Goodbye 78, hello 62 or 66

Someone on the Chevelle board uses as his signiture:

The only DONE car is a SOLD car

I think there is a bit of truth to this.

I'm also giving some thought to procuring a 90s roller cammed engine for my
little micro-truck. I drive the snot outta this thing and I doubt it will last all that long. Current engine is a 302 that has been in the car since the early 80s.

 

There's a lot of truth to that quote. Part of the reason we sold our PT Crapper a couple of months ago. The fixes/wants/needs list was always growing. Every time something needed to be fixed is was a $600-1500 charge, most of it labor. Part of the reason we bought the mustang. One can actually work on it and get their hands around the engine.

In hindsight I probably should have just bought a newer 5.0 block versus the 302 I am working on now. But hey, it was essentially free so beggars can't be choosers. Even with the 289 I had thought about going fuel injection, just because I like the tweakbility of some of those system and a few MPG wouldn't hurt either. Oh well. Next time.

 

Quick question for everyone here. The main pulley whell on the 302 is a good size bigger than the 289's. Should I swap them out or leave it be and just get some new belts.

 

Well the cleaning of the 302 is going a lot slower than I had hoped. That carbon buildup is surprisingly stubborn. Doesn't help that the air compressor i've borrowed in conjunction with it's air grinder just isn't big enough and so it empties quickly and takes a bit to refill, so it is slow going. Hoping to finish it up this week in the few short minutes I get when I get home from work.

Mentioned the fuel injection conversion to my wife the other day and she got really excited. Found a decent deal on craigslist for lower manifold, 2 upper manifolds, 2 computers, all the fuel rails/injectors, exhaust manifolds with O2 sensors, and harnesses and MAF stuff for $175. Cheap enough that I might go for it, but was curious about some more detailed stuff for the installation, if anyone has done it before. Most of the guides I've seen online refer to swapping the whole engine and others talk about using aftermarket gear. Do I need to swap out the alternator? Valve covers, etc. I know I need to add an electric fuel pump and run a return fuel line, but is there anything else to consider?

 

Curious. What carbon are you removing from an engine with an air grinder?

 

Err... not an air grinder but a wire wheel. Fingers working faster than my brain.

 

Which system are you looking to go for, MAF or SD, MAF requires more parts but in my opinion is the way to go, it handles modifications much better. I have some extra parts if you can't find them local, but you can though as many folks ditch their stock stuff for after market like I did.

 

The system this guy has is MAF. Will probably go with more aftermarket stuff down the road, but starting with a stock system is more appealing right now.

 

I know I need to add an electric fuel pump and run a return fuel line, but is there anything else to consider? >havensole

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The camshaft will be an issue, probably; early 302 motors have a different firing order than the later with EFI. This will confuse a factory computer as it tries to fiddle the injector pulse widths based on what it reads from the left vs. right oxy sensors.

My intention -- when I ever get around to it, implementing EFI is nowhere near the top of my list of needed work on the car -- is to go with aftermarket, or maybe even try to design something of my own. My thinking, it could be done with a laptop and a bit of external hardware.

Edit: forgot about the distributor; you'll need to get a TFI distributor too if you want to run a Ford computer. They're very common, all 302 motors after maybe 1986. Watch that the gear on the distributor matches the metal in whatever cam you end up with.

 

There's always the megasquirt stuff but would be out of my budget if it were really needed to get the EFI system running. If you could construct a decent USB controller and had some decent programming skills, one could really run the whole thing off of a tablet. Interesting project for way down the road, as I always love a challenge like that. Would need real information on how these systems work and interpret the sensor information though.

 

If you could construct a decent USB controller and had some decent programming skills, one could really run the whole thing off of a tablet. >havensole

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My thinking is, an older laptop with hardware Centronics port and 9-pin serial would be a better platform. The printer port is a general purpose 8-bit parallel I/O, and more -- with an interrupt line, and the serial port has 4 lines that can generate an interrupt. And you can easily run them both with real-mode code. I did quite a bit of x86 assembler back in the day -- go with what you know.

 

If you can program for a serial port you should be able to convert it to USB. I'd prefer a tablet for size considerations, but a laptop would be good for hardware simplicity, though it is getting harder to find laptops with serial ports. I have some minor assembly programming history with PIC processors, but most of my current programming is C++/C#/Java based. Since the system would have to live in the computer it might be better to go with a mini PC like a carputer and hide it somewhere in the car. Curious as to what processor speed it needs to run at. I have some MIDI boards that could be programmed to interpret the sensor data and handle a lot of the controls, but I think it operates at about 10MHz and am not sure if that is fast enough for a fuel injector system.

 

I have some MIDI boards that could be programmed to interpret the sensor data and handle a lot of the controls, but I think it operates at about 10MHz and am not sure if that is fast enough for a fuel injector system. >havensole

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Per a white paper I have about the EEC4, Ford spec'ed that the computer has to be able to recalc everything between individual cylinder intake events; at 6k rpm that's 2.5 milliseconds. It has to read all the sensors, look up a base value from an array in a chip, and then do about 5 multiplication operations to get a new injector pulse width, all within less than 2.5 milliseconds -- that's pretty speedy.

But in my scheme, there would be a dumb hardware box that maintains critical event timing [batch firing once per rev based on counting the tach signal pulses, making precise injector pulse widths by counting down a xtal oscillator] -- and it would be built to continue to output whatever PW was last set until the computer sends it a new value -- so if the laptop takes 2 ms or 10ms to produce an update, the squirts will continue with the old value -- perhaps using stale data for one whole rev at high rpm. The laptop's only job is to continuously read the sensors and calc a new pulse width -- done asynchronous to cylinder timing.

I believe I can build a system that is better than a carburetor -- that would be the first goal. If you want something as good as a new car, then you should go with a stock Ford system -- but where's the fun in that?

My real problem here is that the motor is running very well with a carb and a Duraspark -- while there's all that other stuff that needs fixing more than working on stuff that isn't really broken.

 

my problem too. So many things that need to be done that it is hard to decide what optional things should be put into the needs category if at all. since most of the EFI stuff can be done with the engine in the car I am just going to wait and see how things work with the 302 in its stock config. Carb needs a good rebuild, and maybe even replaced. If it does need to go I think I will then do the whole EFI thing. I also keep forgetting about the suspension which really needs to be address.

 

Finished cleaning the engine block today and laid on a couple coats of paint. Heads are almost done being cleaned. Amazed me how much crap was built up on the pistons and valves being as the heads were "recently rebuilt." Glad I decided to do this work as it should run pretty nicely now. Took off the oil pan and found what seems like a bunch of metal fragments, a bunch of which look like they were trying to get sucked up by the oil sump filter.I've looked around the pistons and crank and can't seem to figure out where they came from. Will take a closer look at the oil pump and see if that sheds any light. I tried picking a few up with a magnet but they weren't attracted at all.

 

So after really cleaning out the oil pan I spent some time looking at those little fragments I found all in the oil pan. I am guessing they're excess hardened gasket/sealant or some hard plastic. The fragments seem to crumble so I am doubting they're metal, like I feared they were initially. Hoping to get the cylinder heads done tonight so I will post some pics once everything is done.

 

Why not just go into EEC4 and adjust the parameters to make it work like you want. That is my plan. I hope to be able to at least get the motor to idle and run half decent then do some tuning.

 

those pieces may be pieces of old valve seals . had the same stuff in the pan on my 460 . sucked up one of those suckers up in the oil pump. jammed the gears,twisted the pump drive, and was luckey the pin in the dist drive gear sheared before any damage happened. it stopped that motor right now! you did say that the heads were redone right?

 

Pretty certain about the fuel injection now, just waiting on ranchero bucks to refill so I can go grab all the parts. Found a guy on craig's list that has a complete setup for $175 (think I might have mentioned this before) with 2 computers exhaust manifolds with the O2 sensors and all that. Only missing the fuel pump and turn line. I will use the EEC4 system until I can afford a megasquirt system down the road.

Thanks for the heads up about the valve seals. The previous owner said that they did redid the seals. The gasket kit I bought has some new ones in there so I will make sure they get replaced. What you're talking about also sounds a lot like what happened to my 289 so I will check that out once the 302 is done.

Down to cleaning the last cylinder head, oil pan and timing chain cover. Probably another day or so and I'll have it all painted. Reassembly will probably take place this weekend.