hi folks! want to talk at length for my yet-to-be '65 cuda project but have a real stumper problem for a newbie like me on my buddy's latest.
'67 imperial 440 engine (sitting in a b-body ('67 Satellite) ... don't shoot!)
Engine and car had been sitting for quite a long time. The swap seems to have been good and it ran okay but not great. Slowly working through the issues to make this car a driver for him and we're both complete amateurs.
* The car blew a head-gasket after 3 days of driving. had the heads rebuilt for use with unleaded and a small bump to exhaust valve.
* The 440 is all stock - 10.2(5?) compression, with newly re-done 914 heads with 3-angle valve job, new valves, springs, retainers.
* Stock intake manifold. Tried to rebuild carb, but a few small bits were shattered so a new Edelbrock 750 was strapped on, and jetted down (leaner... hoping `down' is the right terminology).
After the carb change and new heads, the car ran but it didn't run very well. After tweaking the knobs on the eddy and breaking out the timing light, we started to see issues. After setting timing we noticed the old vacuum advance went crazy after setting initial timing at 11 degrees and shooting to ~40-50 after plugging in the advance. We figured the old diaphragm wasn't dealing well with the absence of vacuum leaks and going nuts now that everything was sealed. We also suspected that we had a bad miss on either one or both banks. So given the circumspect points dizzy, old vacuum advance ...
* New MSD pro-billet "ready-to-run" dizzy. Originally tried a 440 source ready-to-run but, since this swap was from an Imperial with air-con, the side-mounted ignition housing completely interfered with the air-con bracket to the intake, and the diameter was just too big to get it to seat correctly. Found an MSD small-diameter locally and broke out the calipers to compare to the old one. 2/10's difference. Got it and it seated fine, although is slightly bigger and still a tight fit. I have a feeling the Mallory is smaller but this MSD was available and looked well built.
* MSD street-fire 8mm cut-to-fit wires (most god-awful things. what a hassle. I'll save that for another post. Probably just inexperience, but I've replaced lots of wire sets with Magnecor and never had these kinds of issues)
* traced the bad miss to a badly corroded plug wire and badly fouled plug on cyl #5. mystery solved
* We noted that the old coil had a dent and appeared to be leaking oil from the bottom. Local supplier didn't have an MSD Blaster II coil, so we replaced it with a stock-spec coil that requires ballast resistor (white jobby on the firewall)
* Intense debate as to whether or not the 750 is too much carb for the stock HP 440 @ 10.2. I think it's fine ... but the stock Carter AFB is rated at 625. Plan for early next year is to do intake manifold, headers, and maybe a cam.
Our issue now is that we've got a no-start condition. Being amateurs with new plugs, plug wires, and a new distributor, we ignored the fact that the motor ran and all directions to index the old cap and rotor to the block and just stripped everything down. haha! n00bs!
Determined to do it from scratch, we pulled the old plugs, cranked the motor around to TDC, verified the piston was up in the cylinder w/ a screwdriver and marked the rotor on the new dizzy for Cyl. #1 and wired everything up, checking it thrice after installing the new champeen plugs gapped at .035.
We bumped the timing up to make sure we had spark to kick-start it.
1st start attempt: cranking speed on the starter only slowed to near zero and backfired out the tailpipe and the carb, too. time to flip the wires 180 degrees. did that.
2nd thru 5th attempts: car tries to starts and runs for about a second, but dies with a carb backfire and a fireball as high as the hood. Assumption: wayyy too much advance. continually retard timing.
5th-thru 10th attempts: no more fireballs. car runs for 2~5 seconds at a rough lope and dies. lots of flooding and manually setting the choke. re-check the wires and firing order. all good.
Still the car won't fire-up and run for more than a couple seconds before it dies. No more backfire through the carb, but we just can't keep it running. Progressively retarding the timing but now we're afraid it's backed off too much.
More background info: the timing chain, while probably old and stretched a bit can't be that far off, as the car ran after purchase (50mi drive), and ran with the new carb, albeit not perfectly, still had plenny of get up and go (we discovered the secondaries on the old carb weren't opening up and the throttle cable linkage needed adjusted). Very certain we found TDC and had the rotor 'n cap marked correctly for #1, after rotating it 180 degrees and getting almost starts. We've checked the firing order and wires about 10 times - all good there. Vacuum advance is still disconnected and plugged off on the carb. We figured it would at least idle long enough for us to set the base timing after firing up.
What are we doing wrong? Seems like there's something obvious we're missing, or we just don't know how to read the starts well enough to know what to do with the timing. WE tried to start initial timing as close to TDC on the cap as we could eyeball it, then advanced it a little to get it to start. That all resulted in carb backfires.
thanks for any help to the newbies. This is great experience for me - I want to get into an early '64/65 Barracuda and build a small block for it ... but I figure before doing that, I should at least be able to replace a dizzy and get one of these carb' contraptions to start :read2: :-D
Cutting Our Teeth!
cheers
-ike
'67 imperial 440 engine (sitting in a b-body ('67 Satellite) ... don't shoot!)
Engine and car had been sitting for quite a long time. The swap seems to have been good and it ran okay but not great. Slowly working through the issues to make this car a driver for him and we're both complete amateurs.
* The car blew a head-gasket after 3 days of driving. had the heads rebuilt for use with unleaded and a small bump to exhaust valve.
* The 440 is all stock - 10.2(5?) compression, with newly re-done 914 heads with 3-angle valve job, new valves, springs, retainers.
* Stock intake manifold. Tried to rebuild carb, but a few small bits were shattered so a new Edelbrock 750 was strapped on, and jetted down (leaner... hoping `down' is the right terminology).
After the carb change and new heads, the car ran but it didn't run very well. After tweaking the knobs on the eddy and breaking out the timing light, we started to see issues. After setting timing we noticed the old vacuum advance went crazy after setting initial timing at 11 degrees and shooting to ~40-50 after plugging in the advance. We figured the old diaphragm wasn't dealing well with the absence of vacuum leaks and going nuts now that everything was sealed. We also suspected that we had a bad miss on either one or both banks. So given the circumspect points dizzy, old vacuum advance ...
* New MSD pro-billet "ready-to-run" dizzy. Originally tried a 440 source ready-to-run but, since this swap was from an Imperial with air-con, the side-mounted ignition housing completely interfered with the air-con bracket to the intake, and the diameter was just too big to get it to seat correctly. Found an MSD small-diameter locally and broke out the calipers to compare to the old one. 2/10's difference. Got it and it seated fine, although is slightly bigger and still a tight fit. I have a feeling the Mallory is smaller but this MSD was available and looked well built.
* MSD street-fire 8mm cut-to-fit wires (most god-awful things. what a hassle. I'll save that for another post. Probably just inexperience, but I've replaced lots of wire sets with Magnecor and never had these kinds of issues)
* traced the bad miss to a badly corroded plug wire and badly fouled plug on cyl #5. mystery solved
* We noted that the old coil had a dent and appeared to be leaking oil from the bottom. Local supplier didn't have an MSD Blaster II coil, so we replaced it with a stock-spec coil that requires ballast resistor (white jobby on the firewall)
* Intense debate as to whether or not the 750 is too much carb for the stock HP 440 @ 10.2. I think it's fine ... but the stock Carter AFB is rated at 625. Plan for early next year is to do intake manifold, headers, and maybe a cam.
Our issue now is that we've got a no-start condition. Being amateurs with new plugs, plug wires, and a new distributor, we ignored the fact that the motor ran and all directions to index the old cap and rotor to the block and just stripped everything down. haha! n00bs!
Determined to do it from scratch, we pulled the old plugs, cranked the motor around to TDC, verified the piston was up in the cylinder w/ a screwdriver and marked the rotor on the new dizzy for Cyl. #1 and wired everything up, checking it thrice after installing the new champeen plugs gapped at .035.
We bumped the timing up to make sure we had spark to kick-start it.
1st start attempt: cranking speed on the starter only slowed to near zero and backfired out the tailpipe and the carb, too. time to flip the wires 180 degrees. did that.
2nd thru 5th attempts: car tries to starts and runs for about a second, but dies with a carb backfire and a fireball as high as the hood. Assumption: wayyy too much advance. continually retard timing.
5th-thru 10th attempts: no more fireballs. car runs for 2~5 seconds at a rough lope and dies. lots of flooding and manually setting the choke. re-check the wires and firing order. all good.
Still the car won't fire-up and run for more than a couple seconds before it dies. No more backfire through the carb, but we just can't keep it running. Progressively retarding the timing but now we're afraid it's backed off too much.
More background info: the timing chain, while probably old and stretched a bit can't be that far off, as the car ran after purchase (50mi drive), and ran with the new carb, albeit not perfectly, still had plenny of get up and go (we discovered the secondaries on the old carb weren't opening up and the throttle cable linkage needed adjusted). Very certain we found TDC and had the rotor 'n cap marked correctly for #1, after rotating it 180 degrees and getting almost starts. We've checked the firing order and wires about 10 times - all good there. Vacuum advance is still disconnected and plugged off on the carb. We figured it would at least idle long enough for us to set the base timing after firing up.
What are we doing wrong? Seems like there's something obvious we're missing, or we just don't know how to read the starts well enough to know what to do with the timing. WE tried to start initial timing as close to TDC on the cap as we could eyeball it, then advanced it a little to get it to start. That all resulted in carb backfires.
thanks for any help to the newbies. This is great experience for me - I want to get into an early '64/65 Barracuda and build a small block for it ... but I figure before doing that, I should at least be able to replace a dizzy and get one of these carb' contraptions to start :read2: :-D
Cutting Our Teeth!
cheers
-ike
