Why do I have high fuel pressure...

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Texasdoc

Just guessing here and maybe someone else will chime in with the right answer, but you can ask PowerMaster if they have a slightly larger drive gear to increase gear mesh/engagement...???

If you find the wear pattern is unacceptable, and you find that it's not adjustable somehow, and PowerMaster won't help you, then I would contact Robb Mc -- his starter gets very high ratings over on the FordFE forum and he will make you a custom drive gear that fits perfectly with your tolerances. I only know that though from reading years of posts over on the FE forum; no personal experience. Although i do use Erson roller rockers, which he designed. Here's his site if you decide to go that way:
Welcome to RobbMc Performance Products

[steve meltzer]

i have the motor plate and will try to count the teeth. thanx for the info and the starter instructions, which i'm sure are buried in my file drawer, somewhere. s

[patrickt]

At this rate, you're liable to find a couple of chipped teeth off of the flywheel, so we'll have to pull the transmission out to get the bellhousing off to get to it, then we'll use the wrong pilot bearing putting it back in and fry the thrust bearing on the crank, and maybe drop the trans on the side of the car, then from there we can break the cam, water pump, and create some intake leaks. Yessirrreee, I think this little fuel pressure fix up is good for another two years worth of work....

[steve meltzer]

oooh Patrick, you're a devil and bad luck....tho' I haven't looked at every tooth (I think there are 184, right?) I have at least one bad one (well, absent, completely chipped off). I have one major project goin' in my garage now (engine out reseal and amateur detailing of all parts including the engine bay on an old Ferrari), so my lift is tied up for awhile. Your thoughts (other the Rube Goldberg of catastrophes you've envisioned!). s

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by steve meltzer

Your thoughts (other the Rube Goldberg of catastrophes you've envisioned!). s

Just put in the same brand and model of starter you had in there before (it got you by until now) and let's get the car running. I don't want your car to be like the guy that checked in to the hospital with an ingrown toenail and then never made it back out alive....

[steve meltzer]

The PowerMaster starter was rebuilt yesterday, in just an hour or so! $65 included the clutch, gear + labor, so I'm ready to see how it works. I guess if eats another starter gear, I'll have to start thinking about some serious wrenching. thanx and more later. s

[steve meltzer]

OK, got the starter in but trouble starting the car. Cranked fine and you could see fuel coming from the venturis and the squirters. It fired up once or twice but I couldn't keep it running. When it did fire up, you could see fuel and air going straight down from the primary venturis....never really seen that before. Looked like a tornado headed straight down to the butterflies. Now that I've tried several more times, the starter no longer wants to catch the (highly challenged) teeth on the flywheel. Timing is OK, checked and never touched. Rotor and cap look OK to me and to a semi-professional guy who's doing some body work on another car for me. Got spark that i can verify. Bowl levels set with e-pump on. argggh. thanx steve

[patrickt]

A tornado. Huh. OK, there has to be something wrong on your primary side. Without removing the carb from the car, if you can, I know you have a Turkey Pan, so do I, and hopefully yours is removable like mine, take the primary bowl off, look at the metering block, blow everything out again, make sure you have the gasket on in the correct direction (I kind of think you can't put them on wrong anymore) and put the old power valve back in. Then double check that, with the car not running, and the site plugs out of the bowls, that the electric fuel pump has the fuel level staying at just below the site hole and the needle and seat valves are shutting off the fuel flow and it's holding there.

[steve meltzer]

OK, i'll work on that tomorrow. thanx for the new idea. I too, believe one of the issues is on the primary side + the known starter issue. s

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by steve meltzer

OK, i'll work on that tomorrow. thanx for the new idea. I too, believe one of the issues is on the primary side + the known starter issue. s

Or maybe the gasket around the PV is bad, or missing, or loose - torque it down to a good 50 inch/lbs. The power valve normally is closed when you're idling, or trying to idle (because you have over 6.5" vacuum for that particular valve). This prevents any gas from "shortcutting" around the jet restrictions. Back in the 80's and before, a good back fire could break your PV and the classic test for checking for a blown PV was to turn your idle screws all the way in and see if your engine dies (meaning the PV was good). But Holley fixed that bug around 1990 or so. I know the odds of getting a bad PV in a new rebuild kit is pretty low, but that could be an answer....

[CHANMADD]

So much ado about nothing. Why ...tell me why...for what reason do you have two pumps........Why?????

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by CHANMADD

So much ado about nothing. Why ...tell me why...for what reason do you have two pumps........Why?????

I think Steve said it was because that's the way it came from KMH but, regardless, it really isn't that unusual to have both. The real concern I have now is that we're eating up the flywheel teeth.

[dcdoug]

Originally Posted by CHANMADD

So much ado about nothing. Why ...tell me why...for what reason do you have two pumps........Why?????

The originals had an electric fuel pump and a mech fuel pump set up in parallel with the electrical fuel pick up being lower in the tank. The originals didn't have a fuel level gauge, just a fuel pressure gauge. So you drove the car off the mech pump and if you ran out of gas, you flipped on the electric pump and either pitted or drove to the nearest gas station.

The 4000/6000 CSX cars are all still set up this way, even though most of us have fuel level gauges.

I've actually needed to use this feature....

[steve meltzer]

I probably won't get to the carb today, we'll just have to see. At any rate, my KMP (#174) has never had a fuel level gauge. Most Ferrari street cars until the late '60's, had both mechanical and e-pumps. Once I stop chewing starter and flywheel teeth, i'll be glad I had both. steve

[steve meltzer]

OK, Got out of school early today and you can't remove the primary bowl without...well I take that back. I didn't realize that you can get the primary bowl off if you just loosen the carb and lift it up a bit, as the accelerator pump arm sits in a groove in the Kirkham pan. I learned this after a bunch of extra work. Oh well.

So here are 2 photos of the bowl, its float (which looks low to me, but did have a "trickle" from the sight hole with the e-pump on), the PV and it's gasket and the metering block with its gaskets as I had it mounted. In the photos, the new PV gasket looks like it's been damaged, but it's fine and new as well. The photo lies. The PV was pretty snug. I'm sending the other 2 photos in a separate post.

thanx steve

[steve meltzer]

not sure why it posted a double take, but here are the other two photos i wanted to post. thanx again. s

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by steve meltzer

So here are 2 photos of the bowl, its float ... which looks low to me,

I can find nothing wrong in any of the pictures. That picture of your bowl also looks fine (because there's no gas in the float bowl to make it rise). To reassure you, here's a picture of mine, which is properly calibrated, although you can not tell it from the picture.



The only way I know to test a Power Valve is with a vacuum pump and something like the Moroso tester. But you can push the plunger back and forth with your thumb and finger and try and feel something different from the old one. I think I would just put the old one back in for now -- we're pretty confident it was working alright and if the new one is "stuck" in the open position, that could contribute to an overly rich mixture. An open Power Valve generally boosts up the circuit by a good ten jet sizes, which is quite a lot.

[steve meltzer]

Right, but mine also looked low when held upside down, as the factory says to set it dry. More later. s

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by steve meltzer

Right, but mine also looked low when held upside down, as the factory says to set it dry. More later. s

Alright. There is an old trick that you can use if you really think something is misbehaving between the float mechanism and the N/S valve, but it only does it when you have the bowl screwed on. The only reason I know this factoid is because of the configuration of the secondary side of the 4160. You probably wondered to yourself "why is the float in the secondary side black nitrophyl and the float on the primary side brass?" The reason is not that Holley wanted to cut corners; it is, instead, because a brass float will interfere, sometimes, on the metering plate on the secondary side of the 4160. You can't tell this, of course, when the bowl is off the carb, because there is no interference and everything works perfectly. The way you can check a float in that situation, is with dental floss. You tie the floss around the float and fish it out of one of the top bowl screw holes. You then put the bowl back on with three screws and you can test the operation of the float by pulling the floss. You can also blow in to the fuel line and, if your lungs are strong, you can muster a good 2.5psi to see that the N/S is indeed closing. As I said, this is a rarely used trick, but you now have it in your back pocket just in case you need it.

[steve meltzer]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Alright. There is an old trick that you can use if you really think something is misbehaving between the float mechanism and the N/S valve, but it only does it when you have the bowl screwed on. The only reason I know this factoid is because of the configuration of the secondary side of the 4160. You probably wondered to yourself "why is the float in the secondary side black nitrophyl and the float on the primary side brass?" The reason is not that Holley wanted to cut corners; it is, instead, because a brass float will interfere, sometimes, on the metering plate on the secondary side of the 4160. You can't tell this, of course, when the bowl is off the carb, because there is no interference and everything works perfectly. The way you can check a float in that situation, is with dental floss. You tie the floss around the float and fish it out of one of the top bowl screw holes. You then put the bowl back on with three screws and you can test the operation of the float by pulling the floss. You can also blow in to the fuel line and, if your lungs are strong, you can muster a good 2.5psi to see that the N/S is indeed closing. As I said, this is a rarely used trick, but you now have it in your back pocket just in case you need it.

Actually, I did find it odd that the primary was brass, the secondary, black nitrophyl, thanx for answering that question. So, if the brass is on the primary only, then there would be no need to do the floss test, right? (Can't interfere with the secondary metering plate if it's only the primary side.) Also, if I did the floss test, should I use the wax or unwaxed kind? (only joking!) s