Nice of you to offer those pumps and assorted gizmos. I can assure you somebody on this site would appreciate them.

1. You've got a lot more going on there than I originally thought. The two circular things in the diagram I believe are charcoal vapor canisters that collect gasoline fumes from fuel tanks and hold them for the carb to suck up. There is usually a solenoid or valve that allows the carb to "purge" the charcoal canisters when the engine is hot and under load.

Might want to keep these operational as you will literally be living on top of these gas tanks...benzene vapors aren't great for your health.

2. Keep your original air cleaner and its hot air intake. It prevents carburetor icing = smooth driveability in humid and cool temps. They say carbs can ice in as high as 60 degree temps. This will not affect performance.

3. You should be able to get away with removing cats and air pump and associated plumbing. You might have to run high octane or retard timing since you removed EGR....which kind of defeats your purpose of removing egr....if you decide to reattach EGR, all it needs is ported carburetor vacuum through a coolant temp switch... that's it.


4. The rest of the gizmos are mostly one-way check valves and delay valves. The engineers must've thought they were useful or something.
5. Sweet bimmer! Hope I find one like it!

 

Also forgot to mention:

Make sure you leave the following vac lines connected:

1. Automatic transmission vacuum modulator
2. HVAC system
3. Cruise-control
--Any of these three may also be connected to a vacuum reservoir canister which needs to stay.
4. Distributor vac advance (manifold or ported....another can o worms)

 

Are you familiar with the Edelbrock carbs, thus the reason for using it? I prefer the holley carbs you can get a aftermarket carb that almost looks like the carb that came on it, only without the emissions calibration and all the vacuum ports. But I am more familiar with the holleys, so that is why I lean toward them.

 

Ah so I wonder if I'm supposed to basically "short circuit" those canisters?
All I removed was anything connected to the air pumps: (The lower air pump is still on but disconnected, that bolt was a PAIN to get to from the back and it's not doing anything where it's hanging, right now!)

and associated lines. The latter of which I haven't entiley traced or eliminated but, it hasn't seemed to effect idle/running as of yet.
I need to drive for safety inspection tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

Still have the original air cleaner (Smog connections on passenger side blocked off, now) and line with the flap at the front which appears to be vacuum/temp actuated? All that is currently intact.

I am 99.9% sure there are no cats at all. I will have to put eyes on it again in that context to be 100%. I think most of the exhaust was replaced at some point and maybe if they existed before, they were eliminated.
We cats ever put in place without O2 sensors?

I need to go ahead and split the line wrapping and pick out anything that isn't connected to anything else at this point.
Idk what is up with the burnt looking thing towards the back of the engine but maybe tracing the lines will tell me something.

Just so happens, this E90 will be for sale when I get back from this trip if you're interested!



HVAC is definitely one I didn't think of. On that note, I wonder if it would be helpful to put a shut off on the AC compressor?
It looks to me at this point that it's just like the old Jaguars and the AC compressor essentially runs all the time?

I found someone to charge the non leaking R12 system before we leave so that will be nice.
Nothing beats an old school, working, R12 system!

Not in particular. In fact, when I last had any dealings with carbureted engines, Holley was the "thing".
That was with a Chevrolet and, about 30 years ago, so.....

Edelbrock was just what seemed to have the most information available and what seemed to be most commonly recommended in forums and, primarily, from friends that I can most easily draw knowledge from.
Honestly at this point I am equally lacking in knowledge of either, having spent so many years now working almost exclusively in FI, either manual or electronic.

 

So I'm about to mess with the timing.
I drove about 30 miles today and I can't say for sure yet but I get the feeling that I'm getting substantially better mileage and other than the idle being super low, it's not stalling when I stopped at a light, as it was doing from time to time, before.
Adjusting the kickdown worked, and I feel like I have a considerable difference in power overall.


If I'm not mistaken, the blue Mark is where I should likely find the timing, and the bronze is the range that I want to shoot for?

 

Glad to hear its working out. Someone else will have to chime in on timing the 460.

Those vapor canisters should be connected to the same vacuum as the PCV valve (large nipple at very base of carb intake) which obviously you must also keep--But, there should be a solenoid valve that only allows these canisters to when engine is hot and running.

A/C compressor should actually have an electric clutch in the pulley, which spins freely until A/C is turned on in cab. No issue there. If its not leaking, why ya need a charge??

Here's more than you'll ever want to know about 70s/80s emissions systems https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...emissions.html

carb icing and why stock air filter is good: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...r-cleaner.html

I'll PM ya bout the e90...

 

Looks like the Blue is about 8 BTDC and the gold is about 10 BTDC. Either one of these are a good starting point, but nothing on your engine is factory now, you are on your own. Basically, the higher you can set the timing without pinging, the better power and fuel mileage you will get. That's the way the fuel injected engines work, the computer is constantly bumping up the timing till it hears something from the knock sensor, and then it backs it off. Then it bumps it up again till it hears from the knock sensor again. It keeps doing this over and over, constantly keeping the timing on the edge of detonation.

As you travel across the country on vacation, you may actually have to tweak the dist yourself on the road, if you get a poor batch of fuel somewhere.

 

Got the stock air circuit with the flap on the end still hooked up!
Man, it's crazy to think that a carb can ice up at that high of a temperature but, atomization & volatile fluids, it makes sense.

Tomorrow I've dedicated the majority of the day to making sure that any little vacuum leaks or missconnected systems are all accounted for, since we leave Friday morning!

As far as the AC, I would assume that it's probably never been charged.
I assume this because the low side charge port is virtually inaccessible where it's positioned in front of the top bolt on the AC bracket. even if you had a low profile fitting, you wouldn't be able to snap it on there.
after doing a little bit of research I found that typically, in order to facilitate charging the system, people use a r134a service port and put it further down the line.
We started getting the stuff together to build one of those today and I scrap the idea for now.
the system works, just not as good as I know an r22 system should.
I would attribute this to 34 years without a lot of used, I think it's safe to assume that it could have leaked out some over that period of time.
I've seen some variations of the E350 that actually have a button on the dash for the AC, this particular one engagess the AC clutch once the selector is slid all the way over to the left.

I was thinking maybe it was like the old Jaguar xjs AC which was constantly engaged. A big part of that was that it was also connected to a heat exchanger that cooled the fuel to keep the system from vapor locking.

Good point. I had thought I had read specifically that, when eliminating the EGR / air injection there was a recommended setting for that.

I've set several cars by ear, usually 4 cylinder water cooled Volkswagen engines though!
I didn't think about having to potentially mess with it on the road, I will certainly take that into consideration.

one thing I have thought about is the fact that we are going to be doing some major altitude changes and I'm wondering what effect that is going to have on the carburetor.

I mean, we're at a slightly higher elevation than a lot of the surrounding areas, being in the top of the blue Ridge mountains, but we are going essentially to Denver, first.

Thanks so much for everyone's input, I'm feeling much better about the whole thing then when I first took the dog house off, LOL!

 

[QUOTE=jackietreehorn;18704413]

Try bumping the timing up as far as it will go without pinging. You can do this by hooking a vacuum gauge to manifold vacuum and turning distributor until you reach maximum vac reading and then lowering it back by a couple Hg. Also, overall manifold vacuum will tell you if you're engine is in tune. You should see above 17 Hg. Hopefully in 20's.
/QUOTE]

Hey there it is! I'm about to try that, now!