wish I could attach a video. Also, I wish I could show a good picture of the nice job they did on the system. I took pictures while it was up on the lift at the shop but unfortunately not enough flash. So they didn't turn out well.

In driving the car more, I see (smell) that it runs really rich and that has to change. It has a Quadrajet and according to the numbers was originally on a 1978 Chevy with manual transmission. It's 800 cfm (200/600). So probably the solution will involve rebuilding it and then figuring out how to set it up.

[Shiny]

Looks great!

[79 Phoenix]

Got some pictures from exhaust shop that show their work... For what I paid, I'm very pleased!

Adjusted the idle mixture screws yesterday. Got a max of 15 in. vacuum with slight surges up around 16-17. Not sure that's right yet but will keep working with it. Need to see where the timing is at. Don't know what cam it has. Whatever it is, it is not stock but is fairly mild. As near as I can tell, I'm guessing initial timing should be around 16-18 degrees.

Overall, the car runs good. QUESTION: On a Quadrajet, should the secondaries open when revving by hand under the hood or does there need to be load on the engine for the secondaries to open?

[79 Phoenix]

I shopped 4 sources for replacing my passenger outer wheelhouse and qtr panel skin. I found a guy who does really nice work and can do it in September or so. That's fine because I have plenty of other things I can work on.

When I first rebuilt the suspension, I felt that the front end seemed unnaturally high. I knew that ultimately, I wasn't going to be happy with it. So, last week I bit the bullet and pulled the front springs and cut them. Normally, I would disconnect the lower ball joint and lower the A arm but with drum brakes that won't work because A arm hits the backing plate and can't come down. Sooo, I checked with the shop manual and found the way to do it is to remove inner A arm bolts and lower the A arm. This actually worked very well and seemed safer than lowering the ball joint side. BUT after cutting the springs and raising the A arm up it was difficult to get the holes lined up for the two A arm bolts. Shop manual says to use a transmission jack and a special GM tool #J----. But all I have is a floor jack and a garage floor that isn't level. Anyway, got it done and finished today.

I cut about 5/8" off the springs looking to lower front ride height by an inch or so. It worked really well. Now I am happy!

Pictures below show how it looks with MOOG 5401 coils in rear and MOOG 5327 coils (shortened 5/8") in the front. Hopefully alignment will go fine.