>BTW, does anyone prefer an engine lube over another for assembling the engine?
Depends. If you're particular about the exact brand of green pen you
use to draw around the edges of your CD, the totally coolest, most hip,
Trick Racing Shit engine assembly lube is RedLine's synthetic. It looks
like the stuff Steve McQueen had to fight in The Blob. We also used
graphite and a German STP clone for my race motor, because we weren't
up on the most ]<00L way to do things yet. You basically want something
that's sticky as well as slippery, so that it sticks to the bearing
surfaces before you get oil pressure.
>I'm hoping that this maneuver will increase my exhaust flow a bit, and help
>the engine breath. Should I just put the pipes back in and leave the
>belt off the pump, or am I gaining enough to do what I doing?
It won't do a darn thing for breathing, either intake or exhaust. About
all yanking it'll do is reduce a horsepower or so of parasitic losses from
the energy required to run the pump. It's a Big Deal on a 1275 engine,
it's completely unnoticeable to the seat of the pants or the dyno on
an 1800, and I'd guess that on a 2500cc six you'd get a far more
noticeable result by leaving your spare tire out of the trunk when you
make an acceleration run. It takes nothing from your intake and it
adds no restriction to your exhaust. Even the gulp valve (if you have
such a thing) only works when you get off the gas.
How they work: Yes, they DO inject relatively cool air into the exhaust
ports (or the header, depending on the exact design of your engine) with
the intent of reacting with some component in the exhaust gas. No, they
don't merely dilute the exhaust. And yes, they do clean up the exhaust
a little bit.
>They seem totally silly.
They're a mechanical solution to a chemical problem, that's all. A
three-way catalyst and EFI is a much better solution, but unless you
want to hack up a Bosch unit out of a six-cylinder Benz or Nissan,
you're out of luck.
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