another wheely good day

Had another good day. I’ve been helping a guy with his 66 mustang lately, it a real cherry with a pedigree. Someone bought the car and started a full restoration, then they sold it, someone else dropped a ton of cash in it with a/c, MSD and a boatload of other goodies, and then decided he wanted a new F150???
My bud saw the car in the trade-in lot, and I told him “you aint gotta chance”. We later found the owner of the company wanted the car, the detail shop manager wanted it, (and she can be bloody brutal) the lead lube rack technician wants it bad, everyone wanted it. The Boss decided he has enough toys and decided to let the employees have first refusal. The lube rack dude threw 9k on the table and walked away with the title. However we had to diagnose it first it because it stalls as soon as you put it in gear, and is overheating. We replaced the torque convertor and did a carb adjustment and reset the timing, and it’s still over heating as soon as it starts, it seems the temp sender is shorted; way cool! I guess the guys heard the engines sweet sound of love emitted from the dual exhaust and freaked when they saw the temp gauge pegged and shut it down.
Anyway, I helped my bud out on the car, the MSD pick-up in the distributor took a dump, did some rethreading on the thermostat housing the brand new summit 4 barrel manifold, (I told him go with Wiand or Edelbrock, cheaper aint always better) a bunch of little stuff.
He had a boat-load of agro trying to get new wheels for the car, the tire shop ordered the wrong offset wheels for the car, some really weird back spacing. Anyway he finally got the right wheels. They look really cool, kinda like the Keystone Hustlers from the 60/70’s.then he left the old wheels and tires in my work bay. Kinda irritated me, but it oh-well.
Anyway last night we had a late night lock-in when we could work on our cars for the local car show on the 13th. I was considering the futile task of trying to dress mutton like lamb, when my bud asked me if I was ever going to put those wheels on my Toyota pick-up, so I looked closely at the Fairmont, and said it is what it is, and put those nice shiny chrome wheels with new tires off of his Mustang on my pick up and used the excuse that it was too dark to do a good job, and drove home with a smile like a Cheshire cat.
Future mods for his mustang include alternator upgrade, starter upgrade and 8.8 diff with rear discs brakes, I think they call it a restomod. I don’t feel bad about doing the mods on this car, so long as they look nice and if need-be we can always restore my mods back to stock, but it would be a real performance drag to get rid of the 4bbl and msd.
I like those shiny wheels, they make my pick-up run like a mustang!

I thought you were going to say you were doing wheelies in your Fairmont.

no, but the old girl has certainly had a load of different wheels over the years. now i am wondering if the 17in steel wheels from the ford fusion will work, i think they would look pretty cool.
nowadays, if an opportunity exists, you must act. his mustang used 14 in wheels and so does my little toyota, so i was well pleased.
yesturday i put a new set of seat covers in the pick-up, i got them from the same company who makes the dash mats.
this little pick-up has been really good, barring a timing chain kit and a radiator, its really cheap to operate, its a 93 with 187k on it, just proves maintenance is cheaper than repairs.
have you sorted out your poor idle yet?
i'm thinking it must be something simple a you have covered all the main bases.

No, I've been focusing on things I can actually fix, haha. I do have a few ideas though. First, I still haven't replaced the carbon canister for my gas smell issue and that's involved in the vacuum system, so there might be something there. Second, I want to either get a new harmonic balancer or summit has these labels you can get that have the timing marks on them, so I can actually see what I'm setting the timing at, rather than just lining it up with the stupid white-out mark or doing it by sound. Third, I thought i might pull the lower intake back out and check the mating surface and see if it's flat and maybe get it machined if need be.

yeah, ignition timing is important!!
Be careful when you have the lower intake shaved, if you take too much off, you will actually increase the gap between the cylinder heads and the intake making it prone to leaking.if it’s warped, a used straight one would be a better option.
If you look in the workshop manual, it says to use some studs in the four corners to align the gaskets when setting the manifold down. It does work. Also make sure the tabs on the head gaskets are straight and level so they can prop the intake gaskets up.
I used the studs on the last two I did, I feels kinda funny when you set it down, but I didn’t see as much movement on the gaskets. I just went to ACE hardware and bought an all-thread and cut it up into pieces. If you look at the top of the gaskets near the injectors, there isn’t much room for error and plenty of opportunity for leaks, so any assistance from the studs will be appreciated. The carbed engines don’t have this problem as there is more material area because they don’t have injectors.
Years ago I stopped using the rubber/cork gaskets at the front & rear on the lower intake to block mating surfaces. I actually use the ford TA-30 silicone rubber, but I’m sure permatex makes some that is just as good and cheaper. Just put a thick bead of silicone on the block. This will not leak and will stop the oil puddles near the distributor mounting area and behind the intake. Having said so, it will be an ass-ache to remove the manifold in the future, however you shouldn’t have to.
While you have the lower intake off, this would be a great opportunity to replace the PCV breather and grommet.
When I did mine a few months ago I wanted to change the thermostat and gasket, I forgot to do it when the manifold was off, these gaskets can be a pain to do when the intake is on. I had to get some really sticky quick drying gasket adhesive to stick the gasket to the housing. Mine has Lincoln 90 degree thermostat housing, what dummy; I left it on there so I didn’t have to buy another hose!
I hate the torque sequence on these lower intakes, it makes no sense to me, but I follow it anyway.
I hope you get this beast running like a champ; it’s such a pretty car. You must be turning a lot of heads when you’re cruising. Good luck. i hope it runs fine when you are done.

Yeah, that's a good point about machining too much off. Maybe I'll just get an aftermarket one or something. I don't want to be hunting for used intakes only to find they're all warped. Those can cost pretty serious money though, so maybe I'll just wait a while.

you wont really know till you get it off. these manifolds are reasonably tough.
i've got three bare lowers if you are interested. i can check them out and hot tank one for you before shipping. I used the fel pro gaskets last time, so far so good, there may be something better if you look.
there are some good manifolds out there.

Yeah, I'll probably take you up on that. Thanks! It's kind of far down my list of things to do right now though. I'd rather fix the things i KNOW I can fix right now than tear the engine apart and have the thing unusable for who knows how long while I try to figure this out.

On the upside, I took it for an extended drive down to see Stymees'mont yesterday. It got me there and back with no problems! My work on the rear end seems to have gone well! I think I still have a leaking caliper though...

yeah, sometimes you have teething problems......i'm glad to hear you got to give it a cruise, it's nice to be able to just get out for a while.