Sorry for being the resident needy person here lately. This is my first engine install. I just got her back from the shop to have the u joints replaced and the shifter cable fixed. The sleeve that keeps it rigid was broken and a new one had to be fabbed. They also had to reroute one of my exhaust pipes to clear the new bracket. Ugh..

Which brings me to my current state. The car would drive, but would not shift out of first. My first thought was that the kickdown cable was constantly being pulled, so I disconnected it. Same problem. Then I realized that I did not hook up the vacuum mod on the turbo 350. So I hooked that up. Haven't been able to drive it at speed yet because the engine won't idle in gear. It has a nice 1000 (estimated by the way it sounds) idle in neutral or park but as soon as you drop it in gear it starts to sputter and lope. I am using an Edelbrock 600 that was rebuilt and calibrated for a 351 Cleveland. Theoretically my 358 shouldn't place a whole different load on it, should it? If you hit the throttle in gear there is about a 3 second lag where absolutely nothing changes. It doesn't sound like it is bogging or anything and then it takes off like a fighter jet. My neighbor (proud owner of a 1980 T/A) told me to screw both mixture screws all the way in, back them both out 2.5 turns and then try to set the idle speed from there. Any thoughts if this is the best idea to run with? I'm not sure if it is running lean or rich, but I know that the shop set the idle and when I got it home the choke was halfway closed. They said that they had seen that but not changed it, so I am assuming that they set the idle with the choke shut halfway.

 

I'm assuming that your engine was at operating temperature by the time you got home. The first thing you need to do is get the choke to open completely when the engine is at operating temperature. Any adjustment you do with it partially closed will be wrong.

 

A choke that functions erratically is going to be less useful than no choke at all - in fact, it will be harmful for reasons like these.

Edelbrock includes a fairly comprehensive tuning manual with their carburetors that you can download from their website.

I would treat this carburetor as if it's never been tuned and go about it systematically. Fix the choke, get the idle working, then worry about primary and secondary metering.

 

Could be a vacuum leak...

 

 

Well I adjusted the idle speed and enriched the mix a little bit. I am pleased to say that the car will start, idle well after it warms up, idle and lope in gear and will drive forward through all gears. I have to get the kickdown linkage rigged so it works, off-idle part throttle performance is a little rough so I think I'm going to bump the mix screws or idle speed screw out another eighth turn or so. It is leaking a little bit of coolant around one bolt at the front of the intake manifold, so I need to take that bolt out and put sealer on it (I had to remove it to mount a throttle spring bracket and I thought that the sealer it had would hold up - apparently not) and it is seeping a little oil at the fuel pump (new pump so I'm pretty sure I need to tighten the mount bolts). But it drives!!