The Moroso vacuum pump mounts easily with the Ford specific kit. The shiny aluminum piece is the pressure regulator assembly. Nice!
As mentioned in the last article I am using Moroso’s billet fabricated aluminum valve covers, (#68325). Not only are these covers a work of art to look at but they are very lightweight, strong, and will give a good seal to the valve cover gaskets, which are also from Moroso (#93060). The gaskets are a silicone rubber-type material and have metal inserts around the bolt holes to prevent over-tightening and squishing out the gaskets. The valve covers come from Moroso without any holes in them, (besides the mounting holes), so you can modify them as you please. I decided not to have any holes in the valve covers and instead I plumbed the inlet from the pump into a really neat piece from Moroso that bolts onto where the mechanical fuel pump normally goes.
This same plate, (#65398), also fits the BBC but I won’t tell if you don’t. It comes with a male -12 AN fitting and also has a convenient 1/8” pipe thread hole for installing a vacuum gauge line. To install the relief valve I am using a new adaptor, (#22633), that mounts the valve directly inline with the inlet to the pump. It mounts to the pump by threading directly into the -12AN inlet and the included relief valve threads into the adaptor. Now I used Moroso’s vacuum pump line kit, (#22649), which is a really handy way to go and includes two each of 90-degree and straight -12 AN fittings and a length of special clear hose that is reinforced with coils of wire to prevent collapsing or kinking. I simply cut the hose to the desired lengths and assembled them into the fittings.
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The outlet hose is connected to a Moroso billet aluminum breather tank, (#85500), that has a filter on top and a drain cock on the bottom. I mounted the vacuum pump on the driver’s side using the required bracket kit, (#63915), made especially for Ford small blocks. For pulleys I used a 28-tooth “Gilmer” style, (#64886), on the pump and a Moroso drive mandrel kit, (#63846), for the crank. I also used the supplied V-Belt pulley that comes with the drive kit to power my GM-style 1 wire alternator.
The sharpest among you may have noticed this leaves me without any holes in the valve covers and no way of adding oil when performing maintenance. Not so fast! You can cut a hole (potential vacuum leak) in those works of art if you really want to, but I will simply remove the MSD distributor and add the oil through that hole. Considering the distributor doesn’t control the timing advance any more, thanks to the MSD crank trigger, it is really simple to just mark the position of the distributor on the block and reinstall it when finished adding oil. Plus, it makes people ask questions!
To finish off the little 349 cube “Hemi Eater” wannabe I bolted on a Barry Grant Race Demon 775 cfm. RS (#3402010). The RS stands for “removable sleeve,” and is a really trick piece. By purchasing an RS Demon, you may never have to buy another carburetor again. The boosters and venturi sleeves are removable, and by simply matching up the right size of venturi and boosters you can convert this carb all the way up to a 1050 cfm behemoth! I started out at the 775 cfm rating, mostly due to the recommendation of my tech guy at BG/Demon, but also because I figured this would leave an avenue open for future testing of the “bigger is better” theory so many people have mistakenly followed when choosing a carburetor. I will eventually perform a test using different sized venturi sleeves.