57 Wagon Holiday Thrash

[milner351]

Sounds like fun - except for the rear main seal part!

[Deaf Bob]

How u fixed for trim?
Got all?
Fixing to derby a former drag car 57 Ford wagon

[mrocketscience]

How u fixed for trim?
Got all?
Fixing to derby a former drag car 57 Ford wagon

Really? Interesting.. I have all the trim I believe, what I could really use is a station wagon gas tank that doesn't leak. How's yours?

[Deaf Bob]

Really? Interesting.. I have all the trim I believe, what I could really use is a station wagon gas tank that doesn't leak. How's yours?

Will look this weekend... Prolly not good...drug it off flood plain... Only reason this wasn't as rusted out as the 250-400 EDSELS, is it was a drag car (lettering on fender said 312ci) with no carpet.. Area would floof 2-5X a year. Trim and stuff wasnt underwater much..

[mrocketscience]

I appreciate you taking a look. Thanks...

[mrocketscience]

Man, I've never had a car fight me as much as this one! Lol.. The drivability issue while cruising has gotten much worse, it misses really bad and now will no longer idle cleanly. Very erratic idle and will eventually just die. I thought it might be a carb problem , so I swapped on the Quick Fuel 650 I have as a backup for the Mustang in place of the 600. However, this didn't fix the problem so I'm now looking at the distributor. I have a Pro Comp electronic distributor I bought brand new off of Ebay. I know, Chinese junk, ect. I thought "Hey, they've sold a LOT of these things, it should be ok." Well, now I don't know. I've tried moving the timing all around with no improvement, it's worse with the vacuum advance hooked up so I'm going back to square one. I have a rebuilt stock Ford distributor I'm going to stab in there with a Pertonix Ignitor in place of the points and see what happens. I really hope this helps, cause I'm out of ideas after that! Plus, it's still leaking like the friggin' Exxon Valdez from the bell housing area and I've got to look at that as soon as I get it running right. I could get lucky I guess and it's an oil pan gasket leak, but I doubt it.

[milner351]

sorry to hear of your problems - are you feeding the ignition straight 12 volts - bypassing the ignition wire?

any vacuum leaks?

[mrocketscience]

The old engine had a balast resistor mounted next to the coil. I'm not using any kind of resistor on it now, so there should be 12V at the coil. I tested that with a volt meter during installation, I'll give it another check while the engine is running to verify that. I'm going to swap the disributor on it anyway, just to see what happens. I don't think there are any more vacuum leaks, everything is plugged and a carb swap didn't change anything at all, same symptoms exactly. I think I'll disconnect the tach too to eliminate that as a problem.

[milner351]

I don't recall when Ford went to the resistor wire from the ign switch to the + side of the coil, it was on most of the 60's stuff but I don't know if they were running them in the 50's - or how much of the wiring in this car is original.

My friend that drove the falcon to detroit from new mexico is having pertronix issues and the techline there started off with the number one issue they have - not getting a consistant 12v at the coil.

Do you have another coil you can swap in to eliminate that as the culprit?

[Huskinhano]

The old engine had a balast resistor mounted next to the coil. I'm not using any kind of resistor on it now, so there should be 12V at the coil. I tested that with a volt meter during installation, I'll give it another check while the engine is running to verify that. I'm going to swap the disributor on it anyway, just to see what happens. I don't think there are any more vacuum leaks, everything is plugged and a carb swap didn't change anything at all, same symptoms exactly. I think I'll disconnect the tach too to eliminate that as a problem.

You have to be careful trying to measure 12V that way. Most likely you're going to get an incorrect reading, assuming you measured from the wire feeding the distributor with the VOM black wire to ground. You're always going to read 12V that way no matter if the ballast resistor is hooked up or not. I'll tell you why. When you have 2 devices connected in series, which ever one has the highest resistance is going to drop the most voltage. How many ohms does the ballast resistor have compared to a digital VOM? It's like pissing in the ocean. Back in the day when there were analog VOM meters, a half way decent one had 20K ohms/volt meter resistance. So reading 12v, the meter is going to have an internal resistance of 240K ohms while the ballast has lets say 10 ohms. Basically the meter is going to drop all the voltage or read the source voltage in other words. You're not going to see all the voltage drop from the ballast resistor or from that of the small gauge wiring running all through the car that's making things worse.

On a convention point system to see how much voltage is going to the coil, the best way is to put the VOM leads on both ends of the ballast resistor and read that voltage. Now subtract that from what you read from the battery directly, that'll give you what the coil is seeing. On my 66, I'm running a GM style ignition. I have my ballast wire disconnected and the ignition switch now controls a relay. I take my power from the battery on #12 wire controlled by that relay off the ignition switch. I now have a very good source of power for my ignition with no voltage drop basically on my wiring. It works very well! I did the same for my electric choke.

Put the black wire from the VOM on the + terminal of the battery and the red wire from the VOM on to the + side of the distributor. That amount you read is all total voltage drop of the wiring in the car up to that point and what's left is what's feeding the distributor.

[mrocketscience]

I have the original switched 12v wire that went to the old ballast resistor going directly to the coil positive post. I did run another connection from that circuit to the electric fuel pump relay. Maybe I need to take that off and find another source for that. Setting up another relay for 12v to the coil is a pretty good idea. I might try that too. Didn't think of doing that. Thanks!

[Huskinhano]

Actually what I did on my 66 was to buy an auxiliary 6 terminal fuse block fed by a #10 wire with a 30 amp fuse which is controlled by the relay off the ignition switch. I have a switch source of power when the ignition switch is in the "on" position now. If I want to add a radio, lights ect, I have a source. Look at the factory wiring, it was never designed to supply any real amount of power. It has small gauge wire that has a lot of voltage drop.

I originally had my choke fed off the ignition switch before the ignition resistor wire in my car. The old ignition with the Pertronx worked so-so and the choke worked poorly. Now the choke works great and my HEI has all the power it needs Like the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. A hotter spark requires more power going in.

[mrocketscience]

Man, I just want to torch this car right now. I pulled out the Pro Comp distributor and replaced it with a stock Ford unit with a Pertronix unit. Buttoned it all up, turned the key and it fired right up! Ran beautifully and I'm thinking "Finally, Got it solved!Whats that ticking noise? Oh, no oil pressure!" I shut the car off and pulled the distribtor and sure enough the oil pump shaft is gone. Down into the pan. I thought well, it's in the bottom of the pan, probably won't hurt anything there, I'll just get another one. After a trip to the parts store I attempted to drop in the new one, and sure enough, dropped it into the pan also. So, how many pump shafts will an oil pan hold? I don't know for sure, I'm thinking hard about what to do next. I could pull the engine. I could try to drop the pan with the engine still in the car, or buy the big Ford Motorsports pump shaft that I think is too big to fall through into the pan and leave the other 2 in there. Or I could set it all on fire, which is what I feel like right now.

[mrocketscience]

Alright, I feel better now ;) I did something else for a few hours and cooled off. I guess the answer to the question about how many pump shafts will the oil pan hold is at least 2. I bought a 3rd one so I could see if I could have one more shot at passing the idiot test. Here's how: I glued the shaft to the distributor with black RTV silicone and set it in there a couple of times until the hex lined up and went into the oil pump. Bam! So it now runs and drives bitchen. The pan is gonna have to come off at some point when the rear main seal gets replaced, so I'll fish out the 2 pump shafts at that time.

[Huskinhano]

Man, I just want to torch this car right now. I pulled out the Pro Comp distributor and replaced it with a stock Ford unit with a Pertronix unit. Buttoned it all up, turned the key and it fired right up! Ran beautifully and I'm thinking "Finally, Got it solved!Whats that ticking noise? Oh, no oil pressure!" I shut the car off and pulled the distribtor and sure enough the oil pump shaft is gone. Down into the pan. I thought well, it's in the bottom of the pan, probably won't hurt anything there, I'll just get another one. After a trip to the parts store I attempted to drop in the new one, and sure enough, dropped it into the pan also. So, how many pump shafts will an oil pan hold? I don't know for sure, I'm thinking hard about what to do next. I could pull the engine. I could try to drop the pan with the engine still in the car, or buy the big Ford Motorsports pump shaft that I think is too big to fall through into the pan and leave the other 2 in there. Or I could set it all on fire, which is what I feel like right now.

Still have the old Y block? *G*