I think things are finally coming together. There is still the gas tank to install, but I am having too much fun driving it to take it off the road for a week or so, which is how long I expect it will take to get the new plumbing, fittings, wiring, etc installed. The car ran pretty well, in spite of its problems. The problems only became critical when it got cold. So the cold weather, and the continued very cool Spring forced my attention to solving the problems that were evident. I am really glad I kept to it, and found the problem. I wonder if a good repair shop would have diagnosed and found the problem right off. Because of my problems being created in the first place by a repair shop, I was reluctant to go that route, chosing instead to pull much of my remaining hair out as I plugged through the process of brainstorming this thing.

Anyway, The car still does not start up on the first crank, but it always starts on the second crank, and I am gaining confidence in it daily. It runs much better, and reminds me of the car I fell in love with years ago. Here is a brief rundown on the fixes.

Biggest problem was ignition. All along the way. The main wiring was not up to speed, the ignition switch was intermittant, and the coil was bad.

1. I bypassed the ignition switch with a relay-fed fuse box under the hood that is hot when a toggle is thrown.

2. I upgraded all the wire sizes for the B+ both switched and unswitched with new wire. I went bigger and better everywhere.

3. I finally changed the coil when it seemed as if the problem was still ignition related. This was determined by the fact that starting was so unreliable. I could always smell gas, and it would not start reliably no matter how I tuned the start coefficients. Once the coil was changed, the nature of the car changed dramatically. All the fuel map was now rich, even though I had carefully tuned the map with the old coil to READ 14.8:1 with the wide band gauge. Apparently raw fuel resulting from misfires was giving the AF ratio gauge a faux reading, tricking it into thinking the mixture was lean, so I was making it too rich to get it to read right.

4. I tightened up all the grounds. These seemed fine, but you never know. The main ground cable from the battery, which is in the trunk has a large 100 AMP fuse in the line what is held in a fuse holder that was not completely tight. I may replace that with a better set-up. I simply cranked down on the bolts a little more. I could also improve it by soldering the fixture together and not count on the mechanical connection to carry the load.

It seems as if good tuning is now possible, and I am working on that as time and energy permit. The car feels much better now than it has felt thus far with EFI. I need to round up a buddy to drive it for me while I fiddle with the laptop. The starting needs to be tuned better, but I am getting to where I don;t worry quite so much about getting stranded. I guess I should feel lucky that this coil did not die completely somewhere away from home. But if it had, at least I would have known what the problem was earlier on. The bad coil did lead me to improve everything in the system looking for the problem.

I am still open to the possibility that the MSD box might have a temp sensative breakdown of some kind.

The bottom line is ALL the so-called-problems with the EFI were traced back to things that had NOTHING to do with the EFI itself. The problems were all in basic, fundamental, old fashioned, low tech stuff. The thing is, and this is important to all you guys out there with carbureted cars as well, the car ran fine with most of this bad stuff when it was carbureted. The interelated nature of the different systems was not as critical with a carb. That does NOT mean it would not have run better with the carb if I had fixed the wiring, the ignition switch, and the grounds. Its just that as long as the car does not break down and leave us stranded, many of us are happy to simply make do,and carry on with sub-standard wiring in the car. It if runs, then all is assumed to be fine. But just because it runs, does not mean it is as good as it can be.

I have been saying for years, and this is the real irony here, fix your wiring if you want to improve your car. All the fancy hardware, and high tech upgrades are pretty much wasted it the electrons don't flow as well as possible. I will come down even harder on this in the future.

Thanks for all your help so far. I am on the road to recovery for sure, thanks in large part to the support this group of great guys have given me.

Sam

_________________

I know the feeling Sam - if you want to expose wiring inadequacies, install efi and they will become apparent reeeeeal quick.

Sam, this is wishful thinking at best. Even the local shop that I really trust is rarely up to a task such as you have performed. This is truly a matter of a car that needed some TLC!

It's this kind of care that separates the ones that go to the shows from the ones that go to the crusher.

Don't sell yourself short. By now, you might be the best example of "a good repair shop" within 100 miles.

_________________
1980 Aspen 225 super six

A good repair shop is as common as a hemi cuda around here. I found some guys in Albany but they all do big block stuff so they were only so-so. I feel your pain Sam, I fought with wiring for a long time before I installed the painless kit. All in all, it's gotta feel good now.

I'm aware of Tulip's (1987 carb 2.2 caravan) electrical getting old and yesterday I had a scare of the day that it suddenly had no starter operation, (no click or whir). I had to get my boss to play wth key while I fiddle with wirings and turned out it was the splice my mechanic installed at my request long ago because of the nippondenso starter's lugs are in different location that original harness can't reach when I changed dying bosch starter in 2004.

So I'm working on redoing this section correctly with no splice. All I need is time to find the materials I need to do this.

When megasquirt comes together someday, I'll run all the new wirings along the old wirings instead of reusing the turbo 89 harness and tap directly to the battery for power & ground as well with new wirings.

QUESTION:

battery post terminals, which one is GOOD to have? Crimp wire type (it is all lead) or bolt on to secure wires to it?

Cheers, Wizard

Those battery cable terminals with a two-bolt strap are for temporary "get-by" repair use only. They're not reliable in the long run. See this post for one good option. Another good option is the brass compression-fitting terminals. And the crimp type, as long as they're crimped correctly, are quite good, too. So are the solder type. There are enough good options that there's no need to mess with bad ones.

_________________
一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I personally like brass terminals (either standard crimp/clamp type or marine).

But I have lugs on the cables and bolt them to the terminals (use the bolts of the crimp type, but not the crimp)

_________________
Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

How can I tell a solder type terminals looks like?

I thought soldered lugs/terminals are no good in vechicles due to vibration issues?

Oh, never mind, I can solder or crimp same terminals, better question:

Plated copper, or brass or lead for battery terminals and other lugs?

Cheers, Wizard

Sam, you have a fuse on your ground cable?

I am so glad you keep us abreast of all of your adventures. You are my hero. (well, you did use Accell instead of MS but I will forgive you )

_________________
Chris'
Autobody
Restoration
Service

Yeah , I know, I am paranoid. It is redundant. I don't know if this is true or not, but I figured if the fuse on the + side doesn;t blow, then the ground will. Is this at all correct? Will a fuse blow in a ground wire if there is a short on the + side? There are some very basic electrical fundamentals that I am pretty shakey on. I try to imagine electricity and its flow in a purely mechanical way, and I am pretty sure this is not an accurate concept. But it is about the best I can do with my current limitations.
Thanks. But, it takes one to know one (a hero). Sometimes I feel my ramblings are just self indulgent. The only way they are helpful is to share the silly mistakes, lack of knowledge with seemingly dumb questions, and failures as well as the successes too. I'll let you know how the fuel tank thing goes in a week or two. Honestly, if it weren't for this group of guys and their generosity, I would most likely still have my Corvette, and would have sold this car. I am really glad I did not.

Sam

_________________

Dart 270 came up for a visit as an adjunct to a business trip, and we had the good fortune of good weather, and time to go cruisin' and tunin'. His talent and knowledge was exactly what the doc ordered. He tuned out almost 30% of the fuel in the base fuel map cells across the board by watching the AF gauge, and typing away on the laptop the entire time we were driving around. He can see pretty well in the dark, and doesn;t get car sick reading while riding in a car. He is THE MAN. I just could not have done this by myself. I hope to return the favor to him someday soon.

I can't thank him enough. The car is runnning much better now. It will pull through 3rd 4th and 5th gear with little or no preignition, but the engine still lights up the detonation gauge in 1st and second gear. I put Charlie's lawn mower spark plugs in early this morning, but left the car at home with rain in the forcast. I will try the car again later to see if this helped with the detonation.

Now it is time to retune the trim tables to accomodate the new base map figures.

I am looking now at a bigger inter cooler. When the new gas tank goes in, the surge tank will go, and that will leave space for a better configuration for the inter cooler and tubing. I will keep you posted. Does anyone know how to size an intercooler? It seems to involve alot of high math which is right over my head. Any seat-of-the-pants, rule-of-thumb, easy-to-calculate strategies for this?

I should say, Lou's '68 Dart, which he drove up from Blacksburg is really cool. It feel solid as a rock, drives really well, and gets 25 MPG on the highway, and not much worse in the suburbs. Thanks again Lou.


Sam

_________________

Yes, the fuse will blow in the ground cable if the current limit of the fuse is exceeded.

Remember that all the power (electrons) are actually flowing OUT of the negative battery terminal, through the car, then back to the positive terminal. Seems backwards, but that's how it works. So a fuse on the ground side works.

The only problem is of course that no one circuit (save possibly a short from the positive battery cable to the body of the car) could draw enough current to cause the 100 amp to blow. But that's what all the other fuses are for!

-Mac

Sam,

Glad the car is coming together, and it is getting much more refined! Glad to help out with the tuning too.

Had a nice trip cruizin' the '68, and got back home last night around 11 pm. Also met Chris E up in Hagerstown and picked up a core 170. What a great guy! We jawed for about 2hrs before I headed out.

I can't wait to hear the results of the plug swap...

Lou

_________________
Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

The fuse on the ground cable is for the purpose of protecting against a short in the positive battery cable. Since the battery is in the trunk, the postive cable runs all the way through the car. It seems as if a short there is at least a possiblity, if the cable got pinched, or the insulation frayed for some reason. I guess I could fuse the positive cable, but it seemed easier to put a fuse on the ground cable. Thanks for letting me know my logic was not flawed there. It is just pure luck in this case.

Sam

_________________