With everything ready to go on the lawn mower carb setup for the Rustang's 6 cyl engine, it was go-time. The gasket I cut out was glued down with gasket maker and another layer applied on the outside before applying the intake assembly. Because the base wasn't the thicker base of the stock 1bbl carburetor, I had to use a large nut as a spacer between the top of the base plate and the bracket that holds the throttle cable in order to allow the longer bolt to tighten down on everything. At first I had the assembly positioned where the soup can was facing the front, which would've allowed me to be able to pull the air cleaner element easily, but after looking at everything, the problems created by this arrangement far overshadowed the convenience of being able to easily access the air cleaner element in its current design. I ended up switching the assembly around where the air cleaner can is facing the firewall. The lawn mower carb and intake plenum bolted down in the new position with the soup can air cleaner facing the firewall. What this means is I'll have to pull the carb off to replace the element if it proves too hard to remove the element material from the can through the few inches gap that is present between the can and firewall. Placing the intake/carb in this position allowed me to be able to get the throttle cable in position where its movement would coincide with the movement of the linkage on the carb to operate like normal. It also placed the fuel pressure regulator in a position to easily hook up to the end of the fuel filter with just an extra length of rubber hose, about 2x the length of the original piece that coupled the filter to the 1bbl carburetor. To secure the throttle cable, I added a piece of angle iron to the bracket that originally held the throttle cable. After removing the cable from said bracket, I took the angle iron and drilled some holes to allow me to bolt the piece to the bracket at an angle, then bolt the throttle cable to the other end of the angle iron piece. This placed the throttle cable in a position to line up with the linkage on the lawn mower carb. The throttle linkage had a snap piece on the ball tip that I was able to remove and place on the Mustang throttle cable end to allow me to snap the cable to the lawn mower carb linkage with ease. Once this was done, I was ready to test start the engine. To make things a little easier, I used a remote starter switch so I could manually operate the linkages on the carburetor. I still hadn't hooked up the choke so I had to be able to work that piece, as well as the idle and A/F mix screws. Plus being under the hood allows me to be able to monitor the operation of the engine up close to make note of any issues. I cranked the engine over and because I already had fuel in the filter, the engine didn't take long before the pump pushed fuel to the carburetor, allowing the engine to start. I had to make some immediate tweaks to keep the engine running but I ended up finding that the engine in the beginning was happy at about 3/4 open choke. All the way and the engine was acting like it may have been starving of fuel. At first the carburetor flooded out, causing overflow fuel to leak out and into the soup can air filter. After a while, things seemed to balance out, probably the float valve finally seated itself and the leakage stopped. The engine appeared to take the throttle pretty good when the choke was at 3/4 open. I'm not sure if the carburetor was throwing too much gas out but I did notice some gas moisture around the base of the intake, like maybe too much was leaking out still, I may have to investigate that further. The engine ran pretty good but I'm sure I'll have to dial in the ignition and also get some vacuum to the tube feeding the distributor so I can have vacuum advance. When I tapped off the nipple on the intake plenum on the cylinder head, I did get a better throttle response on the count of the vac advance working. I might also have to tap another nipple with which to use to have a controlled air leak to help balance out the A/F mixture so the engine can run smoother. A threaded bung for an O2 sensor and A/F meter will better allow me to monitor this particular reading to better tune the engine. What all this means is this project will be more of a long term project that will be an enlightenment to this concept of running an engine. Even though others have tried this, my first hand experience with this will give me the knowledge necessary to better apply this whole ideal on future projects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|