3.0L engine swap

[dn010]

I'm sure you can guess what the next area of the car I'd suggest you look at would be.

If it is ending up in the filter and the bowl then the tank has got to be full of stuff too. I don't recall you letting the car sit for extended periods, so maybe you were lucky enough to get a wonderful dose of gas with crap in it from a station.

[Farrar]

Yes, it definitely looks like I got a tank of bad fuel at some point. At first I thought maybe the brown stuff was rust which had broken free from the original steel fuel lines, which were unused and left open to the air for several years. But there's so much of it that I doubt it could have come from those lines. It definitely looks like a sediment of some kind.

fuel sediment.jpg

[Lwanmtr]

that looks yummy....lol

[Farrar]

that looks yummy....lol

I'm sure it's great on French toast. Try some and let me know what you think. :P

[Lwanmtr]

That looks more like something you put on seafood...and i dont eat seafood...perhaps one of the others could give it go...hehe

[Farrar]

I'd rather have blackened catfish than blackened spark plugs.

BTW, credit where credit is due: the reason I checked the power valve is because Bill called me and said "I had a thought. Didn't you say your spark plugs were turning black?" It was his eureka moment. He explained to me how the power valve works and what would happen if the vacuum diaphragm had failed. That explained the symptoms. I am pretty confident that the new power valve will solve the problem. (But, as already pointed out by a couple of people here, I might as well just rebuild the carburetor while I'm at it.)

Another thought that Bill had explains why there was so much rust: when he was driving #2613 in D.C., the fuel filter clogged, so he grabbed a fuel filter off of an old truck. The donor truck has a steel fuel tank.

New power valve arrived in the mail yesterday. The rest of the rebuild kit should arrive today. After everything is back together, I plan to finish re-charging the a/c this weekend. (That's right - air conditioning in November. Welcome to south Florida.) Monday is the anniversary of when I bought and drove the car home in 2007. I'd like to be able to drive the car that day as a kind of celebration, even if it's only driven to work and back.

Side note: I'd like to add a dashpot/solenoid to this carburetor so that I can have a constant engine speed while running the air conditioning. If anyone familiar with these units could find me a part number to search for, I'd be grateful.

[Ron]

Side note: I'd like to add a dashpot/solenoid to this carburetor so that I can have a constant engine speed while running the air conditioning. If anyone familiar with these units could find me a part number to search for, I'd be grateful.

A dashpot will only dampen idle speed drop, so you need a solenoid. The mounting holes-brackets vary.
The correct bracket can be hard to find....

Post your carb number (usually 3 to 4 letters/numbers starting with a "C", a dash, then 1 to 4 letters).

[Farrar]

Post your carb number (usually 3 to 4 letters/numbers starting with a "C", a dash, then 1 to 4 letters).

I couldn't find any such marking on the carburetor. On the bottom, there's a giant "8" on one corner and "KT" on the other corner. The only other identifying marks are "Motorcraft" and "1.08," which we already knew...

Bill says it's a 2100, but it looks to me like it has some features of the 2150. Not sure if that is helpful.

Anyway, it's rebuilt and on the car now. Going to take a water/snack/aircon break and then test it.

[opethmike]

Aaaaand?

[Farrar]

Aaaaand?

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.