Everyone has that moment when they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. In the last month I've successfully illustrated that the light is at my end, and it's attached to the front end of a moving car. Since my last post I've put around 50 miles on the Mustang and it has proven as road-worthy with its limited tuning as it ever was with the carburetor.
With a few more days of time off work, I buttoned up the fuel injection, loomed 90% of the wiring harness, replaced my parking brake equalizer bar and got it up to snuff to pass inspection. I put copper washers under the diff bolts to prevent the slow seepage I'd seen.
I replaced the transmission pan gasket previously but after leaving it for another 3 weeks I returned to another puddle of Type F blood under the car. The leak turns out to be the rev/low band adjuster nut, a common problem in the C4. The nut has an integral rubber seal and, at 45 years old, whatever elastomer they'd used in 1967 had given up. I figured while I had the nut off I'd readjust both bands to TCI's specifications for the valve body kit that's in the C4.
Adjusting them properly requires a torque wrench capable of metering out 120 in-lbs accurately, and my massive 1/2" drive wrench wasn't going to cut it. Figuring it was no big deal to pop in somewhere and get one, I set off for the shops. I spent all day tracking down an inch-pound torque wrench. You'd think they'd be easy to find, but not at Sears, not at Home Depot, not at Northern Tool, I finally found one at Harbor Freight after burning half the day driving. With plans that evening, I had to call it a day and the bands are thus far unadjusted.
After last post's fuel debacle, I've since discovered that with an eighth of a tank of fuel, getting on it hard will starve the pump and run the engine lean, so I'll be keeping the tank full until I have put together a surge tank to cure that.
I need to relocate the temperature sensor from the rear coolant crossover to the front - the rear is 30 degrees cooler than the front and doesn't change linearly with core engine temp because there's no real coolant flow back there. I'll probably just ditch the heater elbow for the sender because the heater box isn't in the car right now anyway. The other is taken up by the bulb sender for the gauge. That's preventing me from properly setting fan hysteresis and throwing off my cold enrichments which means I'm currently driving it with the fan on all the time and with about 5% too much fuel.
The 100 amp Summit-brand one-wire alternator will keep up with the load just fine if I will get the idle set high enough. All accessories draw from the same post that the alternator feeds into, so I haven't had any issues with dim lights or poor load sensing typically associated with one-wire alternators.
The 100 amp Summit-brand one-wire alternator will keep up with the load just fine if I will get the idle set high enough. All accessories draw from the same post that the alternator feeds into, so I haven't had any issues with dim lights or poor load sensing typically associated with one-wire alternators.
The car runs really well, it needs some modification of the idle timing and fueling, it's running a bit rich around 9.5-10.5:1 at WOT, and around 11-12 at part throttle. I'll probably get it a little closer with the base map and then let the wideband lambda do the rest.
What I really need is a good timing map to maximize part throttle efficiency near cruise speed. I'm just mimicking the advance curve of the MSD mechanical distributor, which is leaving a lot of fuel economy and driveability on the table.That will involve a lot of driving and tuning, whenever I get the time.
Anyone happen to have a timing map lying around?
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