1985 CV - A Canadian 2bbl 302

[SeanP]

Buy yourself a Holley, then get me up there and I'll tune it for ya! No hesitation at all. Hesitation from stop to full throttle is an accelerator pump thing, not sure how that Ford carb works or if it's even adjustable.. I've got cams & different pump sizes for holley stuff along with different jet sizes...

Haha, sounds good. Just for the record though, the hesitation is for like a millisecond and it isn't always there and it's never been alarming or put me in a dangerous situation.

However, when I do a 4bbl conversion I'm thinking a Holley is on the top of my list. I'll certainly make sure I hit you up for some tips!

[DerekTheGreat]

Oh ok, that doesn't sound so bad. I drove my Plymouth ~2600 miles across MI before I fully tuned the carb. It stumbled, hesitated and had no bawls under full throttle. Once I began tuning it I realized just how lean it was running, no wonder it got 14.xx mpg but it's also a marvel I didn't blow it up! Needless to say I wanted to kick my own ass for not having done that before the trip but that was pre Holley book. Never thought the car would run this good.

[gadget73]

You might be able to tweak the accelerator pump shot to sort that. Not sure about your particular carb, but usually there are 2 or 3 holes on the arm coming off the accelerator pump. Too much or not enough pump shot can cause a slight hesitation when nailing it from stop. Might be worth trying to move the linkage to the other hole(s) to see if it gets better or worse.

[SeanP]

I think I'll leave it for now. I only noticed it a couple of times anyway. I drove it to work and back with no hesitation whatsoever, so I think it may have just been running a touch lean or something. I may back off the mixture screws 1/4 once I get the idle sorted out if I notice it still happening.

I'll also keep in mind about the accelerator pump. It's cool that all of this stuff can be adjusted and because it's all mechanical it can all be put back if it doesn't work out!

Let it be known though that it runs night and day better than before!

[79lincolnlover]

Did you take any pics at cruise night?

[DerekTheGreat]

I think I'll leave it for now. I only noticed it a couple of times anyway. I drove it to work and back with no hesitation whatsoever, so I think it may have just been running a touch lean or something. I may back off the mixture screws 1/4 once I get the idle sorted out if I notice it still happening.

I'll also keep in mind about the accelerator pump. It's cool that all of this stuff can be adjusted and because it's all mechanical it can all be put back if it doesn't work out!

Let it be known though that it runs night and day better than before!

Only make adjustments to the carb when the engine is fully warmed up, otherwise that will cause headaches like you mentioned. (Not sure if that applies to fast idle settings, probably not)

[SeanP]

Only make adjustments to the carb when the engine is fully warmed up, otherwise that will cause headaches like you mentioned. (Not sure if that applies to fast idle settings, probably not)

Yep! All adjustments were made only when it was hot (as per the instructions on my fan shroud label). I think I've figured out what I may be doing wrong. Worst case scenario there's a garage in town that will do it for an hour's labour. I still have some strategies up my sleeve.

One thing I think I was doing wrong was not revving the throttle after making my fast idle adjustment. That's the mechanism for stepping down the fast idle cam. Also, I'm about 99% sure I have my mixture screws in too far and I'm running too lean.

First things first. Going to properly adjust my curb idle down. Next, get the mixture smoothed out at the screws. Finally, adjust fast idle and then do my throttle blipping to see if she goes down.

It should all work.

That or I'm out $90.

Hey, as an aside... would my leaky exhaust mess with any of this? I suspect there is some effect of not having proper backpressure, etc, but how much?

[SeanP]

Did you take any pics at cruise night?

No. I ended up getting cornered by a chatty (but let the record show, very nice) crown vic enthusiast. He has an '87 the same colour scheme as mine, but it's got some unusual features. Plus my wife wasn't doing all that well in the heat (we're expecting) and we ended up leaving early to go to Dairy Queen (because that makes everything better when you're expecting).

I'll take some pics soon. I know I keep saying that, but I mean it! I'll see if I can document some of my tuning efforts or at least take a shot or two of her on the road this weekend.

[SeanP]

I think I finally have the idle mixture and curb idle speed figured out. Also the choke is working perfectly. The only problem now is I think I have an issue indexing the fast idle cam. When I start the car the idle is like the curb idle rather than the fast idle. I doesn't really seem to matter where the screw is on the fast idle cam. Sigh.

I'm probably just missing something small. A family friend who's a retired mechanic will be going over it with me on Sunday. As for now, she seems to run just fine other than the cold idle speed being a little low.

[gadget73]

you're pumping the pedal to set the high idle cam, right? It won't engage otherwise. Its a simple gravity-drop sort of thing, and the throttle has to open far enough for that to drop in. Related to that, if the mechanism is at all gummy, it may not drop in either.

[DerekTheGreat]

What gadget said. Also, you may need to adjust the hockey puck thing for the choke, there's like two screws that hold it in place and from there you can rotate it a bit to the left or right. Forget which direction does what but it is essentially adjusting its thermal sensitivity, so at its current setting it might not be allowing the mechanism to engage the cam.

[SeanP]

Thanks for tips guys. The throttle does need to be revved pretty fully for it to knock into the cam. There is a little arm that is connected to the rod that goes through the throttle plates. It kicks into the cam if the throttle is opened about more than half way.

I was fiddling with it the other day and I think it's indexed properly. But I'm not too sure. There still seems to be little in the way of idle change between hot and cold. My Sunday got all messed up so I never got a chance to work on it this weekend.

I do have it worked out that I can actually see (with great effort and much manipulation of the hand held light source) the v notch on the cam. That's a step in the right direction.

On a side note, I installed new spark wires but I was half way through when I realized they had given me the wrong kit. They still work, just the wires on the passenger side bank are a little too long. It looks sloppy but it will do for now. The car seems to idle a little higher now that I have the new plug wires installed. Probably need to take a look at my ignition to double check everything's ok before I do any idle adjustments.

At the end of the day though, this is all just a stop gap until I install a 4bbl... so I'm not too sure how much work I want to really put into this. But just being a bit a perfectionist, it bugs me when it's not running properly... even though it works 'ok'.

Still having a bit of an issue with hard throttle input hesitation... there's a bit of a bog then it goes fine. I noticed while I was working on the idle adjustment stuff that there's a bit of a tiny leak between the EGR spacer and the intake manifold.

Also... I notice too that my carb is boiling gas away when it's hot after I turn off the car. The mounting gasket that came with my carb rebuild kit was about half the thickness of the one that came off car so I need to replace that with a more stock sized one. I would have reused it, but I accidentally gouged it (it's presswood or something) when I was taking it off.

Fel-Pro makes a mounting gasket similar to it (if it's half an inch thick... gonna have to get in touch with them about specs). But it's for the Bronco or something... whatever used the V6. Looks the same though, so probably very similar, if not the same, to what was used on my car.

That's the latest anyway.

PS - Hockey puck to the left closes the plate, to the right opens.

[DerekTheGreat]

When you first jump in and before starting the thing I'd pump the pedal a few times, then push the gas past the point of fast idle engagement and then start cranking, should light up and go to fast idle. That's what I did with my 85 CFI car, minus the pump the pedal part, doesn't do anything for EFI stuff if it's not already running.

I suspect that leak between your EGR spacer & manifold is causing your car to idle higher and would fix that first. If that manifold has the carb bolt pattern as the CFI stuff did then you could probably swap in that plastic spacer Ford used and that would eliminate your boiling issue.

The hesitation thing could go both ways. A bog could be too much or too little accelerator pump shot. Fixing those leaks first would help you get things square later on. Dicking with that was the most time consuming thing I faced with my carb. You gotta start in one direction and keep going to see what the problem does. So if you start increasing the nozzle size and the bog gets worse (usually accompanied by black smoke out the tailpipe) that's telling you you've got too much fuel and need to work the other way. Does it hesitate when you go from coasting to accelerating? That transition should also be smooth.

[SeanP]

I'll actually be taking the carb off again and putting a thicker mounting gasket on the carb... once I get one. Fel Pro makes a version of this gasket, but I'll bring the old one to my local parts guys and see what they can come up with. The one I put on is def about half the thickness of the stock one I pulled off. I suspect that will take care of a great deal of my gas boiling issue. I'll be replacing that EGR gasket at the same time.

While the carb is off again, I'll see if I can get that fast idle cam adjustment locked down. I didn't really do it right while it was off the first time, so this time I'm going to try. For real.

Once all that jazz is figured out, I'll then worry about the hesitation. The hesitation has really only been from stop, or real slow, to go. I don't think there's much hesitation while at speed or coast. I suspect there may be a bit of a vacuum leak caused by the egr spacer gasket, so I'll sort that out first. It wasn't doing when I first reinstalled the carb... it was only after it started leaking that this happened.

[DerekTheGreat]

Plastic spacer thing could be worth more HP too, although with a 2bbl I'm not sure it's worth worrying about. Every 85 CFI equipped car I've come across in boneyards is always missing that spacer, the TB itself is hit or miss.

I had a hesitation from coast to go, turned out the jetting wasn't right- they were too small. (No wonder the thing got 15mpg) I drove it over 2500 miles like that and I'm glad I didn't melt a piston or three. Looking back it's no wonder I lost to that VW on the expressway. I doubt jetting is your issue here but it was fun swapping in higher jets, noticing an increase in manifold vacuum and decrease in the hesitation with each progressive step until it went away.