So I was on my way home a couple of weeks ago. It felt like there was an anchor dragging the car down. I noticed the car getting warm and pulled over. as i came to a stop, smoke came rolling off the brakes. After much ado, I figured out that the master cylinder had gone bad. As I was replacing that, it turns out that the rear brake hoses were swelled shut. To top it all off, the RF brake caliper broke a bleeder screw as I went to bleed it. So now I have a new MC, new braded IPD hoses (like them a lot BTW), and a new RF caliper (NAPA premium unit - also very nice).

So then I went to drive to work. As I'm a mile from the house, the car starts to overheat. I pull over and notice that the car is smoking like a steam train out the back. Pull over, open the expansion tank cap and voila, the steam goes away. Bad HG. A weekend of work later, and I have a new OE Volvo HG and a bunch of new seals. While I was in there, I dropped the H cam that I had in place of the A cam. To get stoich at idle, had to turn the idle mixture screw in 4 full turns on the AMM. This cam moves a lot more air. I installed it 5 degrees advanced (more like straight up with the milled head). The block and head were nice and flat. The new cam definitely makes less power under 2k. However, from there up its quite a bit nicer. The old A cam fell on its face above about 3500k. The A cam was much better than the stock M though. The H pulls smoothly to redline. Accelerates very much like a turbo car. There is definitely a lope at idle and it likes to run lean off/on at idle when cold.

You'll notice that the #1 cylinder is quite a bit cleaner than the others. The fire ring failed right at the lower water jacket hole.

Yes, that's a Stahl header.