DocWok

Yep, Lots and lots of members valuable picture records and resources that took time and effort to post simply deleted and lost forever at the click of a button. I think the forum has lost its mojo.

Hey Mal, I had a cyclic vibration on an earlier mustang I owned. Like you I tried many things, but no luck. One day just for the hell of it I disconnected the cooling fan and took it for a test drive. It ran smooth as silk, so I replaced the fan and for me, problem solved.

Hmmm, looks remarkably similar to the picture Fitzy1980 posted a couple of days ago on the Mustang Owners Club of Australia forum of his engine.

The squirt of brake fluid shooting up in your master cylinder is normal, it is the front brake piston displacing fluid until fully travels past the brake fluid inlet port from the reservoir, it is only then when the piston has passed the inlet port that the trapped fluid begins the apply the brakes.

Don't worry, your MSD ignition box should still be fine. If you are using the original ignition wire to supply power to your ignition box, then that may be your problem. As mention above, you need to do either of the 2 options suggested to supply a full 12 volts to your ignition box. You can by-pass the resistance wire from your ignition switch up the the junction block that goes through your firewall. ( check the Ford wiring diagram - I think it is the Pink wire). Or install a relay to supply the 12 volts to your ignition box using the the Red-Green wire that used to go to your (+) coil as the activator for the relay, if you do this no need to by-pass the resistance wire, do which ever may be easier for you. If you don't feel confident to do it yourself, maybe you could try and fine someone who is experienced to assist you.

Are you using a full 12 volt supply to your MSD? If you are still using the original ignition wire it is a resistance wire and will not give you a full 12 volts, this can cause the symptoms you describe as well. Either run a new feed wire from your ignition switch, or use the original ignition wire as the activating trigger for a relay and run your ignition from that.

Hey Buckeye, What happened to all your photo's, unable to see them? They were a good reference resource.

Hey Bob and Sue, Glad to hear you solved your problem and in this case connecting to manifold vacuum worked out for you !

Nope, your wrong Barnett, that exactly how it meant to and does operate.

Ummm....isn't that exactly the proper way vacuum advance is supposed to operate? Extra timing in addition to the initial or mechanical advance. As soon as you open the throttle "even moderately quickly" the vacuum drops away and the extra timing from the vacuum advance drops away......just like it's supposed to. No need for an additional timing retard device, the vacuum advance canister serves the same purpose for free.

Ummm...no real need for the added cost / complexity of a start retard system. If your engine combination requires the extra timing at idle to idle acceptably a properly set up vacuum advance connected to direct manifold vacuum will do the same thing for free i.e. no extra added advance whilst cranking only adding advance once the engine has started. If you have the original type ford vacuum advance canister with the screw off vacuum inlet they are easily adjustable via the spring (different rate springs will alter the opening rate), spacer (can make your own spacer to limit total vacuum advance) and also shims for fine tuning the spring rate and limiting total vacuum advance as well. If it is the later model vacuum canister with the non removable inlet they can also be adjusted via a small allen key inserted through the vacuum inlet tube, also a couple of aftermarket manufactures offer adjustable vacuum canisters and mechanical advance springs kits. It takes a bit of effort to do but there's lots of information out there on the internet on how to correctly set up a vacuum advance system for a street driven performance engine if your engine requires the extra timing to idle acceptably and you find that adding extra initial advance causes hard starting / cranking issues.

The OP did not ask about installing a 289.

Could someone advise me where l could buy a 2 5/8" exhaust kit? l've never seen one advertised anywhere for a mustang.

"I now have to qualify some of my statements by first saying that I am NOT picking on your car, because some overly sensitive person sniveled the other day thinking I was picking on someones car even though I was clearly referring to their cam only and NOT their car." Probably not a good idea to imply one of our members as "overly sensitive" and a sniveler.

I have the 16:1 box in mine, with manual link and stock idler arm and approx 3 degree of castor. It returns to centre, the steering feel is good. It doesn't leak. I'm happy with it.

Hi demon69, Rod Hadfield up at 'Hot Rod Museum' in Chewton near Castlemaine VIC. sells Stubtech 2" drop axles to suit the Mustang. They are a bit pricey but good quality. Best of both worlds, lowered suspension and retain your full spring travel.

Never mentioned anywhere in the post to adjust the mixtures when the motor is cold. 99.999% of the people would know to adjust when the engine is at operating temperature.

I may be able to assist with one of your issues, the one with popping noise from exhaust during cold start up then goes away when warm. I had the same issue a couple of weeks ago, turned out the idle mixture was too rich, guess the extra fuel was still occasionally burning out through the exhaust when the engine was cold, but after the engine warmed up it disappeared. Anyway it turned out to be a simple fix, adjusted the idle mixtures as lean as they could go before the rpm's started to drop and that solved the problem, no more popping out the exhaust on cold starts.

RPM's way of adding extra security is good, you can see he has installed a Ny-Lok nut on it. If you want the rubber mount to work as it should and absorb vibrations then just leave the locking nut with a bit of clearance between it and the mount. That way the rubber mount can still stretch to a degree but the bolt will then limit how far it can go when you 'hammer' it !

That's nice work Ridge, looks great, thumbs up from me ! As far as the toilet goes, once you use it and it has some explosive gases in it......

Your TDC points for each cylinder are 90 degrees apart from each other. If you don't have a fully indexed harmonic balancer you can either buy a timing tape and stick around your balancer which will give you the 90 degree separation points. Or you can get a strip of paper place it on your balancer starting at the TDC mark and wrap it around the balancer till it comes back to the TDC point and mark or cut it off there. Remove the paper strip, divide and mark its length into 4 equal segments. Return the paper strip back to the balancer and transfer your 4 marks onto the balancer with a thin white marker pen, these will be your TDC marks for each piston as you follow your firing order. As you now have 4 marks starting at no.1 TDC separated from each other by 90 degrees it will take 2 revolutions of your balancer to cover the 8 TDC positions for each piston in your firing order. Hope this helps.

Blah, blah, blah...... I still think 'prayers 1' stripes look great.

Who cares? They look great!

Here's a trustworthy article on why you should not "remove the dist vacuum advance hose and plug it forever or until further notice." TIMING AND VACUUM ADVANCE 101 The most important concept to understand is that lean mixtures, such as at idle and steady highway cruise, take longer to burn than rich mixtures; idle in particular, as idle mixture is affected by exhaust gas dilution. This requires that lean mixtures have "the fire lit" earlier in the compression cycle (spark timing advanced), allowing more burn time so that peak cylinder pressure is reached just after TDC for peak efficiency and reduced exhaust gas temperature (wasted combustion energy). Rich mixtures, on the other hand, burn faster than lean mixtures, so they need to have "the fire lit" later in the compression cycle (spark timing retarded slightly) so maximum cylinder pressure is still achieved at the same point after TDC as with the lean mixture, for maximum efficiency. The centrifugal advance system in a distributor advances spark timing purely as a function of engine rpm (irrespective of engine load or operating conditions), with the amount of advance and the rate at which it comes in determined by the weights and springs on top of the autocam mechanism. The amount of advance added by the distributor, combined with initial static timing, is "total timing" (i.e., the 34-36 degrees at high rpm that most SBC's like). Vacuum advance has absolutely nothing to do with total timing or performance, as when the throttle is opened, manifold vacuum drops essentially to zero, and the vacuum advance drops out entirely; it has no part in the "total timing" equation. At idle, the engine needs additional spark advance in order to fire that lean, diluted mixture earlier in order to develop maximum cylinder pressure at the proper point, so the vacuum advance can (connected to manifold vacuum, not "ported" vacuum - more on that aberration later) is activated by the high manifold vacuum, and adds about 15 degrees of spark advance, on top of the initial static timing setting (i.e., if your static timing is at 10 degrees, at idle it's actually around 25 degrees with the vacuum advance connected). The same thing occurs at steady-state highway cruise; the mixture is lean, takes longer to burn, the load on the engine is low, the manifold vacuum is high, so the vacuum advance is again deployed, and if you had a timing light set up so you could see the balancer as you were going down the highway, you'd see about 50 degrees advance (10 degrees initial, 20-25 degrees from the centrifugal advance, and 15 degrees from the vacuum advance) at steady-state cruise (it only takes about 40 horsepower to cruise at 50mph). When you accelerate, the mixture is instantly enriched (by the accelerator pump, power valve, etc.), burns faster, doesn't need the additional spark advance, and when the throttle plates open, manifold vacuum drops, and the vacuum advance can returns to zero, retarding the spark timing back to what is provided by the initial static timing plus the centrifugal advance provided by the distributor at that engine rpm; the vacuum advance doesn't come back into play until you back off the gas and manifold vacuum increases again as you return to steady-state cruise, when the mixture again becomes lean. The key difference is that centrifugal advance (in the distributor autocam via weights and springs) is purely rpm-sensitive; nothing changes it except changes in rpm. Vacuum advance, on the other hand, responds to engine load and rapidly-changing operating conditions, providing the correct degree of spark advance at any point in time based on engine load, to deal with both lean and rich mixture conditions. By today's terms, this was a relatively crude mechanical system, but it did a good job of optimizing engine efficiency, throttle response, fuel economy, and idle cooling, with absolutely ZERO effect on wide-open throttle performance, as vacuum advance is inoperative under wide-open throttle conditions. In modern cars with computerized engine controllers, all those sensors and the controller change both mixture and spark timing 50 to 100 times per second, and we don't even HAVE a distributor any more - it's all electronic. Now, to the widely-misunderstood manifold-vs.-ported vacuum aberration. After 30-40 years of controlling vacuum advance with full manifold vacuum, along came emissions requirements, years before catalytic converter technology had been developed, and all manner of crude band-aid systems were developed to try and reduce hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen in the exhaust stream. One of these band-aids was "ported spark", which moved the vacuum pickup orifice in the carburetor venturi from below the throttle plate (where it was exposed to full manifold vacuum at idle) to above the throttle plate, where it saw no manifold vacuum at all at idle. This meant the vacuum advance was inoperative at idle (retarding spark timing from its optimum value), and these applications also had VERY low initial static timing (usually 4 degrees or less, and some actually were set at 2 degrees AFTER TDC). This was done in order to increase exhaust gas temperature (due to "lighting the fire late") to improve the effectiveness of the "afterburning" of hydrocarbons by the air injected into the exhaust manifolds by the A.I.R. system; as a result, these engines ran like crap, and an enormous amount of wasted heat energy was transferred through the exhaust port walls into the coolant, causing them to run hot at idle - cylinder pressure fell off, engine temperatures went up, combustion efficiency went down the drain, and fuel economy went down with it. If you look at the centrifugal advance calibrations for these "ported spark, late-timed" engines, you'll see that instead of having 20 degrees of advance, they had up to 34 degrees of advance in the distributor, in order to get back to the 34-36 degrees "total timing" at high rpm wide-open throttle to get some of the performance back. The vacuum advance still worked at steady-state highway cruise (lean mixture = low emissions), but it was inoperative at idle, which caused all manner of problems - "ported vacuum" was strictly an early, pre-converter crude emissions strategy, and nothing more. What about the Harry high-school non-vacuum advance polished billet "whizbang" distributors you see in the Summit and Jeg's catalogs? They're JUNK on a street-driven car, but some people keep buying them because they're "race car" parts, so they must be "good for my car" - they're NOT. "Race cars" run at wide-open throttle, rich mixture, full load, and high rpm all the time, so they don't need a system (vacuum advance) to deal with the full range of driving conditions encountered in street operation. Anyone driving a street-driven car without manifold-connected vacuum advance is sacrificing idle cooling, throttle response, engine efficiency, and fuel economy, probably because they don't understand what vacuum advance is, how it works, and what it's for - there are lots of long-time experienced "mechanics" who don't understand the principles and operation of vacuum advance either, so they're not alone. Vacuum advance calibrations are different between stock engines and modified engines, especially if you have a lot of cam and have relatively low manifold vacuum at idle. Most stock vacuum advance cans aren’t fully-deployed until they see about 15†Hg. Manifold vacuum, so those cans don’t work very well on a modified engine; with less than 15†Hg. at a rough idle, the stock can will “dither†in and out in response to the rapidly-changing manifold vacuum, constantly varying the amount of vacuum advance, which creates an unstable idle. Modified engines with more cam that generate less than 15†Hg. of vacuum at idle need a vacuum advance can that’s fully-deployed at least 1â€, preferably 2†of vacuum less than idle vacuum level so idle advance is solid and stable; the Echlin #VC-1810 advance can (about $10 at NAPA) provides the same amount of advance as the stock can (15 degrees), but is fully-deployed at only 8†of vacuum, so there is no variation in idle timing even with a stout cam. For peak engine performance, driveability, idle cooling and efficiency in a street-driven car, you need vacuum advance, connected to full manifold vacuum. Absolutely. Positively. Don't ask Summit or Jeg's about it – they don’t understand it, they're on commission, and they want to sell "race car" parts.

As others have mentioned your fan is too small for the shroud you are using. In your first post you mentioned your engine tended to overheat at idle, I know others will disagree but it's a fact that your motor will run cooler at idle if the vacuum advance is connected to a full vacuum advance port. Limit your total vacuum advance to 6 or 8 degrees and try it for yourself first regardless of others who say it won't work. For your combination it may improve things, if not you can always drop back to ported advance.