Do yourself this favor- The exhaust ports on the 302 heads of that era were horrible. Even if you use the stock manifolds and single exhaust, the engine will run better if you port match the heads to the manifolds. It's not as hard as it sounds.

 

mine is "suposed to be the wifes car too, but i Know if im doing the work I'm gunna drive the ell out her. I kina like the idea of unhooking a cyl or 2 for the wife, less she can prove she can roll w/the big dogs!

 

I know what you mean. I get the itch to floor it, no doubt. A little history on the car....
I bought it about 3 months ago from a nice guy in sarasota. The guy literally drives this thing around his neighborhood. Long story short, I bought it and drove 12 miles, overheated the hell out the engine. Turns out the guy radiator/heater core is from 1991. He rebuilt the engine around 2003. He problably put 5k on the car since then. I actually thought it had been rebuilt sooner than that, But since the guy never used it, he didnt change the coolant, brake fluid, oil as it sat in the garage. I got on the interstate and was doing 55 when the engine died. Smoke, knocking, the works. I opened the petcock and rusted sand poured out this thing like you wouldnt believe. long story short, got towed, and the saga started. Pulled the heads, had them rebuilt. Pulled the rod bearings, had them replaced. rebuilt the carb, replaced the heater core. replaced the radiator. The timing cover was so badly eroded it had to be replaced. New coil, wires, plugs, cap rotor, valve covers, air cleaner, wire harness. Speaker wires. The water pump was replaced.Master cylinder was rotted inside, gone. Repaired the basket ball size holes under the floor pan. POR15 the interior of the car, and the engine bay.Dyno matted the car fro the firewall to the tail lights. The turn lamps were melting from the bulbs so I went with led all the way around. and replaced the lens. Have a little grimlin that keeps eating up my oil pressure sender and gauge...Not sure about this one. Same grimlin was shorting across a turning lamp bulb causing a nice lightshow that took all day to track down. Put it all together and it knocked like a diesel and was spitting out freeze plugs like it was going out of style. Mind you still no tag on the car , so its hasnt gone anywhere. The freeze plug on the head fell out. It was the one on the fire wall side. So pulled the head and found damaged pistons. Tore the motor down all the way. The wrist pins on 4 of the cylinders were partially seized. The bores were scored beyond repair. Had no choice but by a reman engine. Put it all together, and have the last hurdle with the lean condition. I need a break and am desperate to put this behind me. I will be happy if it makes it around the block without overheating. Oh by the way I knocked the freeze plugs out on the block. It looked like it was under the sea for years.

 

Test your vac. adv. on the dist. Pop the dist. cap off and look for the arm that extends from the vac. adv. and hooks to the dist. advance plate. Remove the vac. line from the carb. and suck on it as hard as you can, you should see the arm pull into the vac. adv., if not the diaphragm is shot therefore not advancing the timing at increased RPM's as it should and also causing a vac. leak to boot. You can get a replacement vac. adv. at the parts store or from one of the catalogs. Look at the dist. part # stamped on the backside of the dist. upper portion usually as there are different ones in the same year and you match that # to the replacement part.

Half the people I mention this to find there's is bad, kind of overlooked and after 40 yrs. the diaphragms got to be shot if original. Mine was bad, improved the running and MPG.
Jon

 

I forgot to note, the distributor had bearing issues. It had a horizontal wobble to it. I purchased a stock distributor and installed pertronix into it. I am leaving in a few hours to germany. Will be back in 2 weeks. I bought the spray. So testing all suggestions mentioned before and any new ones that may come up. Will definatly keep all up to date.

 

Hey guys,
I just got back and finally got going with this. Installed the radiator and electric fan, the engine runs at a steady 185 and isnt pushing coolant out the cap. And for the lean condition, as weird as it sound, it was the pcv. I ran it just like in the book. From the carb spacer to the valve cover. When i took the air cleaner off and set up everything up all was good with the idle but revving was lean. I pinched the breather hose and had to redo it all. Now engine runs a little on the rich side and doesnt stumble. I guess i will run the hose to the bottom of the air cleaner and plug up the carb spacer. I did spray the carb cleaner around the valve covers, manifold, and carb base. The engine speed never changed. Thanks for the help guys.

 

Which is all the time if you have them.

 

sorry to hear about your string of bad luck on the car. Glad you got it sorted out though. Hope you enjoy the car and post up a pic if you have one. I've been trying to talk my wife into us getting another old mustang so I can fix it up for her. Haven't got her sold on the idea yet but plan to keep dropping hints and hopefully it will happen.

 

don't attach the pcv to the aircleaner, it's not meant like that. leave it where it is. How rich are we talking now (cruise, partial accelleration and WOT) ?
how do the plugs look like now?

 

Sorry for the delay,
I cant really tell how rich it is. All i know is this. With the uego sensor I have, a 2.5 dcv is the same as 1 lambda which is a 14 to 1 ratio. The flipping carb is finiky. every time i stick a sensor on it gives me different readings. What I mean is todays reading would be different than tommorrows readings.
Either way with the pcv hooked to the spacer i get at idle 2.6 which is a tad in the rich region. as I rev the motor it decreases to 1.5v. Which is a dangerous situation. Thats at about 2k rpm. As i punch the throttle it goes to .5v which translates to all air no fuel . And the engine stumble and stalls. When I removed the pcv and plugged the port, I had to re adjust the idle mixture to maybe 2.5-3 turns out. Before I had them backed almost completly out to achieve a 2.6v idle. The engine idles at 2.65 and when I stomp the gas leans out to 2.4v ish throughout the band. I mounted the hose to the cleaner, and it doesnt seem to work well. The fumes are coming out the breather. FWIW the vacuum at idle is 19-20 inches of mercury without the pcv installed. I still have no tag so I cant take it on the road just yet. The plugs are on the dark side. There hasnt been a good load imposed on the motor to see if its truly rich or lean. Its been all idle and revving. There is maybe an 2 hours on the motor at this point and 2 spins around the block.

I forgot to ask but in the manual it has a pic but instead of it saying pcv it calling it a regulator. Could it be I am using the wrong pcv?