AMC Eagle

[MadMan]

Now that's good thinking!

[Electronic M]

Nice adapter tray! Sometimes craftsmanship is the most satisfying solution.

[bgadow]

I like it! I would...I once mounted an AMC radiator in my International pickup truck using 2x4's.

[MIPS]

Well the car has now been officially on the road for a week and after swallowing the bill for the first full-tank fill ($86CAD for 70L of regular....) and driving it in both clear roads and snow using 4WD it's becoming apparent just how out of tune the entire engine is.
The ignition is off, the mechanical timing is off and the carb has very clearly had the idle jets mucked with. When it's -17 out the car is about impossible to start and no matter what you're up to it's running so rich you can stall and flood the car too easily. Methinks that when the computer was first bypassed and the car retuned it was much warmer. Now as I gather all the parts needed to be positive it's not cabling, vacuum lines or filters I need to ask what I should be adjusting first to get the car ready for a proper tune-up as I am assuming every adjustment is currently incorrect.

Where would I start?

[MadMan]

To be honest, I don't work on carbureted cars often enough to know for sure. My suggestion is to make damn sure all the vacuum lines are routed correctly, and not leaking vacuum. In fact, make especially sure zero vacuum is leaking. This can be very difficult. Large vacuum leaks can be found with a can of flammable brake cleaner and a big pair of balls. Little leaks can be impossible, unless you put eyes and hands on every single thing that has vacuum to it, and even then, it's unreliable at best.

Me, I could just hook up a smoke machine to the intake and watch where the smoke escapes. And yeah, that would probably be MY first step. Second, I'd make sure the ignition timing is in spec. Need a timing light and a tachometer, which I think you have. Easy to get, if not. Which, btw, idle speed has to be set right before doing ignition timing. Ignition timing should probably also be double checked after everything else you do.

Valve timing is pretty unlikely to be off. Perhaps a little with an old, stretched chain. But a jumped chain is unlikely. Besides, you'd know. It'd probably run ok, but have very little power when driving, all the time, not just when cold.

The rest would be carburetor adjustment, which... I'm not sure about with the computerized carb. I'm sure your big fancy book will detail it well. I'd imagine there's some way of locking the computer in default mode, perhaps unplugging some sensor or such. And then likely turning a screw while watching a vacuum gauge. Hopefully. It might be more complicated.

[Electronic M]

Boy gas is expensive up there. I filled up my burban yesterday to the tune of 2.6$ a gal for midgrade.

[MIPS]

Already ahead of you on the vacuum lines. New rubber line for all the vacuum routing and the fuel lines has been ordered. My initial work back in the beginning of winter found either cracked or deteriorated lines.

Carb adjustments are made by placing the computer in a set mode which locks the timing and lean/rich adjustment to a known static value, then it's the usual method of setting the idle adjustment, unless they've also tempered with the metering pins and jets, in which case it might be better to just rebuild the carb.

[MadMan]

Yes, but are you *able* to put the computer in set mode? Or do you need the "scanner" for that?

If the jets have been messed with, you might have to have an actual carburetor shop rebuild the carb. They should have one of those devices that can actually measure the amount of gas being carbureted out of it. But idk.

Wouldn't be a bad idea to buy a rebuild kit for the carb, knock it down, get the whole thing surgically clean, and try again.

[fixmeplease]

FWIW, and Madmen touched on it, vacuum leaks. Dont overlook that at any step. They have caused me too many problems to mention. Various gauges can be used to test it. Hand held pump type gauges test it well (brake type). Im sure many other ways with accuracy. It doesnt take much of a vacuum leak to really screw thing up, especially with engine idle.

[MadMan]

Just for giggles, I looked on ebay for smoke machines...

LINK

And people are selling homemade ones. They're literally a paint can with a small electric heater in it. While I knew the concept was simple, I really didn't think people would be making them out of junk and selling them on ebay. So really, you could easily make your own, probably for real cheap.

[MIPS]

I actually have one of those small smoke machines Wal-Mart sells during Halloween. I've been thinking of ways to make it practical to do smoke testing, otherwise I'm stuck with a vacuum gauge and testing various points with the engine running.
Speaking of vacuum leaks, all is not well in the valve cover. Before I change the air filter I inspected the PCV breather and again after a week on the road I've had oil burping out of the valve cover, up the breather hose, through the PCV breather filter and into the air cleaner, so there's no point changing the air filter yet.



I tested the PCV valve and found it was behaving as it should and found a decent vacuum going through it and into the valve cover and sharing the same vacuum with the charcoal canister. What I did not find however was a vacuum at the air cleaner breather. It must be pulling a LOT of air from somewhere to defeat a 20 inHG vacuum and there was not a lot of indication of serious blow-by. There's an oil leak from the valve cover gasket above the manifolds, so we might have to first start there.

Yes you can set the computer into various open and closed loop modes manually. The mechanics handbook specifies how to jumper the diagnostic connectors to fool it into various states. Speaking of carb rebuilding, there was a partial rebuild kit that came with the car so indeed, there has been people inside the carb body. I know there's at least one shop in town within a stone's throw of my workplace who does rebuilds.

[MadMan]

Eh, a lot of old cars get oil up the pcv hose. Hell, a lot of cars in general. There's a reason manufacturers stopped putting the pcv breather hose near the air filter - it just gets the filter all soggy (and leaves oil deposits on the throttle plate) - so most modern cars usually have the hose routed to the intake or some place down the line from the air filter. I think your car should probably have a little square of felt in the air cleaner, over the pcv hose place. To sop up the oil it squirts out. Not 100% sure though.

[MIPS]

It does. It's a little orange plastic cartridge with a FRAM part number and packed with a wadding that is plugged into the side of the air cleaner.


It's completely filled with oil. I need to find new wadding to replace it. My aftermarket metal valve cover apparently lacks a baffle for the breather port to keep oil out, so I'm wondering if that is something I should install when I redo the gasket.

[MIPS]

OUCH

So my first tank-to-empty calculation was done today when I started stalling down the hill to the highway. Good thing there's a gas station down there.

70L of gas, at $1.29CAD/L it cost $85.38 to fill the tank to full.
70L of gas with short highway driving, mainly city driving and hills everywhere in between lasted 9 days and allowed the car to travel 391km.

My math puts it at 15.75MPG at a cost of around 21 cents per kilometer.
Not.....great...but the Tracker was doing 21MPG when it was retired and the engine still needs a full tune-up, so there's likely improvements in those numbers once things are baselined and properly set. A bunch of that work starts tomorrow when the plugs, distributor rotor and cap, the cables and the smaller diameter vacuum lines are replaced followed by resetting of the ignition timing. This also gives me my first chance to liik into cylinder compression to verify if the source of my PCV issues are bad blow-by or something else. I have now verified there's 18 InHG present at the PCV valve but with the breather plugged I cannot get the crankcase to pull a vacuum below 1 InHG, which isn't enough to overcome the seemingly small amount of blow-by at unloaded revving that pushes the case pressure above 1PSI.

A replacement Sol-Vac solenoid has also been sourced and ordered. What I was not able to find however was a repalcement dashpot as mine is completely missing. The closest thing I could find was the Carter 202-462 (AMC 8127323) but it's listed for the 2BBL, not the 2BBD and I don't know what the difference is.


Edited: aaaaah drat. I tried to test fit my compression tester and the threads are not long enough to properly fit the 258 block. I can make it barely thread in with the O-ring removed but then the readings will be unusable due to a poor seal.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by MIPS

My math puts it at 15.75MPG at a cost of around 21 cents per kilometer.
Not.....great...

Well if you can't get it better and the novelty factor wears off you can do as good maybe better fuel economy with a Suburban, S10 based SUV, or the Trailblazer that replaced it...All were available with some type of 4WD as an option, and the suburban and Trailblazer extended body version can haul an absurd quantity of stuff INSIDE the vehicle (no more sony screens strapped to the roof to fight a death match with a sharp tarp, or driving with the back open in winter to haul a vending machine)...The GMC Envoy version of the trailblazer even had a special version of the extended cab body Envoy XUV where the cargo portion of the roof could open and a weather tight partition put up behind the back seat making it into something akin to a small crew cab pickup truck...My Suburban is so good in the snow that I can comfortably pass slow people in conditions that I'd BE one of the slow people in if I were in some other vehicles I've driven in winter.