Originally Posted by
Farrar
No improvement, or maybe a slight improvement. The car still rocks at idle.
Note that "idle" in my case means three different things:
(1) idling without a/c on and in "Park" or "Neutral," about 880-900 RPM.
(2) idling without a/c on and in "Drive," about 760-800 RPM.
(3) idling with a/c on and in "Drive," about 700-720 RPM.
That is until the engine is really hot, in which case it's all of those + 50 RPM.
FWIW, the 3.0L workshop manual says idle speed should be 790 RPM.
I want to set the idle speed as low as possible without the engine dying in gear with the a/c on (had that happen - embarrassing), because otherwise when the engine is hot and I put the thing in "Park" and turn off the a/c, the engine diesels for a few seconds when I shut it off (also embarrassing).
It's easier to see the "0" on the timing scale than any of the other numbers since it's so far to the right, so I bought a fancy new timing light which has provision for spark advance, set it to 14°, and looked. Advance is at 14° at 780-800 RPM. That's probably not bad, so I'll leave it there.
(Why the ~20 variance in the numbers? Because the numbers jump around when I am trying to set idle speed.)
I'm not sure what to do now except finish charging the a/c and take the thing on a test drive. I need to put fuel in the tank, anyway, because it's down to a quarter tank. Probably it will run like it did before. But I am tired of banging my head against this wall. I will just drive the car and try not to be embarrassed by it. Par for the course with any other old car, so why not this one?
This is not unusual: Bill can tweak one thing on my car and have it running fine, and all I have to do is drive it for a while and stuff starts going wrong with it. When it comes to all things automotive, if Bill is King Midas, I am the poop emoji.