1957 Ford Country Sedan mocha silver V8 4dr wagon

[djfordmanjack]

No pics today, but lots done in 3 hours.
When returning from the test drive yesterday the Y block started running rough and misfiring. It was time for checking the ignition.
Well........as of now I have no idea how this car could drive 1500 miles from England and yet it did 
breaker gap was 0.04 instead of 0.016.  one spark plug wire was damaged and grounded on the exhaust header.  the timing was at least 20degrees @ idle. Possibly to make up for the vaccuum line they removed alltogether ( although the vaccuum diaphragm is in full working order). the vacc line fitting was loose. the connector sockets on the coil resistor were loose to the point where it was firing erratically only. upon closer inspection the coil resistor terminal was totally loose because of crumbled insulator washers.
Honestly I have no idea of how that thing would run at all.
Good thing, now it's back to a very smooth and lively performance, bad thing I have to adjust  idle quite high to prevent stalling in D or R when hot. there's a 2barrel Holley and a Fordomatic in the wagon. any suggestions on how to cope with that problem ?
timing is 6degrees now and idle jets are 3/4 backed off. engine is powerful and pulls great. it's just that excessively high rpms in N or Park.

[gasman826]

confirm there are no other vacuum leaks.

confirm TDC...old dampers have been known to slip

while you have the plugs out...confirm compression

[hiball3985]

X2 on the dampener, until you verify that you will have no idea where the timing is. You will need to get the idle down to the correct speed to set timing accurately. If idling too high the mechanical advance may be adding advance.

Idle speed to high: Is the choke completely opening and all choke linkage free? There is also a high idle speed adjustment for when the choke is on..

Also be sure that the mechanical advance is free and working correctly. But you probably know all that..

[mustang6984]

Sometimes the base gets warped a bit at bottom of carb. I always take a can of carb cleaner and squirt the around the bottom of the spacer and the bottom of the carb to see if I cause a stumble. If so...then you know you have a leak of vacuum. Just a thought.


Quote: bad thing I have to adjust  idle quite high to prevent stalling in D or R when hot.

[djfordmanjack]

Thanx guys. Lots of good tips what to look for! I have been able to prove many other things working and ok so far.(plugs, wires, coil, breaker, fuel pump, chocke heat riser plumbing, choke flaps and high idle setting aso)
The dampener looks very solid, but as you both mentioned, who knows. Will use a stop screw to mechanically find TDC and check the pulley reading. As soon as I can get to working on it in warmer weather, will check further for vacc leaks. I have ruled out quite some. wiper, fuel vacc pump, heater valve and vacc advance lines are all good and tight. no vacc loss there.
Jay pointed me to the phenolic heatdeflecting spacer under carb. it seems it has been removed on my car.
when I have the increased idle-N or stalling in D problem, the car is up to operating temperature and in stop and go traffic in 70 degree weather. When I let the car sit for 10-15 minutes it's all back to normal again and problem starts only 3-5 minutes later. It must be something that can cool of or heat up rapidly and in my mind has nothing to do with oil viscosity or block/oil/ coolant temperature. The block internals would only slightly cool off in 10 minutes. I reckon it's something or even several small things on the outside.
Jim has a good point in the mechanical advance in conjunction with slightly too high idle on carb. they will have influence on each other of course and I have observed the timing light wandering to late when the cars idle drops during getting hot, so I already have mechanical advance when I shouldn't. but it's tough to get decent idle and timing all the same.
I have been thinking about a sticky mechanical advance unit before.
the carb has been rebuilt and the throttle shaft feels tight. the carb adjusts nicely on the idle mixture screws and idle set screw.
Hugh: this is the next thing I am going to look for asap.
I will keep you posted on my efforts. luckily the site is back up again. what would we all do without the forum ?

[djfordmanjack]

while you have the plugs out...confirm compression

I have had all the plugs out and they all look equally nice, with a tan/brownish color on the insulator/tip and flat grey/black around the perimeter of the threads. they are correct BF82C

[djfordmanjack]

a pictorial update.

mangled spark plug wire


crumbled insulator and loose terminal on coil resistor


new coil and resistor




In my opinion the plugs look good for a 60 year old used engine


new fuel hose for safety aspect


trailer hitch mounted solid. feels extremely tight and ready for medium action. bolted a metric ball to it ( 50mm as oppossed to 2" US equals to 50.8mm). needs wiring and socket finished.




og company tag from hitch.

[djfordmanjack]

can't believe this. I was looking on the car several times and couldn't find any factory stamps on the firewall. now that I am looking through my pics I find the PAINT OK stamp is right there if a little faint! I was trying to capture the March 18th factory date stamp in the cowl metal for future reference for my files. I am glad I haven't cleaned/polished over that area or I would have removed it all together. I plan to lightly clearcoat the factory stamps still present.

[hiball3985]

Timing fluctuation could be caused by a worn bushing in the top of the distributor allowing the shaft to wobble, that's another common problem. This could also be why the point gap was off, or there was extreme wear to the points rubbing block, maybe a lack of lube on the lobes?

Did you have the vacuum advance disconnected when checking the timing?

When using the piston stop rotate the engine in both directions marking the pulley both times, TDC will be between the two marks.

I'm probably preaching to the choir  so just tell me to shut up 

[djfordmanjack]

Keep preaching Jim, there's always something else to learn and I am thankful for further thoughts or others' experience.
Even confirming my assumptions is valuable information.
I have repaired worn bushings in another Y block distributor before, and this one feels very tight. maybe it has been overhauled before. I have observed that worn mech advance bushing on several of my friend's Y blocks. you can literally feel and see the top of the shaft ( and cam) shift, when you wiggle it. not on this my CS distributor. it's tight.
The car had been driven 1500 miles before so the (replaced new) points block could easily have worn in. Yes I checked timing with vacuum advance disconnected. so far none of that helped so the problem must be somewhere else. Like Jay said, this will be a problem difficult to detect, but easy to fix...

[John Palmer]

I love the trailer hitch tag!  I'm sure Howard Ward never expected us to be talking about his trailer hitch after this many years.  Nothing is made in that part of L.A. anymore, it's all very expensive property today.  Today, your hitch would likely have a sticker that says "Made in China", from melted down 1957 Fords.

It's very interesting about the 160# tongue weight limit in Europe.  The rule we go by here is 10% of the total trailer weight needs to be on the tongue.  For example my 1948 Spartan weight is 3980#, so they design the balance to be 398# of tongue weight.  Obviously we "over estimate" what is really necessary for sway prevention.  It also answers why we see photos of smaller European cars pulling larger sized trailers.

You have already received many good ideas on "things to check".  One more idea, does your Ford-0-Matic have a vacuum modulator can on the back of the transmission case?  Many times the small 1/4" rubber vacuum hose rots off from oil leaks.  Any vacuum leak will cause your high idle speed issue.  You need to get it slowed down into the 700 RPM range to work.

[djfordmanjack]

John, my Fordomatic is an early all mechanical. no vaccuum modulator on this one.
The topic of trailer tongue weight is very interesting. I have a good friend that has literally 100thousands of miles of towing experience and he has been towing most all of my project cars around. he also insists that a little more tongue weight will improve the bouncing and swaying situation. I don't think that you overestimate tongue weight in the US. 160 pds is nearly nothing and how would you be able to get just close to that value in a real trailer load situation ? if you only have a little less you risk a bouncy and swaying trailer combo. so a little more seems better in any case. he is particularily fond of twin axle trailers. especially leightweight aluminium with high load capacity.
My plans for the 57 call for either a lightweight ( and in Europe they ARE light) camping trailer or twin axle car trailer. ( I am aiming at a max 4500pds trailer weight). Don't worry about my hitch as I will slowly test it, starting out with a 600pds small camper and see how it feels and if anything moves. Before I get to pulling a 4000+ trailer I will make sure the hitch is up to that. especially reinforcing the rear frame crossmember with bolted in square tubing ( to the main chassis rails) and boxing the trailer hitch where necessary. I do feel though that this old hitch is really capable of quite some beating and pulling. It has been nicely heated, bent and hammered around the og gas tank. with a little fiddling ( and swearing, don't tell Jay ) it fit like a glove.
I don't even have a trailer at this point, but I figured since I had this nice hitch I better bolt it on before inspection.(the hitch needs inspected over here as well. a current data tag has to be riveted on for registration purpose and will replace the og dealer tag. of course I am keeping the dealer tag and will put it in another spot on the hitch)

[Ecode70D]

     Guenter
     Maybe you know this already , but I'm going to state it anyways.  Ford advance works on throttle vacuum from the carburetor.  They do not work on manifold vacuum like the GM cars.  Where is your vacuum hose connected?   It should be to the carburetor.  If your vacuum hose comes from the manifold, that would cause the RPMs to go up.

      Another thing to remember if you are adjusting your carburetor in drive or reverse to make sure that the emergency brake is on and the wheels are blocked front and back and don't race the engine.  that car could take off like a rocket.  But you know that already also.

      That's one real cool old timey California  trailer hitch.  Can the plate be seen without crawling under the car?   Jay   

[djfordmanjack]

Jay, my Holley type two barrel carb is a Ford OEM equipment which would be used on a 57. It is covered in the 57 shop manual as well. It has been rebuilt last year and yes the vaccum advance line comes from the carb , namely the typical Holley idle circuit plate and there is really only that one vaccuum exit ( or rather inlet) with a 3/8UNF fitting. it's a bit alarming that the og vacc advance line was cut and plugged for whatever reason. the diaphragm is in working order. So somebody already fiddled with it but they obviously didn't adress the real cause.
It must be something that happens very quickly. I start the engine, let it run until the choke is off the cam, drive the car out of my place and everything is nice, ok (maybe 700-800) idle in N and nicely running in D when stopped. Driving it for about 5minutes and 3 miles and engine stalls as soon as you stop at the light. won't even idle in N or P. starts immediately and I can keep idle with a little gas and left foot braking. as soon as I adjust the idle set screw about 1/2 turn in it will hold idle again ( if a little high in N) and D will go in with the typical clunk, but it won't stall. It drives fully normal. then park it for 10 minutes with engine off and I can back off the idle set screw and it will be back to normal until 3 minutes later it will stall again. choke flap and cam are always open as in hot condition.
I reckon that a little change in idle mixture ( for whatever reason, vacc leak, hot air from the headers or trapped under hood...)
lowers the rpm, which causes the mechanical advance to retard the timing, which further drops idle, causing to stall engine. I am pretty sure it is a combination of idle mixture and timing problem. Unfortunately it has been raining and cold for 2 days in line so I haven't been able to work on it under real driving conditions.
20 years ago my first 57 crashed into a wall, when I was fiddling on the carb. I had the car just 2 weeks, The gear selector lever was not properly set and some PO had mounted an overly heavy stupid shifter ball without checking the worn og P locking mechanism. Needless to say, that when I slightly revved the 302, the gear dropped from P to R and it backed up into a wall. luckily nobody was hurt and the damage wasn't too bad, but lesson learned forever. always set the parking brake and block the wheels, even lift the rear axle in case somethings phoney with trans or so.
I have replaced the brake cable in the CS and tested it. It won't even break loose the wheels a bit in D and half throttle. You know me already Jay....Let's hope that others think the same way - SAFETY FIRST !!!
Yes the (new) data tag has to be visible for an officer in case and will be mounted in place of the old one.

[djfordmanjack]

JFI Chilton says 1 degree centrifugal advance @ 375 rpm and full 18degrees at 2000rpm. That means an approximate increase of timing of 1 degree per 100 rpm. that means 7 degrees of timing difference between 1000rpm and stall. that is pretty much what I observe with the timing light, maybe a little more ( estimated 10 degrees) of timing fluctuation, when engine rpms drop and stalls when hot. can't wait to go out again and search for the cause. stupid rain, move away !