Well, I bought an 86 F150 4.9L a week and a half ago.

So far, I've put in lots of elbow grease, but not a lot of dollars, and would like to keep it that way. I've capped off a few vacuum leaks, and replaced the brake booster. (Big, loud vacuum leak there!)

I've done plugs and wires, and will probably be replacing or rebuilding the carb.

The smog pump is not hooked up. There are many, MANY plugged vacuum lines all over the engine compartment.

Do I just rip them all off and start over?

I know that I need vacuum for my distributer, modulator, and brake booster.

Can I live without the rest of it?

I hate to screw up the original design, but the smog pump isn't hooked up, and countless vacuum lines are laying open or plugged off.

What do you think?

 

Yes you can remove the rest. You can cap the hole where the O2 sensor is with an old spark plug. Rebuild the 1 barrel carter carb and adjust the fuel mixture and ride!! I have an 82' that I did this with and still get 22mpg average with the old "granny" 4 speed.

 

Yes you can remove the rest. You can cap the hole where the O2 sensor is with an old spark plug. Rebuild the 1 barrel carter carb and adjust the fuel mixture and ride!! I have an 82' that I did this with and still get 22mpg average with the old "granny" 4 speed.

 

Your '86 is going to be much different than the '82 he's describing. After '83, they went with the feedback carb, which is computer controlled. Without all that smog equipment, that computer is going to freak out and run your engine on "safe mode", which basically translates to "dump as much gas so it won't run lean until you get it fixed."

There are several options you can go with. First, would be to take your time and hook up all the vacuum lines, read the chart in the engine bay, get some literature as to where they go and what they do and put it all back together. It's ridiculous how many people pull off all the emissions equipment thinking it's going to make their engine run better. It raises combustion temperatures, leans out the carb, as well as other multitudes of problems. They ran great with it and were designed for it.
My 1bbl fully hooked up with all the emissions equipment got 22mpg. After the emissions equipment was disconnected, I got 22mpg, but my carb ran lean, stumbled off the idle, etc, and was a bugger to tune right. I gained absolutely nothing in mileage and had a horrible time tuning it to run right. I also have an '81 so didn't have the feedback carb and the only reason I did it was because I was halfway through an upgrade to an aftermarket 4bbl intake when I had to pass emissions (which I DID without the emissions equipment).

The second is to finish removing everything, which is probably much easier. Then, to get things to run right, you'll need a pre-feedback carb Duraspark II distributor, coil, and ignition module and run your engine without the computer at all. Even then, you'll still have to tune your emissions oriented carb to run without emissions.

The last is to simply remove the intake and carb and replace it with an aftermarket setup that doesn't have emissions. There's quite a few 4bbl intakes out there and plenty of writeups and information on here. Good luck.

 

Thank you both for your input.

Not to be a dumb um... "rump", but if the smog pump isn't hooked up, and various vacuum lines are laying around not hooked up to anything, the system can't be functioning properly.

I guess the question here is, as I'm going to have to replace the carb anyway, why not simply put on a non emissioned carb?

The distributor I have seems to be working without the feedback as is.

...or am I missing something?

 

my vote is to dump everything, get a holley one barrel carb, and use minimal vacuum lines

 

Putting an aftermarket non-emissions carb would work just fine. The difficult part is finding an aftermarket 1bbl.

But you're right, if everything as is is not hooked up, it's not functioning properly and your carb is probably being told by the computer to dump more gas than it should.

 

or you can get a smaller holley 2 barrel with progressive linkage and an adapter plate. it will be a 1 barrel untill you want power, and kick the secondary barrel in.

 

I haven't seen that type of 2 barrel before - can you post a link?

 

alot of little cars used them. the chevy celebrity and citation are two that i know of for sure. it is a 2 barrel card, and works just like a 4 barrel. one side is primary, and the other is a secondary side.
a few of the guys in the falcon club have put them on their 170 and 200's, and say the performance boost is phenomenal, while retaining the six cylinders excellent gas mileage.

 

Good stuff.

 

Pintos, Vegas, etc.,...they were quite common. I think they are usually referred to as a Holley/Weber 5200 2 barrel.

They can even be found on eBay http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/PONTI...4506.m20.l1116

 

I think I found an FTE er close enough to me that has a non emission one barrel for sale.

 

IIRC the one on my Cutlass Ciera Olds V6 was a Rochester 2SE.
regards
rikard

 

Well, I got the non emissioned carb on last weekend.

I removed what was left of the smog and vacuum mess. I now have a grand total of four vacuum lines on the truck.


Fired up first try!

...still needs some adjusting, but it runs smoothly, and does accelerate...not very well, but it does accelerate, and I'll work on that.

So far, so good!