Engine Compartment
On to the engine compartment. I have not documented the removal of the old intake manifold, as this is pretty straight forward. Drain some coolant to avoid a mess, disconnect vacuum and fuel, remove the distributor after rotating the engine so that the rotor points at cylinder 1, and pop the manifold off.
After removing the old manifold I test fitted the new manifold:
Aaah... Looking good! You can see a blue shop rag in the distributor hole. Didn't want any dirt falling into the valley while test fitting various parts.
BTW, I've found a good way to clean aluminum heads is to carefully scrape as much of the old gasket off with a scraper, and then wipe with a rag sprayed with carb cleaner.
Here you can see the fuel feed with the high pressure filter hooking up to the fuel rail. The filter bracket is attached to a water pump bolt. The lower end of the filter goes to a hardline that has a rubber coated clamp bolted to the fuel pump block-off plate. Finally, a piece of hose connects to the original 3/8" fuel line to the tank.
The return line is in place on the firewall. Just need to put a hose from the AFPR to the line. If you're wondering about the un-connected windshield washer connectors in the top of the picture, don't worry; I'm running an electric pump from a '96 Camaro. Works much better than the odd mechanical contraption on the wiper motor.
Next was the throttle bracket. The one that comes in the kit is for the standard GM throttle cable. Guess what... The Corvette does not use a standard GM throttle cable. Are you surprised? I'm not.
I started out with the stock bracket. It attaches to one of the throttle body bolts. I found it will actually work after bending it down to clear the air cleaner. This only left 2 issues: How to prevent the bracket from rotating around the single attaching bolt, and where to hook up a return spring. The throttle body does have a integrated spring, but it is not strong enough.
Here is what I came up with after some fabricating:
As mentioned previously, the front section (left in the picture) is the factory bracket. To it, I welded a piece of 3/16" x 3/4" steel. It makes a slight upward bend towards the rear so the spring clears. I made 5 holes so the return spring force can be adjusted. That only left to question of a second attaching point. To solve this, a second piece of steel was welded onto the bracket. A hole was drilled into the fuel rail mounting boss. It was then heli coiled for strength and a 1/4"-20 stud was inserted. The bracket was then primered and painted satin black. Came out real nice, if I may say so.