Chuck's '83 TBird

Topic: Chuck's '83 TBird (Read 87218 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #360 – April 24, 2020, 06:26:52 PM

Put about 15 miles on it today, doing a little more shakedown and tuning.

Messed with some more warmup parameters, made sure the fan worked and went out. When I put it all back together, I'd messed with the spark map a bit (It had always been a little soft under boost). Need to pull a couple degrees back out under boost, but so far, so good.

Going to do a bolt check on the rear suspension this weekend, but other than that, we're ready for duty.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #361 – April 25, 2020, 01:15:58 AM

your

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #362 – April 30, 2020, 12:22:30 AM

Let us know how it feels with all the rear suspension updates. Looking good

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #363 – May 07, 2020, 06:27:01 PM

Weather and schedule haven't been kind to getting this out and about much lately.

I'd forgotten about swapping the speedo gear (went from 3.73's to 3.55's), so I took care of that.

After my last drive, I noticed that the AFR targets were off. I've just been letting TunerStudio Autotune deal with making adjustments around town, but I saw it was running a bit rich down low.
I corrected that and was able to drive the car to work today (Been WFH mostly, and it's been raining on the other days I've gone in).

I was able to get a couple more pics of it out and about on a couple of errands (and NOT in my garage or driveway)

Want to get some more miles on it before I decide what I think about the suspension. Had it up to about 70-80mph today, but didn't find too many twisties to feel things out.
With the big Cobra rear sway bar (the big solid one), I'm not sure if I'm going to need to increase the rear spring rate or not. I
could also drop the panhard down a bit too. My roll center in the front is kinda low, so that messes with the overall roll axis.

I do need to roll the front fenders a bit. I get some rub on the pass side on bumps. It's done that since I redid things a while back, so I just need to get around to it.

Looking forward to more good weather!

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #364 – May 14, 2020, 06:40:39 PM

Well, I bought one of these to deal with the tire rub situation.

It worked OK, so we'll see if that helps when I can get back on the road (supposed to rain all weekend...)

I'll probably do the driver side for good measure.

I also noticed that the pass side front is a little lower than the driver's, so that probably isn't helping.
Looks like I need to some up with a spring shim to raise it up a touch. (*Goes to dig through the stash in the garage*)

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #365 – June 20, 2020, 05:18:31 PM

Not much has been happening with this, other than driving it a bit.

I did take care of the slight PS ride height issue yesterday by adding in another one of the spring shims I had.

I did a bolt check on the rear suspension, and only found one fastener loose (One of the jam nuts on the PS upperlink), so that's nice.

I did have a loud bang a couple of times while driving it over the past couple of weeks, after hitting kind of a sharp bump in the road. Couldn't see any contact on anything when I checked it out at that time, but I think I found the culprit.

The bolt axle mount for the panhard bar was sticking out about 1/2" or so from the nut and looked like it fouls on the plastic gas tank cover. It causes it to bang against the tank, which can be kind of loud. There's no risk of it hitting the gas tank during the suspension travel, just that cover that is spaced out about 1" from the front of the tank.

I flipped the bolt around, so the shorter bolt head was facing rearward, and it looks like that should solve that problem.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #366 – June 20, 2020, 08:38:12 PM

Looking back at that first pic, I need to hit the front suspension with some Simple Green and the power washer...

I originally was worried that the panhard axle mount would bang against the fuel tank strap mounting boss on the frame, but it looks like the axle will hit the bumpstop a good 3/4" before that happens.

I still think I want to look into some stiffer rear springs.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #367 – July 15, 2020, 10:37:35 AM

Dealing with an odd failure. The last couple of times I've driven the car, it's seemed "off". I've been chasing around the detonation under boost issue and had just dropped a new tune for the drive to work on Mon.

Seemed better, but still was rattling a bit. Took it easy the rest of the drives to and from work. When leaving work, and getting home and letting it idle, heard the unmistakable sound of a 2.3T running on 3 cylinders.

Getting out and pulling plug wires as it was running, #4 was unresponsive. I set out swapping plugs, wires, injectors and everything was pointing to #4 being "dead". Which is NOT what I wanted right now. (The car would've been shoved back into storage until I felt like messing with it again.)

The one thing I noticed was that I seemed to be getting no spark at all out on #4. Every other wire I pulled would result in the audible "ticking" or spark jumping to ground. It's still a TFI ignition, so it's pretty "dumb" on what cylinders is getting spark. I checked the cap, but saw no issues. The rest of the dist looked fine.

Chatting with Gumby, he suggested to check the cap again or do a compression check. I headed back out and completely pulled the cap out. Upon inspection, I noticed that the center (coil) post was loose. Testing it with a multimeter confirmed that it would occasionally lose continuity when it was moved.

So, basically what was happening was there was enough play in the coil terminal, that as the spring-loaded contact on the rotor would spin, it would move the post just enough to break contact just as it rotated to the #4 terminal to fire.

New cap and rotor are on the way...

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #368 – July 15, 2020, 01:55:54 PM

Glad you found the culprit and you didn't have to do a compression test. Bizarre failure.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #369 – July 16, 2020, 12:23:25 AM

That's just odd, but an easy fix.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #370 – July 16, 2020, 03:48:34 PM

Welp. New cap/rotor and fresh plug wires did not fix the problem. #4 is still not sparking.

Could be a bad distributor or TFI module.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #371 – July 16, 2020, 05:29:31 PM

Try disconnecting the SPOUT wire to shift the timing to basic.
The rotor and cap plug wire posts alignment may be off.
If you are operating on the hairy edge, moving the timing may make it better or worse.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #372 – July 16, 2020, 06:08:00 PM

It's possible that the dist/aux gear are wearing a bit and causing an alignment issue. There is a little rotational "slop" in the assembly, but I need to see what spec is,

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #373 – July 18, 2020, 06:12:04 PM

And the 2.3T Achilles's Heel strikes again.

Need to source an aux shaft, but I have several dist gears here to use.

Might as well replace the timing belt while I'm at it.

Re: Chuck's '83 TBird

Reply #374 – July 18, 2020, 08:15:53 PM

Do the 2.3’s have the bushing in the body of the distributor like the 5.0’s? Only ask is the bushing in the original distributor I had for my Coupe was the cause of the high rpm misfires. It was just worn out to the point the shaft would wobble in the body under load. Got a reman unit and transferred all my electronics over to it and it’s been good for 15 years.