patioman

Hello All Again,
I am restoring a 1949 Ford F1 pickup. I have dropped a 302CI & AOD transmission
from a 1985 Lincoln Continental into it.
Engine Specs Are As Follows:
Block has been cooked and cylinders bored 0.040 over at local machine shop.
Stock heads refurbished at local machine shop.
New Thumpr 0.531 lift Comp Cam
New hydraulic roller lifters.
New 120lb valve springs.
New Funnelweb 7-1\2" rise intake.
New HEI Distributor.
New Holley 600cfm at factory preset settings.
New 1-7/8" long tube headers.
New 8.5mm plug wires.
New Autolite 26 sparkplugs.
For now the timing is set to ear and no changes to carburetor have been made.
I have had the engine running for about a year now. The truck has not seen the road yet.
I have started it occasionally and driven around the 1 acre tract I have my shop on.
Up until 2 weeks ago the motor has run and sounded fine. Then it started backfiring on
one cylinder but now sounds like 2 cylinders are backfiring. I had been using 87 octane gasoline
but switched to 91 octane a couple of weeks ago to see if there would be any difference.
I have since switched back to 87.
I have pulled the plugs and they are black and sooty. I replaced the plug wire on that
cylinder but no change. I have put a new plug in the backfiring cylinder.
Seems to help for a few minutes then starts to backfire again. One item that may be of
importance is I have been running on battery power alone and recharge it occasionally.
Have not completed the wiring for the charging system yet. I have run the engine with the
charger connected to the battery and turned on with no difference.
Here are my questions...I'll try to eliminate the stupid ones.
1. Could I have possibly damaged the coil from using battery power alone?
2. Since my plugs are black and sooty it is obvious that my fuel/air mixture is too
rich. Could I have a valve sticking due to carbon build up?
3. Also it is apparent that I need to do a tune up. I have purchased a vacumn tester gauge
to get my carburetor zeroed in and I plan on getting my fuel pump set to 5-7 lbs.
Not sure where it is at now. I have an inline oil filled pressure gauge that used to register
2.5lbs but sits at zero now.
Also plan on setting the timing to about 13 deg BTC, Comp Cam's recommended starting point.
I am going to change out the fuel filter as well and retorque the heads and intake in case of
a leak.
Any suggestions as to what else I can do......thanks.

patioman

Well....pretty quiet here. I set the fuel pump pressure at 6lbs, cleaned & re-gapped all the plugs, wired my alternator so it is charging the battery now & swapped plug wires on the cylinder that is missing. It also seems that the motor is running worse over all. I pulled the push rods on all cylinders, that checked out OK and tapped on all the valve stems with a hammer, they all sound solid. My only recourse is to swap out my distributor with another. The one I have was installed new and the truck hasn't been on the street yet.
Just started once in a while.
What's the odds I have a bad coil?


Any ideas?
Thanks...

patioman

Well...looks like I had to do this all by myself....pretty quiet here. I installed a new set of NGK Iridium plugs at $7.00 a plug. Fixed my problem. Looks like I got a bad batch of Autolite plugs or I just need something a little better because of my cam. Thanks all for reading anyway.

rtg143

Thanks for letting us know the outcome. Sorry we didn't help.

George1861

Bad plugs would have been down low on my list. I've heard it takes a lot of juice to fire platinum plugs, could iridium be simular? Maybe some other type plug with less resistance if you have any more problems.