I have a 1976 F100 with a 302 and need a shop manual and the Ford shop manuals are impossible to find. So what would be second best choice?

 

The ford ones are on ebay. less than 30 bucks

 

I typed 1976 302 ford maual and got nothing.

 

I tried again, 1976 ford truck shop manual volume 2, and got it. Thanks

 

What exactly were you looking for in the manual ?

 

I have been working on adjusting the carb. and the timing. Volume 2 ford truck shop manual should cover this if it is engine related, hopefully.

 

There's several guys here who can give you instructions on that, myself included. Set the timing first, then adjust the idle speed on the carb, then fine tune the idle using the mixture screws. Once you've done this, run it awhile then pull a couple of spark plugs and see what color they are to see if you need to change jets. Start with an initial timing setting of 10-12* BTC, the factory setting of 6* is just plain retarded, literally. These motors run better with more timing. If you get pinging with it, either run a higher octane fuel or back off on the timing, the former is preferred though, retarding the timing nets you less power overall.

 

Thanks baddad457 for offering, should I start a new thread or throw my questions out here? My neighbor is my helper and most knowledgeable person I have who is willing to help and teach me how to work on this project. I have zero mechanical skills but always wanted to know how to wrench on a car or truck. So I bought my 1976 f100 with a 302 engine. The trucks seeps fluids from every gasket imaginable but runs. It has a valve tap on passenger side that we have tried to fix with a shim under the rocker but this failed. My intake was seeping coolent so I took the opportunity to upgrade to a edelbrock performer intake and a rebuild (by my neighbor) holley 600cfm 4 barrel carb. We marked the distributor cap with base for reinstall but think we might have still ended up a tooth out of time possibly. The truck runs but the timing light reads off the scale to run at its best not close to the recommended (8-14) range. I discovered this may be because the vacum hose is connected to the manifold nipple instead of the timed or ported nipple? hopefully that's the issue.

 

Base timing is always set with the vacuum port disconnected and plugged so no additional timing is pulled in to skew the reading. For the same reason the base timing is also set with the idle RPM at factory spec, say 500-600 RPM. At higher idle RPMs than this the centrifugal distributor weights start to move out and will pull in more timing, and skew the reading. But the initial timing isn't really all that important.

The important part is to check with the light and see where the ignition timing winds out to - stops advancing - when spooling up the RPM to 2500, 3000 RPM and up. Be careful when doing this. Mind the fan, and stay out of the plane of it. For all modern V8 somewhere around 36° BTDC around 3000 RPM is optimal. Fuel quality, compression, elevation, intended use etc etc play a role on how much timing can be brought in but for best power and best fuel economy you always want as much timing as she'll stand.

So if it will tolerate 38° BTDC, that's what you want. Always. Every engine is a little bit different for whatever reason, you're tuning YOUR engine, you're not tuning a book. If it pings on hard acceleration back it off slightly. In that regard you don't care a whit what the base timing ends up at, 10°, 15°, 6°, whatever set it to wherever it needs to be to make sure that it ends up with enough timing at high RPM - 34°, 36° BTDC, somewhere in there. This can take a little bit of experimenting and test drives. If you're really picky you might want to get in the distributor and install lighter springs, and limit the amount of advance the distributor will bring in. This allows for a higher base timing. Still the same 36°, just in a different place in the curve. Usually somewhere between 10° and 20°, starter kickback can be a problem as you get closer to 20°.

When you are satisfied with the mechanical timing then re-connect the vacuum advance canister and adjust that. Keep in mind you're done at this point with the mechanical timing, if there is now excessive engine knock with the vacuum advance connected, then that's what needs adjusting, not the base timing.

 

That is all great information Tedster9, I will pass this on to my neighbor this Friday when we take another shot at tuning. Thanks again.

 

If you're using ported vacuum (the nipple on the passenger side of the carb's main metering block) you can leave it hooked to the carb while setting the base timing. This will add nothing to the timing at idle. As for the rest, I wouldn't fool with the distributor till after you have the carb dialed in. No sense in complicating things here. The vacuum hose needs to go to the outer port on the distributor if there's two nipples there. The inner retards the timing. Both would have been routed through a vacuum switch on or near the T-stat housing and that would have been connected to full manifold vacuum.

 

If you have a tapping lifter, it could be sticking. Otherwise, it may have too much lash, that needs to be taken out somehow. Adding shim to a a rocker would go the wrong way.

If your distributor rotor was off a tooth, it can be compensated for by adjusting the housing to set proper timing, limited by what objects the distributor will hit. You got some great information on how to set timing, and if you can do so without hitting anything with the vacuum canister or twisting the vacuum line or wire too much, I'd just leave it.

 

X 2 on this. That lifter is more than likely gummed up inside making it stick. When it frees itself, it's gonna cause a bigger problem. Also on the subject of the distributor, make sure the vacuum pod functions. Quick way to do this is to remove the distributor cap, then take the vacuum hose loose at the carb, then while sucking on the hose watch to see if there's movement of the breaker plate in the distributor. Also would be a good thing to replace the points ignition with a Pertronix unit and a hotter coil to fire it. Points are nothing but trouble and unless you have a dwell meter to set them, you're shooting in the dark as to the proper setting. The point gap setting is only a starting point, you need a dwell meter to get em right.

 

Again great information, much appreciated. As to the lifter sticking, we thought the push rod was worn slightly, this is why we shimmed it. I may have to try to replace these parts with new. Checking if the vacuum pod functions is another great idea that we will for sure check. Thanks to all who have helped, I will definitely let you all know the results come Friday.

 

You can take apart the lifter and clean it with very fine emery paper and solvent to stop the sticking. But don't mix up the parts from different lifters since the inner barrel is selectively fitted to the outer.


I clean them on most engines I have apart, if the cam and lifters are still serviceable.


I believe the quality of most replacement parts is much inferior to originals.