Wednesday the float I ordered for the 2V 2100 Motorcraft carb for my
current snake engine came in but I didn't get a chance to picked it up
until Friday. While I was at it I picked up a can of radiator flush
and some Red Line "crystals". I had already flushed the radiator twice
but the water still looked a bit murky so I decided to give it one more
shot with yet another type of flush before dumping in the crystals.
I spent a good part of Saturday rebuilding the carb (off and on while
running a few errands). Everything looked pretty clean even before I
started. Probably because the engine hadn't been run much since the
last rebuild about 3 years ago. I was somewhat surprised that the
replacement float was made of brass and even more surprised to find that
the float in the carburetor was also brass. I had expected that at
least the old float would be of a composite material. Since the old
float didn't seem to have any leaks, I suspect it's okay. Oh well, I
now have a spare. Assembly was fairly straight forward though it did
take me a while to figure out how to get the automatic choke linkage
right. The pictures I had on hand and the drawings that came with the
rebuild kit weren't quite adequate. In both cases the pictures were for
different choke setups. Finally, by trying every variation that made
sense, I was able to get things right. I didn't bother rebuilding the
choke itself because it was already working fine and not much is really
needed for the stripped down use of this engine. In fact, the center
pivot Holley on the original HiPo engine didn't have a (connected)
choke. Not even manual and I never had a problem starting and driving
the car, even in sub freezing weather.
I did an eyeball adjustment of everything adjustable, reinstalled the
carb, poured an ounce or two of gas down the twin throats and tried to
start it up. The engine started right off but sputtered very weakly,
coughed a time or two and quit. I tried giving it a bit of gas but the
pedal felt very odd and did nothing. Ooops! forgot to connect the
throttle linkage. After 30 seconds or so I was ready to try again.
This time it started in earnest. I backed out of the garage so I
wouldn't asphyxiated myself on oil fumes. The idle adjustment was way
off so I had let the engine run a bit until it warmed up enough to idle
at about 300 rpm. Finally, off around the block to see if the problem
I'd rebuilt the carb for was cured. As the car got warmer I started
feeling the same intermittently cutting in-and-out, but this time it was
only occurring between about 1000-2000rpm. Acceleration was fine; idle
was fine. Then I remembered that I hadn't adjusted the idle mixture jets
yet. I had a sinking feeling this wouldn't fix the problem since it
felt so similar to the way the car had felt before. So, back home for
some tweaking of the two mixture screws. At least this time when I
screwed these jets all the way in the engine had a noticeable response.
In fact, it wouldn't run. I backed off the adjustors several turns,
then slowly turned them in again until the engine just started to
stumble; then I back off again until the idle smoothed out. Back into
to car for another test drive. The improvement was dramatic. There was
still a hint of flatness around 1500 rpm or so. A bit annoying, but
tolerable. I'll keep fiddling with it but this may be as good as it
gets. God knows how many times this carburetor had been apart before I
got it. It's probably gotten a bit warn.
I had all kinds of snake project plans for Sunday but my wife informed
me that we would be making a trip to the Central Valley next weekend so
I decided that I'd better do the brake job on the van I'd been
postponing for several months. That ended up taking most of the day and
included the inevitable numerous trips back to the auto parts store to
return incorrect parts I'd been sold. Guess I'll never lean to not buy
auto parts unless I have the old ones in hand for comparison. BTW, the
set of Helm shop manuals I bought for this car ('87 Chevrolet Astro van)
really suck.
At least I was able to do the radiator boil out while the brake job was
in progress so I got that out of the way. In spite of how awful the
radiator water looked before hand, the car seemed to run fairly cool,
even without a water pump driven fan and with the electric fan off. It
should be even better now with cleaner water and the Red Line crystals.
I didn't bother using distilled water since I'll be having the radiator
rebuilt before too much longer. Last week I dropped off my heater
radiator at Dave's Radiator Service in Santa Clara for rebuilding.
Unfortunately it needs recoring but I expected that. If Dave does a
good job on the heater I'll have him do the radiator and the gas the
tank.
Roland Dudley
cobra@hpcdcsn.cdc.hp.com
CSX2282
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