Holden 186

[Rbdirty30]

Well whilst I've been waiting for my GTR motor to get finish ive decided that is build my self a little fun burnout car for next weeks tassie nats. Now I no its not a nissan motor and the mods can take this post down if it's not appropriate for here, But I thought I'd show you guys my little 186 that I've finished off and will be in the torana soon.

[cav33r]

Looking at this makes me miss my old lj

[GTRPSI]

Nice, reminds me of the 265 Hemis i use to build to E49 specs (plus more) with tripple webbers back in the early 80's.

Then we would sledge hammer the firewall back an inch on the LJ's, use a 727 or 904 Torque flight with a high stall and 9" and bingo, mid 10's cars running on M/T's.

Good to see some of the older engines still being appreciated.

Try finding a LJ coupe now......they use to be a dime a dozen back then, its hard enough to find a good sedan these days......

Edited March 8, 2015 by GTRPSI

[Rbdirty30]

I've never been in an LJ with a 265 before, it would fly! Yeah I love my holden red sixes there a good motor and a great sound, hopefully this 186 goes alright, the torana in these pics is abit rusty, but yeah your right trying to find a coupe is near impossible these days unless your got a big check book haha, that's why I've kept my coupe, my first car I've had it 12 years in April

[Trex]

not wrong about the sound, and surprisingly punchy too!

[Rbdirty30]

She's in , start up tomorrow

[Rbdirty30]

Here's a little vid of her running, needs a pretty good tune yet.

And I made my own exhausts today, pretty happy with how it came up

[warps]

Noice

Makes me lament the missed opportunities of $5k XU1's I passed up in the early 90's because they seemed "a bit rough"

[PLYNX]

Now that takes me back to the days of old !

Had that set up in my HR with all the goods as well

And just recently started building a new red 6 using a Ekins supercharger from the late 60s that I've had for the last 25year sitting in a cupboard.

[Rbdirty30]

Yeah don't you wish that them kind of cars you kept or brought back in the day! Jesus plynx! That should get the red motor going! I've always like the look of a blower hanging out of the bonnet on the left hand side

[PLYNX]

Hell Yeah ! Every time I think about that car I bash my head against a brick wall for selling it !

My HR was the 186S with the genuine Opal 4 speed box ! Its the model that was supposed to run at Bathurst but apparently the gearboxes never made it in off the ship in time.

With the heavily moded motor I took the gearbox out and ran a toploader cause I knew the Opal box would break !

I went with the car when I sold it !

Oh look a brick wall ! ! ! ! BashBashBashBashBash

[zebra]

when I was 16 I could've bought an XB falcon tudor with a factory 351 and 4 speed for 3500.

I didnt because I thought it was over priced.

fml

[GTRPSI]

Would have, should have, could have, we all have those stories, if only we could turn back time.

3 Things that stick in my mind about those engines in the good ol days.

The first was some mates with a Eh that tried to kill a motor for shits and giggles, they drained the oil and use to beat the crap out of it to kill it for a few days after school, took them 2 or 3 days of thrashing it around before the parents got home from work before is seized.

Another mate had a rusted up cooling system, drained the water, replaced it with beer, ran it for a week, drained it, replaced the coolant and no more rust (but wasted good VB)

The last one was a built motor running a Holley 350 with a blocked jet, swap some leads around to create a nice intake backfire and problem solved, jet clear.

Ah the good old days when engines were simple to work on....

[Rbdirty30]

There's nothing better than hearing about stories from the old days were muscle cars (to me) were muscle cars! I didn't get the torana finished in time to take it out for a burn, ain't got everything sorted, I just needed a baffled rocker cover to stop the oil from coming out the breathers, time for a catch can setup , maybe even a drain back to the sump or even into the side plates, seams like it has some go for a 186

[GTRPSI]

Nice vid of the first start up, brings back memories seeing that black smoke and miss fire till the side drafts are jetted right and balanced.

Now that was a black art for those who never tried, or those that did and failed.....

So are you going to tune them with the garden hose stethascope method and reading plugs like i use to or are you going to go fancy modern on us and use a vaccum gauge?

Many of those old motors were underestimated, thats where true modding for power was learnt.

The other day i was sitting with a young group of my sons mates and we got onto talking power, they all said turbo is the way if you want to get into the 11 second bracket, i looked up and mentioned we were doing mid 10's NA easily in the mid 80's, they all looked bambozaled at me.

Ah the crank up the boost and buy brand names generation......mention deburring and shot peeing a stock rod because you didnt have better that you could afford and they think your from Fredie Flintsons time.

[Rbdirty30]

I've only ever done the full noise in top and shut it off and pulled over for plug checks, I've never heard of the garden hose stethoscope method, please tell me more I've also thought about buying a vaccum gauge but I've never bothered. I like fiddling around around with the 48's there a good carb once you've got your head around the jetting/ emoulition tubes, air caps and chokes.

Haha, yeah they would of! It's easy to make power these days! They'll never try to find every horse power in a motor like you have to in an old red motor, like taking off the altonator fan off for 1hp hahaha

I had good fun dubburing and balancing my starfire rods for this motor

[GTRPSI]

Get a 12-18" length of garden hose, (my parents use to crack it when they saw me hacking theirs), while engine is running start putting one end of the hose into the intake runner entry of each throttle bore and listen with your ear to the other end of the hose.

Move from port to port, making note of the diffrences in noise.

Adjust throttle stop for each one till they are all to as near as to identical as possible.

Point being any throttle thats open more or closed more will sound different, old school way of balancing the carbs throttle positions.

From there read plugs and adjust jets, also go back and re listen to the sounds if any need a tweak.

Back in my day vacuum gauges were hard to find and big $, i learnt that from a old time race engineer back in the late 70's who was adjusting and balancing side draughts in the pits, he was kind enough to show me when i was a teenager because i took interest in what he was doing and ive been doing them that way ever since he showed me.

Edited March 20, 2015 by GTRPSI

[zebra]

This is inspiring me to finish off my early headed 308.

Time to hunt ebay for an old school single plane intake

[zebra]

Get a 12-18" length of garden hose, (my parents use to crack it when they saw me hacking theirs), while engine is running start putting one end of the hose into the intake runner entry of each throttle bore and listen with your ear to the other end of the hose.

Move from port to port, making note of the diffrences in noise.

Adjust throttle stop for each one till they are all to as near as to identical as possible.

Point being any throttle thats open more or closed more will sound different, old school way of balancing the carbs throttle positions.

From there read plugs and adjust jets, also go back and re listen to the sounds if any need a tweak.

Back in my day vacuum gauges were hard to find and big $, i learnt that from a old time race engineer back in the late 70's who was adjusting and balancing side draughts in the pits, he was kind enough to show me when i was a teenager because i took interest in what he was doing and ive been doing them that way ever since he showed me.

That is a very neat trick!

[ARTZ]

Lol, listen to you old farts... these days cars are much heavier full of electronic gizmos and what not...and all the tricks racers used to use are done from factory now so the engines are much better, there is no need for shotpeening rods or adding 4 bolt mains, it all.comes standard...

I mean a 4.5lt motor in a >1000kg Torana....of course its going to be fast...now try making a 2.5lt 1600kg Cressida do 10s without a turbo..

You couldn't do that in the old days..

And there is still.plenty of NA love these days, Ls1 commies will do 10s with a few basic mods and they are heavy as...

Bur its a simple theory of huge motor, light car...Nothing has changed..

Anyway Im sure you all know this already...So I just want to say that Rat Torana is cool as f**k....

Edited March 20, 2015 by ARTZ