Today I picked up a noid test light and the harness seems to be firing good. Noid pulsed bright and all the connectors.

I replaced the IAC too but still no change.

I also checked the injectors and was getting .016-.018 resistance on them.

 

So the noid lights are hitting for several revolution, the end of the plug wires is showing 1/2" or greater blue spark length, and the plugs are fouled?

You need to be checking the cranking compression (150-180 psi) and the fuel quality.... along with checking the ignition timing with a timing light.

 

Check the ignition timing and verify that #1 is where it should be..
Obviously check firing order as well. Sounds like the timing is retarded..

 

never saw where you verified fuel pressure....this is critical. 40 - 45 lbs.

 

you verified you got fuel pressure, but what kind of fuel pressure?

carburator runs with about 6-7 psi fuel pressure.

TPI runs with 40-45 psi fuel pressure.

not quite the same. TPI won't run with 6-7 psi fuel pressure. fuel would probably just dribble out of injectors if even, it won't squirt (i.e. "inject"). that's not enough for the engine to run. mebbe enough for it to cough and frustrate you.

 

Waiting for a fuel pressure gauge to show up and I will check. I will see then what is up.

 

Ok I got my fuel pressure gauge in yesterday. After everything settled down from Christmas I drilled and tapped one of the fuel rails and installed the fuel pressure gauge. When the key is turned on it reads 43 psi and when the motor starts it drops to 40 and stays there till the motor dies after 2-3 minutes. When it died this time I decided to check the plugs and they were wet on all 8 plugs. When the motor was running I put a long screw driver to each injector to verify that they were opening and closing and they were.

While I was waiting on the fuel gauge to come in I replaced the fuel pump relay and the oil pressure switch. They were cheap enough.

The car will start and idle for 2-3 minutes but once it dies I have to wait a while. This makes since now as it seems the motor is flooding out.

Saturday I plan on removing the fuel rails and injectors to check the P/N on the injectors. I bought the fuel rails and injectors off ebay so they could be anything. I also have a good set of 19lbs injectors from an old mustang that I might throw in there just to see if it makes a difference. I know those are not the right injectors and I am only doing this as a test to see if anything changes.

I am still having problems with the battery not staying charged too. Once I get through with the injectors I am going to take the alternator to autozone and have it checked. It is less than a year old so I'll be interested to see what the results are.

 

You may have a bad FP regulator leaking gas. Pull the vac hose off it to see if gas comes out. It shouldnt. If its flooding bad, check the oil to see if it smells like gas.

 

That was my first thought to. I pulled the vacuum line any nothing come out.

 

40 is probably just a hair outside of range (I'm not 100% sure what these should be but I think 42-45 is spec).


at any rate if it is maintaining 40 psi fuel pressure is probably not your problem.

is it rough sounding during the two minutes or just before it dies?
does it rev smoothly or not at all? do you notice any erratic movements on the tach

I would unplug one injector, and pull the plug wire on that cylinder, hook it to a spark tester and watch it. make sure the spark maintains a strong blue color from startup all the way until it dies, you may have a module, pickup or coil over heating.

 

It is rough idling. I can rev it and as the rpms go up it seems to smooth out some but once i let off it dies right away. It also has black smoke at the exhaust and it definitely smells up the garage quickly.

The module is new but not the coil or pickup. I just went and started it again with the noid light and spark checker on cylinder number 1 and both lights were flashing good until it died. They did not stop flashing until after it died, not before.

 

You may need to remove the O2 sensor and clean it good with carb cleaner, blow dry it good. When the motor is running that rich it will contaminate the O2 sensor fast. The first 3 minutes the car is in open loop. Not using the O2 sensor. Then it goes to closed loop and the O2 sensor comes in to play. If its fouled it will really screw up the mixture.

 

Does it have a cold start injector and if so is it leaking? Lacking a scan tool what is the map sensor reading in volts with the engine idling and reved up? Is the map sensor vacuum hoses connected to a constant source of vacuum so it is seeing what the engine sees. If your fuel pressure only drops to 40 psi running and is 43 with Key O Engine Off then only 20 kpa of vacuum which is way to little it should be closer to 50. Did you check the timing yet? Other than a vacuum leak it is the fastest way to lower the vacuum. You might ask yourself why the previous owner changed it to a carb too. What might be broken that either could not be fixed or at least not figured out.

 

Why did you drill the fuel rail ? Is there no schrader valve on your rail ?
Have you tried with the cold start valve electrical connector removed ?

 

x2....

 

Yes it has a cold start injector. I did disconnect the connector from the injector but no change. This car is MAF so I do not believe it has the MAP sensor. I need to find my vacuum guage and check the vacuum. I will try that today. The carb swap was several owners back so I could not find the true story as to why it was swapped but I have asked myself that same questions many times. I have checked the time and set it at 6deg base. I have looked all over for vacumm leaks and do not see anything.

I did just noticed that I can start it and pull one off a vacuum cap on the side of the throttle body and the engine starts trying to run a litte better. I guess with the motor getting too much fuel that the extra air would only help.

I just used a fuel pressure guage with and NPT on it. I drilled out the schrader valve location to accept the NPT.

I did disconnect the connector from the injector but no change.

I am wondering now if maybe the cold start injector is leaking or stuck open. I'll try and do some testing on it next.

 

I have never had a car that has a cold start injector but is it possible to remove the connector and injector with the fuel line hooked up and just cycle the key and see if it leaks fuel. With the timing it might be interesting to see if it advances from 6 degrees with the engine running to see if the computer is talking to the ignition module. I think when you get to the bottom of this you will find out why the carb was installed in the first place.

 

i'm wondering if there's something screwy with the chip. is it still the factory chip, the right one? or something else?

 

Well here is today's update.

First this morning I decided to check the cold start injector. First I unplugged it to see if there was a difference and noticed nothing. I then removed the injector from the manifold and put it in a container. I then plugged it back in and started the motor. Only a small amount of fuel came out and it must have been just momentary because as it was running I could see no fuel coming out. I hooked everything back up.

Next I decided maybe it was time to swap out the injectors with a set I knew was working. I pulled off the injectors and swapped them with another set that I had. Again no difference at all.

I checked the codes and now I get:

code 33 MAF sensor circuit
code 42 EST circuit
code 54 Fuole pump circuit

I am going to focus on MAF sensor for now. I will check to see if the FSM has a way to check it. I am sure it will. I verified that the wiring checked as the manual said with two being ground, one being 5v and one being 12v. All checked good. One other note is I noticed no difference in the way the car runs with or without the MAF sensor connected.