FRANKO

Hello,
I have two sons and a daughter and I want to take them camping and I thought a camping van would be awesome. I've been doing a lot of research lately on vans in general. I have been searching for a van for almost a year and I finally found one!
When I was younger, my dad had a 1982 g10. I drove it for a while after he passed and my mom eventually sold it. This is the reason I wanted a Chevy van for this project. I will be posting pictures and updating my progress over the next...uh, well...however long it takes. I am blessed to have good friends that do different types of work on vehicles. One is a paint and body guy and my other friend does vehicles add-ons and upgrades for a dealership and does some mechanic work.

As of now, I have started rebuilding the carb and in the process, I'm changing the valve cover gaskets and will be performing a tune-up. I have a lot of things I want to do, but as I said before, I will be updating those as I go along.

Here's where I need your help - I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what ways I can improve the performance and/ or fuel economy. I want better fuel economy first, then the performance. I am willing to remove smog, emissions items as well as small inexpensive changes. Are there benefits to things like an electric fan as opposed to the clutch fan on these? Also, does anyone have a good contact for parts for these?

Here are some specs;
305 with quadrajet 17084226 - 3 speed trans - conversion


Thanks in advance - Franko

canucklehead

The electric fan is supposed to ease up on the few horsepower it takes to spin the regular fan.....
The 305 is better on fuel than the 350, and I got 16 mpg with my 1990 g 20. It had 3.42 gears, and the turbo 350 tranny with no overdrive.
Without knowing your setup, all I can say is help it breathe, and keep it tuned.
All in all you usually have to choose between performance and economy dont you??...lol.

FRANKO

I appreciate the feedback. I will be looking into one of those for sure. So, today, after rebuilding the carb, I stripped the threads for one of the bolts that tightens the base plate. I bought a heli-coil kit and will try that tomorrow. My friend and I removed the valve covers to replace the gaskets.
I am really considering removing most of the emissions stuff. I have so many little hoses and many of them are cracked and rotted. I was also looking at the thermal vacuum switch? That's what it looks like any way...I would have to replace 3 of the four hoses that lead to/from that thing. Does anyone know exactly what I could remove and what I would need to keep like the line for the distributor and so on? I would really appreciate any help with this. I've done some research on deletion of the pump, egr and others, but would like a good solid list.
On a positive note, the removal of the valve covers revealed a fairly clean top side. I plan to run an engine flush as soon as we're all tightened up. Any thoughts on that?
Thanks again for the info, "canucklehead"...