Some new Clues! - Finally figuring this out!!!! LOOK!

[Anonymous]

Well to say that the cold and damp weather is making my life harder is a serious understatement.

The temps hit the low 30's with lots of drizzle and sleet. Starting the car from cold twice today was painful. It starts OK, idles fine with the choke closed at 1600 rpms... then after a minute or two, it dies down to 900, if you open the choke, it stalls out. It will start, but is not easy and I have to hold the throttle up at 1200 to keep it running. Let off the gas and it stalls right down. I left the car alone, both times for about two minutes then started it again with the choke open and held the throttle at 1200... lots of smelly smoke out the rear, like cold weather vapor but a lot more than most cars... smelly too...

once the car heats up a bit, and I mean warm, not sort of warm... about ten minutes of the throttle being held, then it will idle, roughly, at 950. If you hit the throttle when the car is in this stalling bliss... the engine does not surge cleanly, it dives then rises, there is a loud hiss at the carb throat during this time.

after a little driving it runs better, still rough, but will idle at 1000 where it is set... it still stalls when coming to a stop, not on all of them, just after running hard, or stopping quickly...

I just came home about 15 minutes ago, and I let it sit for a minute... I started it up, and it was fine, runs like normal.... but it is also a hot engine now.

I pulled the plug wires at idle, to see if one was not cool, and they all affect the engine, when you pull one, it misses and makes a ticking sound?




I am not sure still what is causing these rough idle and stalling issues, we have all been looking into this, and I have to admit, I have not gone as far into the engine as I would like to, but time and money are holding me up right now....

Here are my to do lists, I am going to do each of these things one at a time to see what if any changes occur... I wanted to post the above new information to hopefully shed some light on the issue...

1. Re-adjust float level, I have removed the float bowl three times now to change jets, I am going to adjust the level to the sight plug on the 2300 per the Holley instructions, 1/4 rotation at a time to see, I pulled the plug and it is not at the hole level, it seems to be a bit below that.

(I will run the engine after each step to test, to help eliminate the possibility of doing too much at once...)

2. Manifold or carb base leak, if the float adjustment makes no difference then I am going to pull the carb and manifold and attempt to reseal that by making my own gasket and filming it with Per-tex Ultra Copper. Same to the carb adapter gasket and carb base...

3. If 1 + 2 make no difference, then I will pull the valve cover and give the engine a few rotations by hand, make sure nothing is sticking I would probably do this cold and then hot.... at this point I can check the valvetrain again, although I have found nothing wrong in there as of yet.


Still trying, but losing the battle...

 

[Anonymous]

OK, so I dropped the float level one 1/4 turn, when I pulled the sight plug a little gas came out, the level was right up to the line...

after I dropped the level, I started it up and it seemed to be smoother, maybe though it is idling so rough that it is spilling over, the level may have been fine? seems a little low now? but I will test drive it at this height tomorrow and see what happens.

I think I have a vacume leak, causing the rough idle, causing the float to spill? sound crazy?

 

[Anonymous]

dont wurry jimbo , addo is already sending me a crossflow intake , so this winter you got a EFI 2 V head ! ore a TBI 2 V head , our pick !
i realy hope i gone make this winter a real BOLT ON TBI kit ore EFI kit for the 2V head .

and a TBI for a log head , got already a complete TBI setup from a 2,2 liter reneault , seems good fitting to me to a log head intake plate ! !! with al the wiring harnas and sensors / computer! -175€
stupid question : how to figure out howmuch flow a setup is ???
i always do it this way : 2,2liter engine 4 cyl -2200/4=550 per cyl!
[200 ci] 3300/6=550 per cyl , so a 2,2 liter TBI setup wil be close for a 3,3 ???????????????????
btw stil problems with paypal , can i send you a money order ?

 

[Anonymous]

when my car was running rough...turned out to be a blown head gasket

I also have a loose dizzy...making it jump out of timing

 

[CobraSix]

I still think most of your problems are being caused my the carb. It definitely sounded like you had some float issues that you fixed. the stalling under heavy breaking or heavy acceleration sounds like floats.

Have you tried adjusting the throttle plates at idle? Which HOlley are you running? Maybe your throttle plates aren't adjusted right.

Trying to think of anything else we haven't covered. I just don't think it is an engine problem. I just think it is somehow fuel/air related. Either carb or vacuum leak. have you tried another 2V carb?

Slade

 

[strat1960s]

Jimbo

We are having some simular problems with our cars, granted they are set up a little differently.
As for the cold starts and stalling, I have a bear of a time keeping the motor running in the AM, mostly due to the fact that I do not have a thermostat in it yet. Could your thermostat be set to open while the motor is too cold yet?

As for the rough idle, i have one, maybe more than that, vacuum leaks in my intake circut. Could be at the carb base, the carb adapter, the carb flange on the intake manifold or at intake to motor junction. I am looking to seal it up with some ultra copper to get me by till AZ Coupe can sell me a couple of intake gaskets. I am going to use a can of carb cleanerto spray around the intake circut while the motor is running to see if I can take down my vacuum leak(s), then seal them up.

I know you have a great deal of time and money wraped up in your car, it would be a shame to give up on it after you have come so far. Remember my saying at the bottom of this post. "I always have fun, but sometimes are more fun than others."

Ted

 

[Mustangaroo]

Jimbo65,
I think this was covered before, but just incase it was not here goes. Is the vaccume advance on you distribtor working correctly? Does you engine idel better or worse with the dizzy vaccume pluged off? You may not be running enough advance at idel if your vaccume advance is not working correctly? Like I said you may have already covered this in one of your other posts?

 

[CobraSix]

Ben,

I thought vacuum advance should not be operating at idle. Maybe this is the problem. I had that problem with my offy set up at first. I was relying upon the vacuum advance too much and I didn't realize it until I unpluged it and my initial timing dropped to 2* ATDC...Very bad.

Just a thought.

Slade

 

[Anonymous]

Good thoughts, I agree I think this is fuel related, and it could be the weather just makes things worse...

Pulling the advance at idle makes no difference in the timing, the mark stays the same, it also has no effect on the idle. There is a difference under load, has better power with the advance hooked up, I have not tried driving it without, might try that in the morning... plugging it off and taking it for a spin would not hurt?

No I wish I had another carb, specially a 500cfm holley, cause I really think it is not getting enough of something...

I am running the 2300 350 cfm beast...

One more note, my passenger side needle may be toast, for some reason it is harder to turn than the driver side fuel mixture needle? could it be bent, I remember someone having this problem with their 2300?

I also have pulled the float and metering block a couple of times, wonder if i messed up a gasket or someting, I have the blue gaskets, maybe I should change those too, but this problem existed before I started jetting, and I am back to square one on those... 8.5PV and 61JETS.

?

Not giving up, just praying I don't hurt anything too bad, it sounded like crap this morning, I was a little worried...

some of my cold start issues are choke related, that thing is not set right, but I can usually find a spot where it gets up and idles fine, and I did, then it dies? the temps are fine, even warmer than I would expect, still runs like a bear...

there is a larger problem here, not related to the cold weather but made worse by it, I have had this rough idle since it was first fired up, it is time to try another carb, or at least pulling the manifold and looking for leaks... but how I am gonna know if there was a leak, will there be any signs on an intake? exhaust is easy...?

 

[Anonymous]

i think all you problems are carb related. spray around all the intake runners at the gasket, and around the carb base with w d 40 and listen to the idle, that will tell you if you have an intake leak at the head or a bad gasket. unless you have a radical cam, i believe you are using to much carb for the engine, that would explain the extremely high idle speed. also, i have had 1 good holley in 30 years of working on cars. it doesnt matter if it was 4 barrel, 2 barrel, or 1 barrel, they were junk! i would try a plain old autolite 2 barrel and see if that helped any at all. i have run them on 4 bangers, taken straight off of small block v 8 engines with out all the trouble you are haveing.

 

[CobraSix]

Remove the idle needles and take a look at them.

I don't think the 350 is too much for this set up. mustangaroo and son are running like 500CFM and 600CFM on a similiar set up. Heck, mustang_geezer is running 500CFM holley on a log hed.

How old is this carb? spray carb cleaner all around the intake and head and watch the RPMs. That's the only way I know to check for leaks around the intake. Does your intake have a vacuum tree? Are all the unused ports pluged?

Slade

 

[mugsy]

My Dad work for 7 years at Ford then 25 years at GM as a Product Development Engineer. He told me that when the outside temps are in the 45 F to 32 F range it gave the carb engineers fits. He said that it is easy to tune a carb for "cold" weather and "hot" weather, but the "in-between" was very, very difficult. So if Ford and GM with their millions of bucks couldn't get carbs to run right in this range....

Now I have been following your "progress" to date and have been silently cheering you on, but maybe the best thing to do right now is wait. Wait for the weather to get colder, then re-attack the idle/choke/performance issues.

Good luck.
Mugsy

 

[Anonymous]

Yes I have the vacume tree... and both ports are used, one is for the brakes and the other is capped.

I already sprayed around the carb base and intake with WD40 and it had no effect, however there are places around the bottom of the intake where I cannot really get too... smelly too.


This carb is new from Summit, does not mean it is good....

I will pull the needles and have a look, trouble with the tight passenger side needle is I am leary about seating the needle, since it is so hard to feel when it stops, I am trying to be gentle, but the thing is much harder than the other side...

I just ran it through another warm cycle this morning, and it was not as bad, it still rpms down on the choke, but once it starts to warm up it does rise... there is still too much smoke coming out the back, but with the low temps it is immpossible to tell if that is real or not, and lots of fluid on the driveway behind the engine...

I pulled the PCV to make sure I was not getting any oil in through there again and it is all clean, working fine!


Couple of questions,
is it possible I may have messed one of the meter block gaskets up when I was playing with the jets? maybe I should get some new ones.
Is there a difference in distributors for manual and auto transmissions or are they the same?


will try the carb cleaner spray now and see if I can find anything...
the bottom of the intake is the hard part...

EDIT:
waiting is not really an option, I took the day today to work from home, but I need this thing to run all the time, Tis my driver...
and the range of temps you posted from 45-32 degrees is the average low here in the south, it will not get much colder but stays like this for three months...

Starting to seriously wish I had a TBI! may be the only way to go, but my old engine before the rebuild had better than this with a beat block, burnt head, and Carter YF... I would not think the weather is my trouble, there is something fishy smelling in there I know it, I just have not found it yet...

 

[Mustangaroo]

Jimbo65,
One other thought both my Aussie 2V setup and my son's are tuned using a vaccume gage at the vaccume port at the base of the carb, we tune for maxinum vaccume mine with a stock cam runs 18 to 19 inches and Jasons with a 256 Isky cam runs 14-16 inches vaccume. His also will run at 10 to 11 inches but it won't idle You may already be doing this but if not this may help tuning the carb and sorting out other problems.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, mine idles at 14-15 inches with a 270 cam, and I think that is good... it was down to 10 inches but would not idle, now this is all at 1000 rpms, I cannot get the car down below that it dies...

one of my biggest problems has been the idle... running too high to keep it smooth, if you go any lower it dies.

I just went over the intake with carb cleaner and nothing there, no change in idle anywhere, I even got around the base pretty good...

the only thing I can think of is maybe the intake is hitting the headers and might be holding it up off there a bit, the clearance is tight down there.

but I did take it for a road run, and since I lowered the float level, and cleaned the carb with the cleaner it is running mutch smoother, and has a nice even power surge off a start, seems to respond a little better in the 2500-3500 rpm range too... maybe the float was too high, causing the bowl to spill on stops and heavy starts? not sure....

I am going to keep playing, I think my next task is to attempt to drop the rpms down to 800 and set the timing and take another vacume reading.

if that will not run, I will pull the plugs, and pull the fuel needles to check them out...


typically I have been taking vacume readings from the intake tree, not the carb base, I will give that a shot and see what happens, if there is any difference...

 

[CobraSix]

The other thing, if the idle mix needle is stuck, or hard to move, it may be jammed against something that may be clogging the idle mix screw. That could be causing your idle rpoblems.

With your cam that vacuum sounds about right. With my 260 max vacuum I could get at idle was about 16-17.

once you start getting above 1000 RPM, the idle circuit is less important. Maybe you have something wrong in the idle circuit. Is this a new carb? Did you buy it off someone? I think you should try another carb.

Slade

 

[Anonymous]

What is your timing at idle with and without the vacuum advance?
You mentioned that unplugging the vacuum advance at idle had no effect on the timing. It should have a significant effect. Unless you are running a distributor with no vacuum advance, a large portion of your advance should be coming from the vacuum advance at idle. Vacuum at idle should be high and should be advancing the timing probably by at least 20 degrees. You need to check where the vacuum line is connected? Is it connected to a fitting that is giving ported vacuum or full manifold vacuum? You may want to connnect it to a manifold source of vacuum and see if it has any effect? If it still has no effect, the diaphram in your vacuum advance is probably shot. You can test it with a Mity-vac pump and see if it holds vacuum. The other thing that often happens with poor idle, is that folks tend to adjust the idle speed up using the throttle plates, This uncovers some of the idle ports, and leads to erratic idle. The plates have to be closed. It is difficult to get a good idle when the throttle plates are openned too much trying to compensate for something else. The car will idle better at idle with more advance. You note it is smoothing out at 2500 rpm. That would be because the centrifugal advance is kicked in and has advanced the timing. Get your vacuum advance running and idle speed will pick up from where you currently have it. You will then have to back of on the idle speed adjustment.

 

[Mustangaroo]

Doug Flaten
Your post explained much more clearly what I was trying to say about the vacuum advance and plugging the line to see what effect it has, in the way it was idling. I was thinking if there was no vacuum leak and it still wasn't idling correctly that it may be the vacuum canister on his distributor malfunctioning and effecting his timmimg. Any way Doug my hats off to you for explaning it much better!

 

[Anonymous]

which one is fuel mixture and which one is idle again?

passenger side is....?

 

[Anonymous]

which one is fuel mixture and which one is idle again?

passenger side is....?

sorry, slow learner on board