Reply to "How should I be driving my engine?"

Mike, I'd take a look at the roller wheels too. Street driving a solid roller cam is much harder on them than racing because of low oil flow at very low speeds. The wheel surfaces may show chipping & galling. There are also valve spring pressure checkers to be used on an assembled engine, but they're a little pricy and in a Pantera, probably as much trouble to use as changing springs.

I was there when Roger first fired the engine up with the Quella EFI; within a second it idled quietly at 600 rpms. The engine builder looked at me and said, "Geeez- I guess I shoulda put a (obscenity deleted) cam in it!" With a big Holley on it before, the thing shook like a wet dog at low speeds. This is what convinced me that EFI is the way to go- if one can afford it.

As an aside, I richened the mixture up a bit at low rpms with a laptop, but the real fix came with another modern innovation. Kirby Schrader in TX runs the same EFI system on his track car, and he downloaded his fully tweaked program and mailed it to Roger, who loaded it into the Haltech brainbox! Dunno if its ever been looked at since. Can NOT say the same with Webers or Holleys....