HI All,

over the last few months I have been dialling in my 445 build in my Thunderbird. All going well but having an issue with the carburetor.

The problem is if I leave car for a week or so and start it up, it blows black smoke until it warms up. Then when I start it hot after a few hours it spits fuel out of the exhaust. Other than that the engine is running well, carb setup with air flow meter and pulls around 15 lbs of vacuum at idle.

I noticed at initial startup that the car blew black smoke and I replaced the power valve (6.5) with a new one and all seemed ok. When I pulled the old valve out I noted the well behind the power valve was flooded with fuel.

This week it happened again, smoke at startup so I checked the power valve again. Yes, the well was full of fuel again. If you click on the image below it should zoom in to an image of the metering plate. This is the best image I could get but it seems to have a lot of hairline cracks in the area between the two jets.

Has anyone seen this before and could it be the cause of the fuel flow into the well? Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

The carb is a Quickfuel 780 vac secondary.

Thanks
Graeme

Hi everyone,

my last post was around this time last year when I installed Jay's intake manifold adapter but had to abort since I seemingly over torqued one  bolt and cracked the water jacket - yes my fault.

Well now I have had the adapter repaired and tested and now installed on the car, see images below.

Seems to run like a charm but need to tweak the distributor settings and the carburetor as well as it is not perfect. Also I cannot drive the car yet since I had to rip out the accelerator arm, the kickdown and of course the accelerator itself. The reason for this is the adapter and Cleveland manifold have moved the mounting points so high that I only have HALF the leverage and ipso facto - half throttle maximum.

Would any readers out there who have replaced their throttle with a Lokar or similar please offer any feedback? I have not purchased the throttle mechanism yet (thinking of http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/361379932349?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT ) but the Thunderbird is a pain as the firewall is double skinned!

Here are my specifications now:
- Mallory mechanical distributor, setup like Faron did with my Duraspark and fired with a MSD 6AL
- 4 barrel Cleveland manifold
- Demon Carb, 650 cfm
- everything else the same as before

Also, thanks to Brent, I found this on an old Forum 54 post from years ago and following this the engine fired first crank - saved a lot of fussing around!

If you're not sure of the firing order and distributor, here are some pointers:

Firing order is 15426378, CCW.

Passenger side cylinders are 1-4. Driver's side is 5-8.

Make sure that #1 is coming up on the compression stroke (you can put your finger in the spark plug hole, or you can pull a valve cover and watch the rocker arms), and stop when the pointer is pointing around 25° BTDC. Once that happens, make sure the rotor is pointing at the #1 spark plug wire. At that point, give her a crank.

HI,

this is my first major posting so please let me know if the images are too large or I missed something.

What you see here is the process of modifying a Cleveland 4V Performer, model # 2665 to fit onto Jay's FE adapter. I used hacksaws, a Dremel and files to cut the manifold, if I had my time again I'd get it done professionally. Not that it looks like shit but its the first time I've butchered a manifold before!

The images below have text descriptions, but what you cannot really see is the manifold runner to #5 is huge and encroaches right over the water crossover tube - it is a bit too close but will work I think. I call it 'El Capitan' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Capitan - it is a bitch!

The reason I chose the 2665 was that the ports are very close to being a perfect match to the adapter and I'm sorry to say, pure dumb luck, that's what I ordered and could not return it!

Next step is of course to install it and I will update this post when it's done - might be a month or two since its summer here in Australia and I want to keep car on the road for a while yet.

Enjoy,

Graeme
Melbourne - Australia.

The very first hiccup I found was the heat crossover on the Cleveland manifold would not permit the manifold to even lie down on the adapter. (manifold is backwards, just to see who noticed!!)


So, out with the hacksaw and it’s gone.


An Edelbrock Performer (not RPM) next to the FE Adapter and the modified intake manifold - I estimate that the Edebrock carb mounting plate is 1/4 lower than the adapter and Cleveland.



Top down on the manifold after mods and the adapter. Since this image I have cleaned up the cuts and chopped off the corners of the manifold, looks dangerous with those edges.

Of interest is the water temp adapter, this is very close to the distributor base as I mocked it up but it should work with care. The other thing is the clocking of the distributor is critical, it will only rotate maybe 20 degrees before it hits the walls of the intake manifold.



Another item to consider is the lower area of the manifold, to be able to line up the bolt holes the base of the manifold must be massaged and cut away so that it does not touch the top of the adapters water passage. I had about 1/16” of space after all this and the manifold is still looking good, plenty of meat in this area. (the area closest to you with the black marker line)



Here is a side to side view - going to be a close fit in the 62’ Thunderbird