This is my first post here.

I have a 1985 E150 Club Wagon with some kind of 351 - 4V and 54K miles. I'm guessing its a Windsor H.O. I bought the van just recently.

Its been running excellent until last night. It was damp and raining, and I was on the highway. Not having experienced a 4-barrel in decades, I kicked her down at about 55mph. Before long she zoomed to 80 or so, and I was quite impressed.

But after exiting the highway, the van stalled upon coming to a stop, and kept on doing this all night at every stop. I pulled over a couple times and sat in Park while allowing it to idle. Idle was rough but smoothed out, and I'd get going again, only to stall at the next stop.

When I start back up again, it starts with what seems to be a miss, and a heck of a lot of what I think is "lean" smoke. Definitely not oil burning. After some sputtering, it smooths out a bit, and acceleration is OK...no misses and pick up seems normal. But it continues to stall upon stopping. Now this was only last night's events, and it rained continuously...even today, but I haven't started it.

Any ideas what the "kickdown" did to get this van sputtering when it stops? I do not hear any pinging or knocking when I accelerate, or when I rev in neutral (not real high or hard "revving").

Thanks for your help.

Joseph

 

Hi joe,

Well, this might be tuff to diagnose but a clue for me is when you say that it was raining out. The first thing that comes to mind is that when it is raining or damp out and someone has a rough running condition or idle I head directly to the spark plug wires and cap. See if it still does it during a dry day or you can spray the cap and wires with WD-40 and see if the problem clears up. You may have dislodged some carbon when you tromped her down and some is jamming up a plug or two.
You could also have a carburater problem but first check the wires...as I can only give you some ideas.

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 07-Jun-02 AT 02:16 PM (EST)]I have had this happen to me after "getting on it" and what happened was the secondary butterflies in the carb where not going completely closed. They are totally operated by a vacuum diaphragm on the passenger side of the carb(I am assuming you have a Holley). Find the large round diaphragm housing on the pass side of the carb, and you will find a rod coming out of the bottom of it going to a bell-crank that hooks to the secondary butterfly shaft. Take some needle nose and put a little pressure on the bell-crank to make sure it's in the fully closed position. Then see if the idle problem goes away. If this fixes it, then you need to figure out why they won't shut all the way. Sometimes just loosening the bell-crank lever and then re-tightening it will work. Maybe a little wd-40 on the linkage or some carb cleaner sprayed around the butterflies will free them up too.

When this happens, it lets to much air into the engine at idle, making it seem like a vacuum leak.

 

Thanks to both of you who replied so far. Here in Cleveland, we get a break from the monsoon this weekend, so I will crawl under the hood and tinker. BTW, it was sunny and dry today, but the Club Wagon was still under the weather.

I used it to my advantage, though. This knuckelhead parked next to me in one of those newer Chevy mini-thingies that look like spacecraft, and he started giving me dirty looks. I started the old Ford up and gave him a bit of a gaseous smoking .

Joe

 

OK had a chance to tinker.

What a joke. I found a couple glaring problems that obviously need my attention.

1. My oil filler tube is jerry-rigged to hell on the valve cover breather. As of now, it is not entirely plugged into where its supposed to go, not that where its supposed to go is the right type of port. There is a piece of rubber hose wrapped around the filler tube, and that is partially jammed into the bell-shaped inlet on the valve cover. Needless to say, not a stock configuartion. How might the stock configuration look for the oil filler tube?

2. Breather valve going to air cleaner is plugged with a handy-dandy jerry-rig. Breather filter on air cleaner is BLACK...useless.

3. At the rear of the engine, from the inside of the cab, there is this wonderful wooden "cork" plugging up some kind of vacuum control device that has (4) outlets and is shaped like a cross. Three outlets are about 3/4 - 1", and the forth outlet narrows through a vaccuum device like the distributor advance.

The small hose from here goes to a multiple outlet vacuum splitter, and the (4) lines from there go to places all over the intake manifold.

One of the larger outlets on the back vacuum device leads to a metal hose that runs to each of the heads. The other larger outlet leads to a hose that goes to the air pump. And the last outlet has the wooden "cork".

So how should I connect these two "plugged" hoses (breather valve and the "cross-shaped" one in back)? Secondly, whats up with the oil filler tube?

My guess is something came loose when I kicked it down the other night. Regardless, this vacuum abortion gone bad really needs to be corrected before I can even think of checking other "normal" things.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,

Joseph

 

i had a tempo that did that would stall at a stop after highway speed just try this chk youre egr valve