Dyno Tuned Uva (long)

["Eric Sands" <epsands@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Alfisti,
It has been quite a while since I have posted to the digest, so here is 
an update. I took Uva, my '66 Giulia Sprint GT Veloce to the Valley 
(Suburban Los Angeles) for a session on Dave Evans portable dyno. The 
car hadn't been running well and I was at a loss to set it right. My 
mechanic had a try at it with little luck and my fiddling with it just 
made it worse. The symptoms were: no power when cold and when it warmed 
up it ran much better but still slower than what I thought it should 
run. Then there was the RML ignition, which I was about to blame for 
some of this. The only way I could get rid of pinging was to retard the 
timing to the point where it was running on the other side of tdc (at 
idle). I had already tried it with the stock ignition and had the same 
results, so I knew it wasn't really their product, just looking for a 
scapegoat.

So since Dave Evans had come highly recommended to me by friends and 
fellow clubmembers, I took the plunge and made an appointment. Dave gave 
me the third degree about the car and made some recommendations before 
we met. He had me change the fuel pump (to Carter) and pressure 
regulator (Holley) which were about 33 years old (okay maybe not 
original but damn old) so that we could rule them out as problematic. I 
did that but experienced no relief. In the mean time I ran the car at 
the Torrey Pines Hill Climb and practically embarrassed myself. The car 
would barely run up the hill!

Dave's first run of the car on the dyno was telling: 42 hp at the rear 
wheels (did I mention that this is a 2 litre with 40DCOE's, 10.5:1 
pistons, 11.5mm lift cams, GTA headers and a Stebro exhaust?) God, what 
how had lived with this all this time?! As he got out of the car he 
looked concerned "this car has lots of problems" was his assessment. But 
he started right in on it. He managed to adjust the timing correctly to 
get 4deg at idle and 38 at full advance, and changed the main jets. Got 
a big improvement here. Continued twiddling and jet replacement netted 
great results. The ending numbers were 102hp at 5500rpm (at the rear 
wheels) which Dave guessed would be about 135-140hp at the flywheel. The 
most amazing thing to me, however was that changing the gap of the NGK 
plugs from .030 to .025 netted a 4 hp gain! I asked him to run it with 
Golden Lodge plugs as well and although he said he liked the feel of 
them better, smoother response throughout the rev range, they neither 
added or subtracted from the power.

I got lots of great tips for improving it further, which I will do as 
soon as I can recover from his bill (!), he says the exhaust system is 
robbing power among other things (anyone have good experience here?). I 
can highly recommend Dave and his service to anyone in the So-Cal area. 
You can reach him at 909-985-6308. No fiscal connection, just satisfied 
customer, yadda yadda.

Any ARO Southern California Clubmembers still reading please send me 
pictures you may have of AROSC club concours or the winetour. I need 
more pictures for the web site. Send them to: esands@domain.elided not to the 
hotmail address above. Entry forms for the Time Trial and Race at Laguna 
Seca on Valentines Day weekend are posted on the new site so print and 
mail. This event will close early so don't procrastinate. The newly 
revived Uva will be there, I hope there is a good contingent of GTV's.

Ciao
Eric Sands

The official AROSC Home Page (still under construction)
http://members.home.net:80/esands/alfaclub/

66 Giulia Sprint GT Veloce (Uva Bella, now fire sniffing if not 
breathing)
87 Milano Verde (sitting ignored, waiting for the little girl to get her 
license)
92 164S (God, I love this car!)
78 Spider Veloce (boy child spredding Alfa culture to Honda crazed 
youth)




______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

------------------------------