ok so i have an 85 302 that i put into my 83 ford f150, it seems like most of the time when i accelerate or put a load on the motor it seems to rattle but it does not do it all the time most of the time it does it is when the motor overheats alittle, the motor is in time so i know that is not the problem so what could it be? and if its lifters do i have to guage them one by one or jus tighten the rocker arms down jus alittle?

 

I would guess you are running the original dist and carb, with all the vacuum lines plugged, including the EGR which has probably been disconnected. If that's not true, I would suspect your EGR if it is hooked up, is not working.

I had this same problem with a engine the I de-commissioned EGR on, and I put larger jets in the carb, cooler plugs in the engine, but what seemed to really help it was going to a 180 degree thermostat from the original 195 thermostat.

If you still have the EGR, and get it working again, you will find your problem will instantly go away.

 

ok heres a stupid question were does my egr valve go on my 85 302? i put a 4 bbl carb on it with headers so if i get a egr valve were and what else do i need to buy so i can put it on?

 

If it's "overheating a little" it will be a lot more detonation prone.

 

If you put a aftermarket carb on it, I would not worry about the EGR. The EGR only becomes a real problem with the factory emissions carb and other stuff on the engine. Since you have probably taken all that off, and I am assuming have a non-emissions type carb, you should be able to tune it without the EGR.

The first thing I would do is get a timing light, unplug the vacuum line to the dist, and check the timing. You are probably going to have to run it around 8 degrees or so BTDC. Once you see where you are at now, turn the dist just a little bit to back the timing off, and then try it. If it still pings, keep turning it back till it quits pinging during a road test, and then see where you are with the light. You will have to reset the idle speed and possibly the mixture screws while doing this.

If you go down the same senario I did, you may find you are down around 4 degrees, and it doesn't have much pep. I found out I had to keep turning it back, because the factory vacuum advance was advancing the timing too much. What I did was disconnect the vacuum advance and plugged it off, and then turned my initial timing up to about 12-14 degrees. It ran so much better, and had lots of power. I was going to buy a adjustable vacuum advance unit, and adjust it till just before it would ping, but I sold the truck before I got around to doing that. Leaving the vacuum advance off will just affect your fuel economy a little bit, that is all.

 

After all the reply about the timing, I read your response and re-read the original post, and you are correct, I would fix the heating issue before I did anything else. Overheating will certainly make it ping.