[gtobird]

FYI,

I've built a dozen or so engines over the course of 45+ years with 3 of them being Pontiac engines. Owned half a dozen Pontiacs in those years so I'm not new to this. My goal right now is to do the best diagnosis I can before I rip the intake off. Once I do that, I'm in familiar territory. Just never had this type of vacuum issue and never had to remove a cam while the engine is still in an A/C car. My philosophy has been to build them right the first time and leave them alone. I didn't build this engine and I have practically no run time experience with it so I'm just trying to get everything diagnosed first. It's a 350 built pretty much to HO specs, so I'm only willing to go so far in working on it. I have a 400 that I've been wanting to build so if I can't figure this out with a modest amount of labor, the engine is getting yanked and replaced. I have another 400 that is sitting on an engine stand that I built a while back and ran on my test stand. I considered dropping it in, but it's correct all the way through date code wise for my Firebird, so I'm trying to resist doing that.

OJ