xafalcon

Hi

I've just put a new engine into my EB. Originally it was an EECIV injected 5.0, but I built a new engine. 1968 302 short block, comp cams 351W (for correct firing order) extreme energy flat tappet cam 212/218 480(ish) for I&E 110 lobe separation. Flat top pistons with valve reliefs. Home ported E7TE heads. I swapped the whole injection manifold, and used a TFI distributor I had in a spare engine with the gear swapped to 351W for the cast iron cam. Now I need some help tuning the engine....

It fired up nicely, and I ran the cam in, but it wouldn't idle. 4 half turns on the idle screw fixed that. But the fuel usage is much higher than the old roller cam, and I have a huge idle surge. The timing is set to 30 degrees. What do I do now? I have an auto, so have 2 TPS's. I've heard about setting voltage to 1V or something. Is this correct? Where do I measure this voltage? I assume it's the bottom TPS I rotate? Could the TFI distributor be causing the problem - it's the only electronic part of the engine that came from another engine.

The drivers side spark plugs seem richer then passengers side. I do have a reasonably large exhaust leak from that side just before the O2 sensor. Hopefully be fixing that this weekend. Would it be contributing?

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
Tris

PigDog

The TPS voltage must be below 1v otherwise the EEC thinks the throttle is slightly open and starts dumping in fuel, which makes for the terrible idle and low speed driving. You need to stick some pins thru the red and black wires on the TPS and then read the voltage with a digital multimeter, make sure they key is ON but the engine doesn't have to be running. You adjust the voltage by slackening off the screws and rotating the TPS.

That's about all I can help you with, someone else might know more about the distributer etc. I'm just wondering, why the change to a solid cam block?

__________________
EF Fairmont 5.0

"Five litres of Ford's finest cast iron!"

xafalcon

Thanks for the reply, sounds easy...

The reason why is simple - I had a flat tappet engine lying around that was a great re-builder core. I could also keep driving the 5.0 until the very last minute before the swap. As it turned out, a very wise move. I bought a crane cams valve spring/retainer/lock set from USA, but they posted it surface mail over Christams, Doh!! 8 weeks to arrive. I also wanted an engine with a larger cam, but in NZ hydraulic roller cams are really expensive. The only HR cam I have is an E303 which I was saving for a 347 with the now spare roller block a little later on. So I figured why not just run a flat tappet cam. These are the cams I'm used to using, so I knew I could pick a reasonable cruiser cam just looking at the specs. This is just my daily driver get-to-work car, so I didn't want anything over the top, just another 800RPM over the stock all-done-by-4500 cam.

Thanks again, and if anyone else has any useful input, I'm all ears.

Cheers

xafalcon

I don't have a red wire on the tps. There is a black, an orange and a green. Voltage between orange and black is 5.4V, but doesn't change when the idle screw is adjusted.

PigDog

Oops! I just checked and it's the green and black! You won't change anything with the idle speed screw. to change the TPS voltage you loosen off the screws that bolt down the actual TPS sensor and then try to turn it some and then tighten it back down.

__________________
EF Fairmont 5.0

"Five litres of Ford's finest cast iron!"

xafalcon

Hey, thanks for that. The reason I turned the idle screw back was I counted how many turns in I made when trying to get the car to idle after the new engine. So I knew I was putting the tps back to a setting that would have been approximately correct. Thanks again, I'll go check green and black.

Cheers
Tris

xafalcon

I just thought I'd post a final outcome for future readers reference. After trying for two weeks to get rid of the surge, I got it about as good as I could - not perfect by any means, but at least it wouldn't stall most of the time (still surging periodically). Then I bought another project car, so left the V8 in the garage for a month. Came back to it yesterday in preparation for a roadworthy check. This necessitated fixing the exhaust leak from the drivers side exhaust header flange. Easy fix with some manifold sealer. Started the car up and the idle was perfect. Fuel usage is now almost back to what I got with the old roller cam as well. So it would seem very important to have good exhaust seals on EFI engines.

Cheers
Tris