My '85 MGM, "Maisa"

[Arquemann]

the vac shouldn't be your primary source of advance, its the mechanical that you need. Too much vacuum advance can cause problems. Figure 10 degrees initial, another 25 or so of mechanical, and the vac and you're at 45 degrees. Beyond that is "breaking shit" territory. 20-30 degrees of vac advance without it acting really dumb generally indicates no or very little mechanical advance and the vac is making up for it.


if this is a duraspark distributor there are advance limiter plates in there too, its in degrees of distributor advance which is half the degrees of crankshaft advance, so a 14 plate will give 28 degrees. Normally there are 2 notches per plate.

Vacuum advance should be the main source of advance when cruising. Cruising in overdrive at, say 60mph, my engine should be running at about ~1500rpm, should be way below mechanical advance territory. You're not going to have all the vacuum and all the mechanical advance in at the same time.

With the old setup the engine cruised happily with somewhere around 35°, from 12° initial and whatever the vacuum was, if I bumped up the initial to around 14-15°, it got a bit stuttery in situations where the engine ran a bit lean.

There's pretty good info on Duraspark dizzys and while the mechanical advance is kinda shitty to access, my biggest gripe is that here in Finland finding advance plates and springs is a nightmare. Easiest way would be to buy another whole distributor and even then you're rolling the dice on what advance plates you get.

[Arquemann]

Today's croooze night is over 30 minutes away, so I had to get my cruise control hooked up again. Since my previous ziptie setup for the cruise cable was shitty and an eyesore, I wanted something better and smarter. Thing was to not overthink it.

A cheap hose/line separator and some grip tape to make up the diameter difference and add some grip, done. Cheap, simple, adjustable and not too ugly.




Ended up buying the mrgasket 925D advance springs, dunno when I'll get to tearing apart the dizzy. Box says '65-'74 Ford V8 distributors, so maybe they'll fit a Duraspark. Supposed to move mechanical advance to 2000-2800 rpm. Hopefully the slots installed in the dizzy don't have an insane amount of advance.

[gadget73]

you can also mix and match the springs, one heavy, one light, to get a compromise. If the plate allows too much, a welder makes that gap smaller. Just measure the existing slots and do a little math to figure out how wide you need it to be. It will be so many millimeters or thousandths of an inch per degree.

[Arquemann]

I've now put about 200 miles on the rebuilt engine, no change in anything, but I've come to the conclusion that the carb needs more tuning before diving into the timing stuff.
Idle is the smoothest at about 13 AFR, I need it there because with AC running and in gear it leans out to around 14-14.5. Highway cruising is around 14 ± 0.5, which is fine, but it could be a touch leaner for the mpgs. Problems is it goes a bit too lean at slower cruise speeds and stumbles a bit on very light acceleration.
Transition circuit is too lean, and because I've got an entry-level Holley (street avenger), it doesn't have adjustable idle air bleeds or idle feed restrictors. Those are the only things that affect the transition circuit. So I bought some 0.5mm steel wire to fish into the idle air bleeds to reduce the air going in, and thus richening the transition a/f mixture. With such a thick wire it'll probably go unneccesarily rich on very light throttle, but thinner wires were a bit harder to find fast, so this'll atleast get me into the ballpark and see where to go from there.

Other notes:
- Dash speakers seem to have deteriorated even more, starting to sound less bearable. Or it could be they need to loosen up again after sitting still for 8 months. Same with the rear speakers, but to a lesser extent.
- Idle afr affects the smoothness of the idle considerably more than before rebuild. Before it happily idled at 14.5-15, but now it's quite shaky above 14 afr.
- Exhaust note is oddly boomy from the outside at idle. Apart from cold high idle, the idle just sounds like a big subwoofer on a bass test going "bwööööööööö". Otherwise just as quiet and unremarkable.

[Arquemann]

0.5mm wire in the idle air bleeds did what it was supposed to, but surprisingly the effect was a bit smaller than I was looking for, even though I expected just the opposite. Where the lean issue is now present is close to lugging territory, so I don't know how much richer I want to go just because. Mostly scenarios with low rpm in OD, some load, but not quite enough for kickdown.
It's an inconvenient balancing act between transition circuit afr and main circuit afr. If I go rich enough in transition, it'll affect the main circuit some and I'll want to drop a size in main jets, which might make the transition too lean again.

Also cleaned up and banged out the worst dents off the 2 LTD wheel covers I have and put them on too see if I really do like them enough to buy more of them.
And I do, I think they look great. They seem to make the car look older without being too out of place. And most importantly they fit correctly, without the wheel weights intefering. I don't mind the factory wire covers, but they don't fit over the wheel weights correctly, they creak, groan and some loose spokes tick and tick me off. Refurbishing the turbines isn't a job for this summer.

[Mainemantom]

Actually those 71-72 Galaxie/Ltd hubcaps look good and cleaned up nicely. I have two sets. One set I used with steel wheels on the LTC when I installed studded snow tires . The other set are spares which could be sold

[DerekTheGreat]

Yah, looks good.

[Lutrova]

I think there's something more timeless about this style of wheel cover than the pseudo wire wheels. They're clean looking, and their visual solidity appears more proportional to the mass of the car above.

[Arquemann]

While I personally love the "baroque" styling of the 70's Mercuries and Lincolns, wire covers are always kinda meh, and seem busy a bit cheap. They're ornamental without elegance. Many 60's and 70's turbine wheel covers are incredibly conical, which looks like ass IMO. These more understated wheel covers with contrast and depth are just the ticket.

Actually those 71-72 Galaxie/Ltd hubcaps look good and cleaned up nicely. I have two sets. One set I used with steel wheels on the LTC when I installed studded snow tires . The other set are spares which could be sold

I put up a buy-listing to our Ford club buy/sell group, but no bites yet.
I'm guessing you wouldn't be exactly enthusiastic about boxing up a set and sending it to Finland?

[DerekTheGreat]

I absolutely hate wire wheel covers- they've always looked like ass in addition to chincy & cheap. Freakin' posers they are, ain't nothin' like the real thing.

[gadget73]

They also rattle annoyingly. The Continental doesn't have "real" wires as in the spokes are merely decorative, but its not a wire hub cap either so it doesn't look nearly as craptastic.

[DerekTheGreat]

I'd call those real spokes, especially if they're anything like the wire wheels offered on box Lincolns. I always thought wire wheel covers were stock, and that the non wire cover offerings were optional. I was shocked when I learned wire wheel covers were both optional and expensive.

[kishy]

I'd call those real spokes, especially if they're anything like the wire wheels offered on box Lincolns. I always thought wire wheel covers were stock, and that the non wire cover offerings were optional. I was shocked when I learned wire wheel covers were both optional and expensive.

The wire wheels on the box Lincolns are absolutely not "real spoke wheels" by any reasonable interpretation.

If you took each and every single one of those spokes off, the wheel still has exactly the same load-bearing capacity and can still be used to drive on.

With a real spoke wheel, if you removed all the spokes, the hub and rim are no longer connected by any material at all.

[Arquemann]

Dunno what's a fake wire hubcap and what's not. I'd guess my MGM's covers would fall under the "fake" category, as the spokes don't even hold the middle and the radius of the wheel cover together, there's a black sheetmetal backing to all of it.
Non-interlacing straight spoke true wire wheels would be freaking cool on the MGM. 14" or 15" with reasonable tires, white walls. None of that lowrider stuff, even though it's kinda cool too.

[DerekTheGreat]

Umm, you're being too definitive. I meant "real" in the appearance sense. They look integral to the wheel and thus present better than the wire wheel covers.