ZZ502 Ram Jet questions

[scottyz]

A friend of mine is looking to purchase one of these crate engines. Have any of you guys had any experiences with these engines. Price looks good for an injected engine. Any issues with them?

[rockdogz]

I have one, and although the car is in the body shop and I have only driven it around the block, everything looks good (and sounds killer ) so far. It's easy to install - only needs power and fuel hookups.

Couple things to watch out for:

Make sure you remove and reinstall the oil filter before you put the engine in. My filter was totally stuck to the block and it was a pain in the butt getting it off with the headers in place. I recently saw that K&N filters have the nut welded to the bottom of the filter for easy removal - sounds like a good idea to me, I'm going to try it after I use up the AC Delco filters I have.

Next thing is that my engine (and I heard about some others the same way) had a defect on the plug on the wiring harness that goes into the MAP sensor underneath the throttle body. It was a female connector when it should have been male.

Lastly, make sure you have enough space under the hood. In my '68 Camaro, I wanted to run the regular cowl hood and not the 4" hood - and it does fit although I had to remove some of the bracing under the hood to make it work.

Oh, I almost forgot - the fuel lines provided are not AN size (4 or 5) connectors. I was running braided lines to the fuel tank, with regular AN connectors that looked like they fit but leaked all over the place. Solution was to cut off the threads provided and get a compression fitting that mated with the AN4 connector.

And... you may need to get a throttle cable if you don't already have one.
Whew, that's enough - let me know if you need more info, and check out the forum at Sallee Chevrolet

[EFI69Cam]

I have one, and although the car is in the body shop and I have only driven it around the block, everything looks good (and sounds killer ) so far. It's easy to install - only needs power and fuel hookups.

Couple things to watch out for:

Make sure you remove and reinstall the oil filter before you put the engine in. My filter was totally stuck to the block and it was a pain in the butt getting it off with the headers in place. I recently saw that K&N filters have the nut welded to the bottom of the filter for easy removal - sounds like a good idea to me, I'm going to try it after I use up the AC Delco filters I have.

Next thing is that my engine (and I heard about some others the same way) had a defect on the plug on the wiring harness that goes into the MAP sensor underneath the throttle body. It was a female connector when it should have been male.

Lastly, make sure you have enough space under the hood. In my '68 Camaro, I wanted to run the regular cowl hood and not the 4" hood - and it does fit although I had to remove some of the bracing under the hood to make it work.

Oh, I almost forgot - the fuel lines provided are not AN size (4 or 5) connectors. I was running braided lines to the fuel tank, with regular AN connectors that looked like they fit but leaked all over the place. Solution was to cut off the threads provided and get a compression fitting that mated with the AN4 connector.

And... you may need to get a throttle cable if you don't already have one.
Whew, that's enough - let me know if you need more info, and check out the forum at Sallee Chevrolet

Did you have any trouble getting the fuel lines to clear around the firewall? The rail looks to me like the 7.4 vortec rail where the connections are way in back.

[rockdogz]

No, the fuel lines were not a problem in terms of clearancing the firewall. The distributor had some issues clearancing the firewall at first because as delivered the harness goes straight out the back. However, I ended up re-setting the distributor so that the harness now comes out 90 degrees counter clockwise (at the 9 o'clock position if the firewall is at 12 o'clock) and everything is cool.

[EFI69Cam]

No, the fuel lines were not a problem in terms of clearancing the firewall. The distributor had some issues clearancing the firewall at first because as delivered the harness goes straight out the back. However, I ended up re-setting the distributor so that the harness now comes out 90 degrees counter clockwise (at the 9 o'clock position if the firewall is at 12 o'clock) and everything is cool.

Cool. Folks have asked me about the fit of the RJ intake, and I told them about cutting the inside of the cowl hood (I had to do the same with my AZ speed TPI), but I was concerned about the fuel rail.