Well, I've definitely had better weekends

Cougar Community Classic Cougar Maintenance Restoration and Repair
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This is my first time reading this post. I read most of it. WHEW!!! You have some great mentors providing advise - I ditto, no triple ditto - stick to basics as they are guiding you to do, go one step at a time.
Regarding your Carb - I’ve been an Edelbrock fan for a long time due to how easily and completely tunable they are. As you may know, that’s the old Carter design and I think they are still made by Weber in Italy (anyone know this is still the case?). I’ve found Holleys (at least the basic 4 barrels) to be a bit crude. That’s just my opinion.

Does this 302 motor of yours have the original (i.e. factory) cam?

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They are made by Weber in Indiana. The same company also makes grilles.

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More good news to report today…

Cold & not running, I first removed the radiator cap and disconnected the upper heater hose from the intake. Slowly poured coolant in radiator until it came out the intake fitting. clamped the hose back on, topped off radiator just above the core, sealed new 13psi cap. trapped air issue closed.:white_check_mark:
Start the car and now with fuel line moved and room to turn distributor, address the timing again. I took it up from 7 to 13.8-14 about where vacuum peaked and now is all way up to 20 from last Sunday @ 3 or 4! turned down the idle rpms back down to about 760. At this point, purring away steady, smooth and very cool running. Never ran close to this good since i got the car.

Continued to let the car idle, turned heat on full high and monitor temps, so one thing happened I think my fan temp coolant switch went bad now as the fans kicked on at 140 instead of 185. I will order a new one for install this week. After about 20m idling, the motor wouldn’t even go above 165 degrees, the cooling system & fans are functioning so well! Quite opposite of last month where it instantly overheat and boil-over on shutdown. im not used to any of this good stuff with this car (still completely replacing the poor electrical wiring job on the e-fan system this coming week) So since temp was so low, it wouldn’t even open my t-stat, i pulled the fans fuse and let it heat up. idled another 13min and in a hot brick garage with no fans, it never went above 190-200, thermostat opened and i check temps all over, has a nice variance of like 30 degrees, ± 10 between upper & lower hoses. the heat inside the car was so hot that i couldn’t even touch the metal ducts or a/c heat control switch assembly, they were all like a hot pan on a stove. so my hard work to restore the heater, A/C box and heater core has also paid off as well. very satisfying. So she ran over 35min sitting there idling, zero issues, smoothest i’ve seen this car run yet. yanked the throttle a few times and there was no more bog either (i’ll see if under load). Turned off, heat soak stayed with it out there, and nothing. no boiling, no sounds, no leaks, or puke-spitting coolant on the ground, no bloated hoses, nothing bad. like a normal car again.

Will still need to real-time adjust the new vacuum canister and also check total timing, both not touched yet, but should be a minor thing. I put a couple pics below including the new temp gauge inside the clock’s opening. (and yes, i need Bill’s dash panels asap, mine are broken & in horrible condition. they’re wrecking a beautiful interior) and i think im switching to a green backlighting too.

I am so happy right now and haven’t felt this good about the car since i’ve owned t, I needed this so badly and many of you here really helped to get it here and kept me focused on the right things too, so thank you all for that! :folded_hands:

Now tomorrow will be the real test with a couple drives out there to see how she acts on the street rolling and under load. One thing to do tomorrow before i head out and it’s related to the old argument dating back to the year one about vacuum advance canister off ported or full connection.

So I need to give you some info or you can’t properly help on this. Most of you probably drive your cars pretty normally out there including speeds up to or above 70mph cruising, my daily driver gets that, my classic cars just do not.

Other than going out of town, or to the burbs for a car show or dinner 90% of the driving time in my old cars is only> rolling under 20-35mph combined with alot of stop & go or idling in a very tight Urban setting. It’s unfortunate but is what it is until i sell and move away, which I will eventually. Occasionally i’ll go enter the expressway at off hours just to open the cars up and roll at some high speeds. Given this information, would you guys here that are very much more experienced than me on this subject. So based on the info of how this car is actually driven, should i start tomorrow connected to ported or full or should i be driving it in my setting, testing out both connections on a couple different drives to compare how it feels? I appreciate your experience and opinion or instruction on this so please let me know what you think after knowing the car’s unique use. Thanks again everyone, I appreciate you all and your help here and Sunday is the test drive and back on the road! Marco

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Hi, yes you’re right and they all have worked with and put up with me here to now have everything coming together on this first full weekend day since the prior Sunday being the worst yet for the car. After working together here, everything is different now. Im very grateful.

Very happy here with the carb all the way around and have it dialed in nicely now. What i know of the car/motor, it does have true dual exhaust and a very nice exhaust note out back, but i wouldnt say wild chop from any cam. what i was told is that before the last couple years, it sat dead for near 11yrs. its only a 37K mile car and that shows in many ways. It has none of the emission equipment left anywhere. not a sign of it. Besides entire suspension & steering parts, they did everything on the brake but for master & booster, did a valve job, head gaskets, Weiand intake, Pertronix, 24” aluminum radiator w/e-fans and the edlebrock 600. there is no indication of anyone touching cam, timing chain or more thru the life of the car.

i have no intention of ‘building ’ this cat as i have other classics that fill that niche already, but i will some point get rid of that timing setup with nylon gear situation. i had same thing on my ‘79 Cadillac Seville with Olds 350, they added nylon for quieter running. and of course that isnt going to hold up for 40, 50, 60 yrs on materials tech from that era.

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pulling our leg there Royce!

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I don’t think I did - the carburetors are made by the grille company in Indiana. The company that made carburetors in Italy went out of business long ago.

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I’m told by my friends that I’m quite ‘wordy’. I think you top me there!

To the question on driving at speed, more in particular the question about ported vs. not on the distributor… Is your distributor connected to vacuum at all? If not, then my preference is to connect as ‘ported’ - you generally get better throttle reponse at low engine loads. If you detect pinging, then either adjust static timing (lower) or revert back to the other tap in the distributor.

I will suggest that if you are original, i.e. likely a flat tappet cam - you may wish to use oils that contain higher ZDDP (in particular the Zinc element - the phosphorous is simply the chemical carrier).The reason for this is that modern day oils have less Zinc in the additives since many of the high stress wear parts have (e.g. flat tappet cams to lifter wear surface) have been eliminated. That may be worthy of a separate thread; certainly not an immediate need. Any of the aftermarket zinc additives will work well.

To the temperature concern, irrespective of what temperatures you are reading (don’t know where) - the thermostat will stay closed until it needs to open. I’ve not heard of the 1/8” hole bypass flow orifice but I can’t imagine it’s enough to matter much more than venting air. Having said that, most certainly you need the engine operating temperature to be high enough to boil off condensates - that’s the REAL reason why thermostats are in the cooling system. So… assuming you DO have a thermostat - don’t worry about temperature (with the caveat where you are sensing it may NOT be representative of the engine temp) because you will be at or above the temperate setpoint of the thermostat inside the engine. Yes, the radiator may not be at that temperature - but where the water is circulating in the block - it is.

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Hi great info for sure, and just to be clear on same page with these things, Owned couple dozen cars in my life, like 9 were from ‘60s ‘70s with old-school drivetrains so am up on the zinc & phosphorous need. i do all my own work, engine, body, interior but for sending heads out & things like that, nor do I get inside transmissions. Oil changes, I’ll run either Royal Purple, or sometimes Castrol plus Rislone ZDDP.

Thermostat 1/8 hole no definitely not coolant related. is just a backstop for any trapped air. that was resolved this morning when i displaced all air from the block filling radiator & then bleeding out the intake heater hose.

The cooling system and temps will be fine now with everything else that was jacked up properly repaired. mentioned earlier only because the fan temp sender just went bad with todays test and turning on way too early @ 140, inhibiting proper operating temps. i’ll have that swapped out and all back to normal this week. just going for a couple short joy-rides to finally enjoy this car for a bit tomorrow anyhow.

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Way to stick with it - great progress! With timing advanced that far, I bet you get real snappy acceleration! But don’t be alarmed if the engine sounds like it’s full of rocks when you accelerate. You’ll likely have to dial it back closer to 10 degrees BTDC to prevent pre-ignition pinging.

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Thanks. yeah, actually before closing up yesterday i took it down to about 12 so we’ll see how she runs. I’m looking forward to driving the car today.

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Sunoco recently came out with a 94 octane pump gas. Maybe there is a station near you. That would be fun.

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They’re in my region but not the city. way out in the North and South suburbs.

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Sounds like it runs great at 12 degrees BTDC initial timing? You must be running premium in it! Congratulations on getting it going, and enjoy driving it. It is definitely a head turner!

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Hey Craig, to help keep the thread history & resolution accurate, I started with 14 in the garage, but ended up @ just under 11 BTDC base timing on the road test, vacuum advance connected to ported side and running just a quality regular gas.

Should I have put that new TY post & update connected here at the end of this thread? Maybe Bill can decide that it should be moved here before your reply. You were a big help and thanks for the compliment on the car too.

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Nice! Glad to have contributed. It sounds like you are all set for some fun driving, and I’ll just add the link to your other post here:

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Great, thanks for connecting them here. that takes care of having everything together now👍

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