Project Junkyard Dog

[Robert Swartz]

Originally Posted by iraceitall

Question, would you just run it as is, off the street, or if you already had a cam, converter, and gear, go ahead and put them in first? Odds are (I will know in about 4hrs) if this Comet runs ok I will drive it home. But with the season over, it would be April before it would see a racetrack. I don't want to tear it apart if not necessary at first; I want to follow everyones advice and see what it will do for a baseline, I guess at minimum I could remove the unnecessary stuff and whatnot over the fall? I have a carport, so no winter tinkering if the weather is as usual...

I want to take everybodys advice, start at square one, and do it right. One car, one plan.

I would say you're getting the holy grail of advice from some of the real heavies in this categorey.

I'm just going to go at this from my view. If you get your Comet, and it runs. What I would do, not change a thing, except get the car as close to class weight as you possibly can. Then take the car to a track, make some passes, record the information, baseline the car. See what kind of times you get. Just get a feel for the car. After this, I'd then take it as is, back to the track or maybe, depending on how far you are , go to a different track, see if you can repeat your results. Tracks can have different conditions, some tracks a car will go faster, others, they will slow down.

Then, if you have a choice of tracks, go to the one where the car performed best. Then start making your changes. Others here might have a differing opinion. The first thing I would do, give it a good tune up. Then, I would start with putting a gear in it and some slicks. Next, freshen the transmission, put your converter in. At this point, you would have a real good base on what the car is capable of. If the car gets into the range of the index, then I would start considering going into the engine.

Like Billy has said, if you don't have a wealth of experience, you can get the best advice there is but there will still be a learning curve. Good luck.