Well the summer has pasted and now we´re entering the winter here in Sweden but no snow yet!
The Hugger didn't run that many hours that I wanted too because a lot of things but the main one was the starter.
It was a rebuilt one I got from a friend that got it from a friend so I didn't really know so much about it, but it worked ok when we ran the ZL-1 in the dyno.
But running in the street is a different ball game and here it did not deliver. Despite my original GM heat shield, which btw is too small, the starter got to hot when you tried to stat if again after a quick stop. It didn't even made a click when turning the key....so I had to put the starter on the to-do-list for this winter.
I at least got the car to the biggest car event my town during this summer together with my 427-pal Nikke, as you may know from this forum. Here are our orange monsters together in my garage and at the show. We really got some attention with our rides among the 1500 other cars that attended!
But during the up coming cruise night I had to feed the beast but I didn't get any further then this due to the troubles mentioned above.
My ZL-1 does givs a LOT of raw and fun power as it sits but it has been very difficult to just get it out from the garage, especially when it´s cold. But we think we have the solution for that.
My old 750 Holley 4 barrel didn't really match the spec of the engine and the old converter that I kept had to low stall speed. Together with a borrowed distributor it was a fight to get the car out of the garage and running...
Therefore a new custom made carb based on a 4 barrel Holley from
https://www.smicarburetor.com arrived the other day to the home of the Hugger. It has an electric choke and a vacuum secondary to match the TH350 and gettin the power smoothly instead of instant. I've heard that this was the intention from Chevrolet from the beginning, when having a street usable ZL-1 together with an automatic!?
I also ordered a custom made distributor from Performance Distributors and I came earlier this summer. Both this parts has been built based on the specs from my ZL-1 engine so it really hope that this will do the trick!
We also got our new 3000+ stall speed converter from B&M Holeshot Torque series part no 20413.
So now it just a matter of time and effort the get the Hugger running next summer again, let the winter start!
