Pontiac General Discussion/Questions

In the late '90s, my dad and I did a whirlwind tour of Germany. One of the highlights was spending time at the actual Hofbräuhaus beer hall in Munich. A real German oompah-pah band is playing. Singing German drinking songs I have no idea what the song was about. Watching waitresses carry 8 liters of beer at a time. A truly wonderous place!  

Europe is the birthplace of beer and they take it very seriously. There are some beautiful beers on offer as you travel about. We were in Prague a few years ago (the birthplace of Pilsener) and Pilsener Urquell was ubiquitous. If you've never tried it, splash out on a case and savour what real beer should always taste like. Absinthe was another drink that was sold just about everywhere. My father attempted to make his own using the herb wormwood...apparently slightly psychedelic. As I drove home (carefully) there were creatures jumping in front of the car that didn't exist. Good times.

Haha , I would if I could frosty ! 🍺

Hello,    My dirtiest, unknown mileage, not running,  junk yard 5.3 liter LS motor moves to the machine shop tomorrow for a rebuild.  This rebuild will take about a month they say and maybe a little faster because I'm providing a set of 862 casting heads that this shop has already rebuilt - a few months ago.  And perhaps about $420 less expensive from the standard $3000 price because these heads are rebuilt.   The probably worn out heads on the dirty motor are a 706 casting that various references say are a higher compression head.  I don't want to change the PCM operating system tune to support a 706 set of heads in the Catalina because the Cat is a cruiser, not a tire smokin' race car. The 862 heads will be fine and the 706 heads will simply get a good cleaning. I've got one more junk yard 5.3 liter motor that is magnitudes cleaner that I will use for engine mount test fitting while I wait for the dirty motor to be rebuilt.  I will hang my almost certainly dead, sixty dollar, junk yard 4L60E transmission off the back of the motor before I lay the whole thing into the engine compartment.  This will allow me to get into the bulk of the engine swap to work out proper drive line angles to the differential, floor pan sheet metal clearance, radiator fan clearance, exhaust manifold clearance, drive shaft creation and passenger side engine head clearance with the AC firewall plastic suitcase. As this is a full sized B-body vehicle, I think most of these things will be easier than what I found in my A-Body El Camino.  My PSI Conversions LS swap engine harness also arrived today.   For durability, I have abandoned the idea of depinning and repinning one of my junk yard harnesses.  They were variously mangled, missing connectors, had the wrong connectors or had brittle insulation.   I'm about 49 percent disappointed with myself here for not at least trying. The upside of the PSI Conversions harness is that it is built with extra wire length to move the PCM into the passenger compartment - maybe on top of the glove box under the dash cover. Rick  

To continue with carbon monoxide. Think about this for a bit. Plant earth has more than twice as much surface area of water than land! 70% vs 30% to be a little more precise. The oceans produce per square mile more carbon monoxide than the land per square mile. As a whole they out produce human caused CO about 30 to 1!!  Now you may not know or understand, but CO is a extremely important gas for life! Yes life! Without it earth & the universe would die! Besides the reaction of CO with bacteria that splits the molecule into oxygen & hydrogen, there is also a reaction between ionized helium & ionized carbon monoxide! This reaction produces produces ionized carbon. Ionized carbon is one of the important elements necessary for organic reactions. Remember this; carbon, while not being the most abundant element in the universe, it is the most important for all life! That includes ALL forms of carbon.  Arguably most people start to have their eyes glaze over when discussing this type of stuff, but if you believe in anything believe this! God! If you doubt his existence you need look no further than these things right here being spoken of to realize all of the immensely complicated workings of earth, let alone the universe didn’t just happened by chance! Finally, for carbon monoxide, they and you know who they are tell you it’s a global warming gas! Guess what? So is oxygen! & water vapor! Guess we better hold our breath & drain all the water to the moon!