So, let me tell the whole story....

[moore_rb]

It's been a fun week with my shiny blue car, which has been acting more like a red-headed step child lately...

It started last Wednesday- I drove the car to work, and just as I pulled into the parking lot at my office, I started smelling gas. I parked and took a look under the hood, and the fancy little glass filter with the plastic insert (you know- the ones you can get from JCWhitney for 10 bucks, and then you never buy a replacement element for it ever again for the rest of your life) had broken in half, leaving a puddle of fuel on the ground....Who knows where the glass tube and the little plastic filter piece went... Vanished.

So, I left it there and went to work for the day, thinking it will be easy to splice the fuel line back together when it's time to go home.

When I went back out later that afternoon to actually pull off my little McGuyver maneuver, I realized that both bolts holding the fuel pump to the block had backed almost totally out , and naturally they were large Allen heads in a size that I didn't have in my tool kit. So I did the old "wedge the closest size Allen key in there diagonally, and get them as snug as possible" trick, spliced up the fuel line, and made the 22 mile trip home (stopping twice along the way to make sure my fuel pump was staying attached.)

I got home and ordered up some braided fuel line, new fuel filters (No, not the fancy glass ones- This time I just got plain old fashioned, el-cheapo one piece canister filters), etc...

As usual, the delivery guy shows up Friday afternoon with my parts (Like or hate SummitRacing, their delivery times are amazing)

Come Saturday morning, my new parts in hand, I pulled all the small sections of rubber fuel hose off the car, replaced both fuel filters, clamped in my fancy new braided line sections, and replaced the fuel pump mounting bolts with a pair of more sensible hex-heads... Short test drive went great- no leaks, everything nice and snug.

Saturday evening rolls around, and I run out to pick up my younger daughter to bring her home, and we decide to make a quick stop for tacos. As I pull off the freeway the car is running pretty rough - sputtering, misfiring, not wanting to hold an idle, but it seems to get a little better as we pull into the parking lot. After we're done eating, we go out to head home, aaaaannnnnnd..... No start. Normal cranking, plenty of gas shooting from the squirters, but no "vroom".

Part of me was relieved that it wasn't anything related to my earlier fuel system repair, but the other side of my brain (the side that manages the creative collections of curse-words that I'm occasionally known for) was more than just a little bit annoyed...

So Saturday night closed out with me calling my wife to come and get our kid, then calling Hagerty road side assistance, waiting another hour (during which I get to endure the normal Saturday night assortment of "Dude- Nice Car" comments, which I am usually highly appreciative of, when the car is actually serving its primary purpose as a fully functioning automobile), and then getting a ride home from these guys...:



This time it's the ignition system. The frustrating part is that on Sunday morning, it fired right up, leaving me no "red X' on any bad component(s), but even with a short drive up the street and back, it's still not running right. The coil ohm-tested out of spec, and one of my plug wires was also suspicious, so those will get swapped out, and I'm going to go over everything else in the ignition system, while I'm in there. I just hope it's not the built in ignition controller in this fancy MSD distributor.

So, over the past 4 weeks, I've overhauled the clutch hydraulics, the fuel system, and now the ignition system... Just about every system that makes the car actually go....

I WANNA DRIVE....

But first:

I GOTTA REPAIR....

Eh, Wrenching on the car is fun, too, I guess.... Just not as much fun

I think the car is rebelling. It spent its first 15 years of life racking up a leisurely 2400 miles, and I've already put over 500 miles on it in just 6 weeks.

It's like a stable-bound horse that suddenly has a rider with some spurs sitting on its back. Sure, it's gonna buck, snort, and stomp around... But in the end, who's gonna win...? Who always wins?

ME...

I win.

[Cobrakeith]

Heck Robert no Thoroughbred is ever easy to ride until you get a few miles in the saddle! Sorry you won't be with the group on the Tombstone run though.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by moore_rb

I think the car is rebelling. It spent its first 15 years of life racking up a leisurely 2400 miles, and I've already put over 500 miles on it in just 6 weeks.

It takes a good 5000 miles before these cars are really broken in. I like to put Torque Seal on any bolt that I've had trouble with (meaning they've loosened or backed off). You might want to snug up all your drive line bolts (U-Joints, driveshaft fittings, differential bolt fittings, all of that). I've had a lot of bolts come loose on me, but the fuel pump has never been one of them.

[Danr55]

Welcome to the world of personalized race cars. Get used to it

[lippy]

I just had another MSD episode. The magnetic pickup on the dizzy went bad. Just for kicks unplug your dizzy and measure the resistance across the two pins. If it's above 1300 ohms then it's bad. Also check the LED on the box to see what it does when you turn the key and crank. If those things check out do the MSD spark test to see if you have spark.

[moore_rb]

Originally Posted by patrickt

You might want to snug up all your drive line bolts (U-Joints, driveshaft fittings, differential bolt fittings, all of that). I've had a lot of bolts come loose on me, but the fuel pump has never been one of them.

Oh, I gave all the drivetrain bolts the once-over the first time I had it up on jackstands, but yeah- the fuel pump? That was a new one on me, too...

[patrickt]

I asked this of Lippy over on his thread, so I might as well ask it of you. Are you using the MSD 26Kufd Capacitor in your installation?

[moore_rb]

Originally Posted by lippy

I just had another MSD episode. The magnetic pickup on the dizzy went bad. Just for kicks unplug your dizzy and measure the resistance across the two pins. If it's above 1300 ohms then it's bad. Also check the LED on the box to see what it does when you turn the key and crank. If those things check out do the MSD spark test to see if you have spark.

Mine is the "ready to run" style with the controller built in... testing the pickup requires the whole thing to be taken apart.

besides, I know it has spark- The car starts and runs again now- it's just that it's still not running right...

I'm going to tear into it this afternoon - I'll post whatever I find (if anything)

[moore_rb]

Well, the plot thickens...

Yesterday I changed the plug wires, and swapped in a good coil from another car, but when I started the car and starting adding revs, it began sputtering, popping and misfiring at 1500rpm and above (same behavior it's been doing since Saturday night)

So, I took my timing light and first made sure all the new wires were sparking consistently (they were), and then I put it back on #1 and watched my timing scale while I revved it, and WHOA! - I had over 40 degrees of advance at 1500rpm, and over 50 degrees at 2000rpm

So then I plugged the vaccuum advance to watch the centrifugal curve, and as soon as I did that, the car immediately began running "normally" again, and the misfiring completely ceased. The built-in timing curve seemed about right for this engine- it was aggressive, but not insane (it ran from 12 degrees up to 38, all in by about 2500rpm)

Once the car was fully warmed up, I left the vaccum advance corked, and went out for a test drive, and the car ran flawlessly - it ran hard (and fast) well past 6000rpm, and smoothly returned to idle at each stop. No sputtering, no stalling, no misfires. When I got home, neither the coil, nor the dizzie were any hotter to the touch than the intake manifold was (on Saturday night when it died, both of them were WAY hotter than the rest of the engine, they felt more like the header tubes )

So, the only mystery left is: What's up with the vaccum advance? it was connected to the correct ported source on the carb, and it had never been touched since the day I brought the car home. After my test drive, I pulled the cap and rotor, hooked my hand vacuum pump up to it, and watched it pull and release the advance plate - everything looked normal.

My best theory is that perhaps the vacuum advance never worked, and something during my drive on Saturday night (some bump in the road, who knows ) finally jarred the advance plate in the distributor loose, allowing it to finally pull the timing forward, and the excessive advance started the car misfiring (which is much harder to hear when you're blasting down the freeway at 3300rpm and 80mph), thereby overheating the coil until it finally gave up (that suspicious plug wire on #3 was probably also a contributing factor, but the new wires should clear that up)

I can't imagine an alternative scenario where the engine just magically started producing more vacuum??? What mechanical condition could cause the exact opposite of a vacuum leak? I haven't messed with the carb, and the plugs say the engine isn't lean - all 8 plug insulators are dark tan (like the color of cardboard) and the electrodes are clean

I'm going to drive it around for a couple more days before I decide that the spark controller is totally off the guilty list, but all indications are that the un-adjustable vaccum diaphragm that MSD used on this dizze is just adding in too much advance... I'll have to decide whether to just leave it capped, or try to find an adjustable one that fits this dizzie.

I also considered hooking it back up, running the rpms up to the point that it misfires, then slowly retarding the dizzie until it smooths back out, but I'm afraid that might leave me with too little initial and centrifugal advance (initial is set at 12 degrees right now) - But I guess it wouldn't hurt to play with it for an afternoon.

If any of you Ford engine gurus have any other insights or ideas, please chime in, but 50+ degrees of spark while cruising just seemed too aggressive to me on 91 octane Arizona winter blend pump gas... Any other opinions on that?

[Bob Broberg SPF667 460BB]

When I have a problem like that I just say "Jeff, my Babe ain't runnin right." He's the guru for all things mechanical and electrical.
Jeff Classic will know.
AZ Bob

[lippy]

Get it running right without the vacuum advance. It helps with economy and temperature but you don't need it. You want to make sure you aren't getting too much advance, as it could damage things. One you set up the ignition baseline without the advance, then install and tune the advance

[Car Nut]

I see two issues.

The timing marks on many aftermarket dampers aren't indexed correctly to the timing tab on the passenger side of the engine (when using a driver side water inlet for the water pump). They were designed for a tab on the drivers side. Not sure if yours is this way. You can check this by putting it on TDC (between the compression and power stroke) and checking the mark.

I have the same distributor. I run a base timing of 18 degrees with a total of 36 degrees. The vacuum advance adds another 20 which makes it pop and snort over 2500 rpm in cruise. That is just way too much timing for my motor. I run it without the vacuum advance and it performs just fine. Could it be that someone put a stop on the vacuum advance and it fell off?

[moore_rb]

Originally Posted by Car Nut

I see two issues.

The timing marks on many aftermarket dampers aren't indexed correctly to the timing tab on the passenger side of the engine (when using a driver side water inlet for the water pump). They were designed for a tab on the drivers side. Not sure if yours is this way. You can check this by putting it on TDC (between the compression and power stroke) and checking the mark.

Yeah I confirmed that my balancer is indexed correctly to my pointer (mine is driver's side)

Originally Posted by Car Nut

I have the same distributor. I run a base timing of 18 degrees with a total of 36 degrees. The vacuum advance adds another 20 which makes it pop and snort over 2500 rpm in cruise. That is just way too much timing for my motor. I run it without the vacuum advance and it performs just fine. Could it be that someone put a stop on the vacuum advance and it fell off?

This is great info... thanks!

I also saw 20 degrees added by the vacuum cannister, so good to know that my dist. is acting the same as others of the same model.

I am leaning toward the same conclusion as you about the vaccum advance on mine being "impeded" before saturday night, and suddenly having something work loose which allowed it to go full vaccum. I didn't see anything loose floating around inside the dist. housing when I had the cap and rotor off it, but I'm going to take a second look at that, because I think you are onto something....

[Karl Bebout]

RB, so what's your feeble excuse for not going to Tombstone? Rather make the well worn run to Payson? (granted, going to Payson is a very nice drive, but this is an opportunity to go someplace different.

[moore_rb]

Originally Posted by Karl Bebout

RB, so what's your feeble excuse for not going to Tombstone? Rather make the well worn run to Payson?

I'm expressing my solidarity with our west-valley compatriots...

Remember Karlos- It's only run-busting when an east-sider does it.

Honestly- My car is my only excuse. I don't trust it right now, and the last place I want the ignition system to fail again is out in the desert, halfway between Wilcox and Benson, a million miles from the nearest cell phone reception... By the time roadside assistance arrived out there to pick me up, I'd be vulture-bait...

However, I still have about 45 hours left to get my car sorted out, and change my mind....

I live my life via Occam's Razor... I don't have to make a decision about my confidence in my car until Friday night, and I don't have to decide where I'm going on Saturday, until early Saturday morning...

So what's the point in doing any planning today?

[Phx Mike]

Robert as my wife said as my car was being hauled up on the flatbed once a couple of months ago - "the good looking ones are always high maintenance".

As stated above - the old guidance on timing was always to remove and plug the vacuum advance and set initial timing (everyone these days seems to run a lot of initial advance but most of the OEM guidance was always around 10-12 degrees initial with the vacuum advance plugged). Then get your vacuum checked out. Vacuum advance if working correctly will get you better part throttle fuel economy when cruising. It may also help the car run cooler in those conditions. I am not sure why this was not causing a problem before, and is now, but I think your theory about the distributor advance plate being stuck previously and now loose is a plausible one. It may just have never been working before, and now it is. If you are getting too much advance with the vacuum advance connected, you may need to change the vacuum canister.

[Jaydee]

I have a dizzy where the vacuum line connect there is a threaded union. If you unscrew this you can put in spacers to limit vacuum advance and also change springs to alter the vacuum it needs for advance. After reading a great article on vacuum advance, I now use manifold vacuum only. It idles much better and has better throttle response.
JD

[moore_rb]

I have my new plug wires all fitted and loomed up, and my new High Vibration coil is in. The car is absolutely running better after those 2 changes, and so I went ahead and changed my plugs up one heat range, from a 3 range autolite racing plug, to a 4 range, and that smoothed things out and improved the throttle response even more... I'm gaining on it

It still has a rough spot if I hold the RPMs steady in the idle transition zone around 1500rpm, so I'm going to tinker with it some more this afternoon and see if I can smooth that out...

[moore_rb]

Well, that was a fun afternoon....

Grabbed all my tuning gear (timing light, feeler guages, distributor springs, vacuum gauge, handheld tach, carb jets) and headed out to the farm roads south of my house...

GEEZ!!!! it was a LOT easier 10 years ago, when all I had to grab was my laptop and my diagnostic port to serial adaptor...

Anyway - Making the move up to the #4 heat range plugs was the right call. The #3 plugs always looked dark (as if things were a bit rich), but after putting over 100 miles on the car with the #4's, these plugs look PERFECT The insulators are the color of pine, and there's a nice clean, gray spark line on the electrodes; and I didn't have to change jets in the carb to get there.

Timing-wise, I left the vacuum advance plugged and focused on that off-idle flat spot. I swapped one of my centrifugal return springs to a lighter one, which allowed my timing curve to ramp up faster off idle and hit the max sooner, and that did the trick... Everything seemed to run best with 14 degrees initial, and 38 total all in by 2800...

I also moved the accelerator pump cam up one notch on the carb primaries, to deliver the primary pump shot faster.

Now it comes away from a stop much better under normal throttle conditions, and the best part is that it's even faster...

No, ACTUALLY the best part was that it never stalled out or refused to re-start. I cycled the ignition probably 20 times today, and it fired every time...

[DWRAT]

Sounds like you're a tuning expert.
Job well done.