Panko

Ok I think Ive worked out what needs to change. the coil is fine wired as it is, with the ballast wire intact. the distributor itself though, needs a new switched 12v feed that bypasses the resister wire. So the resister wire stays as is, but I need to change the + feed for the distributor itself.

Ok so ill stick the multimeter across the coil tomorrow while its running. if its getting less than 10v i need to bypass the resister wire?? if im getting 12v or above i should be fine? the alternator is in great working order. Spits out 14.2v all day long.

I have another question. if im running a NON resisted coil, in this case a GT40, do i still need to bypass that resister wire?

bah what a pain in the ass. ill check it out tomorrow and see what conclusions i come to.

thanks Rod, that is the answer i needed. now, do i need to replace it with a normal wire, or can i run without it? so just disconnect it? apparently there is a connecter in the escorts near the firewall

still confused. So can i run without it or do i need to replace it with something? learning here guys

but what is a resister wire? whats the difference between it and a normal bit of wire? thats what has me confused. Ill have to confirm tomorrow, but i think there is two positive wires going to the coil.

nope the escort never had a ballast resister, so apparently has the resister wire. In theory i should be able to just disconnect the wire. there is meant to be a join near the firewall wrapped in the harness. I need to unwrap the harness and find the join.

Well the Escort saga continues. there are 2 parts to this post, and one of them i feel a bit stupid for. Ive been talking tonight with Warren Heath. (Warren Heath Performance) https://www.facebook.com/Warren-Heath-Performance-135194779879292/ HE has suggested three of things that maybe causing my issues. First one he suggested is looking for any vacuum leaks on the intake side of the engine. pretty simple and easy to investigate i hope. If it is leaking i think i know where from, but i doubt it. Second suggestion, was a fault with the carburettor. apparently newer 32/36s are known for having issues, like accelerator pump diaphragms getting holes in them, the auxiliary venturis apparently come lose, the 2 piece aux venturis rotate, he listed all sorts of things. so i might have to strip the carburettor down. Third suggestion, which i feel like a bit of an idiot for. Apparently there is a resister wire hidden inside the main wiring harness for the ignition system. I need to disconnect that wire, because im running electronic ignition. Warren suggested that this could be the reason why changing the plugs last week made such a big difference, because this resister wire could be fowling my plugs over time. The reason i feel like an idiot for this, is because ive heard others talk about the resister wire, but not in depth. Warren gave me a good description of where to find the wire. so thats another thing i need to try finding and doing tomorrow.

I have saved a screenshot from the DHHS website in my phone. so if i get pulled over, ill pull that out

yes they are. however this time in lockdown, the DHHS has stated (and its on their website) we can go for a leisure drive providing we only get out of the car for 1 of the 4 essential reasons

After finding another manual pedal box on Gumtree, with the correct throttle pedal, i was wrapped. then the guy went cold on me, and stopped responding to me, after arranging freight to me from Adelaide and all, he went quiet. thankfully i hadnt paid anything before he dropped off the face of the earth. So today, i decided to "adjust" my original pedal, to get it into a more useable location. First iteration Then i decided i wanted it a little closer to the floor, a little lower... Second iteration, where it will stay. Obviously i had to correct the angle of the pad too. I drilled out the spot welds holding the pad on, then after bending the pedal above to get it to where I wanted it, while i had the pad off, I bent the last little bit to get it back in the right position, relative to the rest of the pedal arm. after a bit of trial and error, tack welding the pad back on, bending the weld etc 3 times, i finished it. Then gave it a polish to a nice chrome finish because my pedal seemed to be incorrect for the (manual) car, it didnt have the return spring hook either. So, i made one. an old hose clamp, some fuel hose and presto, i have a return spring. Here it is, installed. Its heaps closer to the brake now, but even with my biggest boots on (in pic) i still dont seem to hit both pedals at the same time. In saying that, I havent driven the car yet out on the road. The final installed position im pretty happy with. With the return pedal stop i added previously, and this pedal arm being a different shape to the one i removed, i have gained huge amounts of cable adjustment now. The pedal is sitting maybe 10-20mm lower than the brake pedal, and i still get full throttle, so this could be interesting to drive now. Cant wait to try it tomorrow.

Hi Guys, does anyone know, or know where to find the specs of a stock factory EFi crossflow camshaft? TIA Panko

The new engine is finished, nearly. just need a fly wheel, harmonic balancer, and get my rocker cover modified to clear the roller rockers. The reason im doing it twice, is because im making up a converter box that plugs into the factory van meter plug, that will make converting an injected XF to EL injection plug and play. (excluding the addition of the O2 sensor) I want to test my theory that it will all work reliably on an engine that i know is running and reliable, and not have to worry about "testing" the system on a brand new engine. *The same converter box can be used for aftermarket ECUs as well, with my future plans to go to Haltech*

or is the crow replacement for the stock EFi cam actually smaller than a factory EFi cam?

OK im a little confused. David's figures on the stock camshaft, is that at 50" or what? the figures given here are significantly lower duration than the crow cam's figures, but are higher than crow's duration at .050". If im giving cam specs to someone to write a base map onto an ECU for me, what figures am i giving them? when the factory specs David has listed above dont seem to be at .050". if i use Gerg's method of calculating the lift from the Ford workshop manual's specs, i get a total intake duration of 272, which is about the same as the crow cam i have fitted to the new engine, which is a 14892, much bigger than the stock camshaft. So i am definitely a bit confused here.

Ok thanks guys. This should help me out. I need them to give to a tuner to get a base tune, then a retune when the new engine and big cam goes in. @Mr Polson i have that too, but because its in metric(?) Measurements i didnt know how to compare to the crow cam which is in imperial

yeah ive looked at that before, but according to a little birdy, this is not correct. a stock factory cam is not the same valve lift on intake and exhaust. im trying to confirm this, and if so, what the actual specs are.

well thats the thing. previously I would have said the plugs were definitely fouled, but they looked good today. nothing out of the ordinary, which is a first for this engine. i knew it wasnt ignition on the basis that i had swapped the entire ignition system from coil to distributor, plugs, leads, the whole lot. flushing the carby last time worked. now fitting hotter plugs has seemed to significantly improved it. ive possibly been running the wrong plugs for a long time, since fitting the weber. the BP6s are good for stock, but my understanding is due to the bigger carby and bigger rush of fuel and air, i should have been running hotter plugs all along. I did a test also today before fitting new plugs, trying to compress the cylinders. number 1, sealed well enough, that with the car in gear and handbrake on, it still moved the car. all 3 other cylinders had plugs removed. however, it does have blow by. head seems to be sealing fine, but the rings are not hence the comp test only returning 100psi peak lol

well ive had some luck today. After driving the car this morning and it running like utter shit, i changed the plugs this afternoon to BP5s (from BP6s). so one step hotter. after doing this, it feels so much better. idles better, runs on all 4 cylinders, pulls really well, BUT, it still has a decent misfire cruising at an RPM range between about 2700 and 3200rpm. so cruising, the throttle only part way open, around those RPMs, it is still not happy. give it a little more throttle than cruising throttle, and its ok, and RPM outside of that area its ok. when I was changing the plugs, there was subtle hints of dried moisture, what i thought to be coolant, on top of the pistons. so i immediately thought head gasket. i think its just condensation building up over night, so if thats it, im hoping the hotter plugs will help. The old plugs, came out looking right. usually when i pull them out, i get 2 that look ok (#1 and #4) and 2 that are as black as anything (#2 and #3), which are the two that the primary barrel runs on. Well since the last time i pulled the plugs out, ive spaced the carby up, and now the plugs look very close to even across the board, and they are a good grey colour, clean and dont smell like fuel, and not oily. so im hoping that means my mixtures might be pretty close now that ive spaced the carby. that was the reason for spacing it. So tomorrow ill fire it up again in the cold morning, and see what happens. its pretty low on fuel now, so i might drain the tank tomorrow completely, replace the bit of old fuel line coming out of the tank, then put some fresh fuel in there.

Yeah perhaps i could try taking the valve lash back a tiny bit. although previously its tended to run better as it gets up to temp, not the other way round. argh i dont know anymore lol.

well my thinking is the reason engines with emissions controls are dirtier inside is because they are reburning engine emissions, in this case it would have been oil vapour. The charcoal canister is meant to filter out what it can, then recycle back into the engine. Its the unburnt shit that goes back into the engine that makes them go yuck. Similar to a catch can, but a catch can actually catches oil and nasties which means having to drain them from time to time. 1 thing i have not tried that a mate just suggested to me in a fb messenger chat group was perhaps power supply to coil is breaking down. so i need to test voltage at coil supply. My dad suggested (after the debacle with the XF’s new engine head) perhaps the valves on one of the cylinders isnt sealing. After all, ive only had this issue with this head. The suggestion has merit, but i did pick up 10psi compression on all cylinders with this head. when i flushed out the carby, then ran the metho through the fuel tank, it came nearly 100% good again. Its now sat for a couple of weeks, its been cold and wet, contaminated fuel again? Moisture? Condensation? I got NFI, and its frustrating. Ill drive it tomorrow, see if it clears. If it clears, it suggests fuel problem again. For such a simple car, this is crazy. on a side note, been watching lots of MCM, and they were talking about spark plugs in an episode i was watching. Did some googling, and with the weber carby, ive generally still run standard Escort plugs. Ive realised i should possibly be running slightly hotter plugs, to help with the rich AF mixture.

Look to meet emissions yeah i should have one, but tbh how much cleaner are they? the engine certainly is cleaner internally. I know from oil changes. Whether or not they would filter out moisture, doesnt make a difference. Because the fuel breather into the canister doesnt affect the feed line to the carby. what i would need is a water separator, or an old style fuel pump with a bowl on it, where they seperate the water and fuel

I changed it because I removed the charcoal canister, and it was not breathing haha. on warm days it used to pressurise and push fuel back out the filler. classic example was a club run with VicMini, on a warmish day, parked in Healesville i think, id just filled it up, parked it and had lunch. came back an hour later and there was massive amounts of fuel on the ground and down the carpark. it pushed about 10L of fuel back out the filler. Same thing happened the first time i ever put a full tank of fuel in it when I got it on the road after buying it. The reason it was changed in the later cars was due to emissions laws. pre-1975 Escorts didnt run charcoal canisters like mine. haha the second pic was actually taken before the first. it didnt have the sender hooked up to it at that point.

Gauges all done, and I am wrapped with how its come up. They look fantastic, and i think suit the car really well. Unfortunately, its the same old story. fix one thing, break another. The dam misfire has come with a vengeance. it is running like a complete pig again. dropping a cylinder, no power to accelerate i think this time, I am going to drain the fuel tank entirely, flush the rest of the fuel system and clean out the carby all over again. Dad and I are starting to think it could be condensation on the inside of the tank. I have previously noticed how the outside of the tank has gotten quite wet on cold days from condensation, so perhaps its happening on the inside of the tank too. Why now is it a problem and never before you ask? 2 possible reasons. 1, i have changed the fuel tank breather to a pre-emissions car style breather, where the breather pipe comes out right at the back of the car behind the tank, instead of going through the charcoal canister. 2, the car is spending more time out in the cold weather, but under a carport, as opposed to being in a sealed shed or garage like it has in the past couple winters. I am otherwise lost as to what could be causing this issue