Build Thread 1978 Mercury Cyclone. The pig is in the pen.

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#5,261
This week, one of my classics plugged up the fuel filters so bad the accelerator pumps would not dribble when I went to start it. Then it did it again after one drive of 10 miles or less. There was black, fine powder, probably from a hose or a recent fuel pump not liking modern fuel. Lots of fun.
 
#5,262
What a jug phck that was....:nonono:

$113.00 tow charge this time.

I get the car home and jacked back up. Remove the new 180 degree AN fitting and I got dripping gas again.

Dismantling the whole mess puts me back exactly where I was this morning.......looking at a red umbilical cord hanging out of my tank.

I have this snake camera that I used to use in walls to look into them to see if I was gonna phck something up before drilling. Today I wanted to see if I could see how much of that red sht was potentially clogging the drain outlet. What I saw was.......enlightening.

It looked like I was a gasoline tank scuba diver,...and the "ocean" had red sea weed floating all over the place.

The red kote that I used to seal the tank had came off the walls, and was floating around.

I had to drain,and drop the tank. Then I had to cut it open.

I cut a large rectangular section out of the very top of the tank so that I could see inside this btch.
The red stuff was everywhere. I was able to literally peel it off of the tank walls like some sort of metal protection film that you'd peel off of a fresh piece of stainless....only way easier.

I guess that I applied that stuff over an oily surface, and it didn't stick.

It was getting sucked into the outlet and the drain was creating a vortex. This junk would twist itself up into a rope that would plug the outlet almost solid. This time that's what it did, the pump ran potentially dry for who knows how long...

My tank gave birth,..and this was the placenta..
20170211_161122_zpsprtifdgm.webp


I purged the thing of all of that red. Then, through that hole I washed the tank as best I could,...effectively cutting the pss outta my arms on the raggedy assed edges left over from the cut.

So then,......The top piece........................The one I cut?.......
I had to put that back together and create a cap so that I could put the tank back together...and that my friends is another one of those pictures that you'll never see....
suffice it to say that since it was on the very top of the tank, and would only see sloshing gas,....it got riveted back on,..and sealed w/ "The right stuff"....

As of now,..it's sitting in the garage curing....I'll re-install it after I flush the thing with a gallon or two of the 7 gallons of gas that I drained out of the tank.......Hopefully the pump isn't dead.
 
#5,264
Good thing you found it now...instead of in the middle of a monster throttle thrashing.

Either way it sucks...but it coulve been so much worse. Running lean is a bad bad thing for an engine like yours.
 
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#5,266
RaggedGT said:
MEK dissolves redcoat if you find traces of it still in the tank
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There are remnants of the stuff that stuck to the tank like it's sposed too....That stuff is stuck,..I don't think I'll have to worry about the remaining drizzles that found non-oily metal to stick to... I completely coated the read cars' home made gas tank in that stuff,..and never had a problem with it afterwards.. I know full well that the reason it phcked me here is because the inside of that tank was coated with a film of oil to prevent rust after it was built...

I do know that I'm concerned that I have to worry about whether the car will get me where I want it to get me. Between a fuel level gauge that tells me nothing,...and a pump that may or may not be compromised,... and now red plastic sea weed plugging everything up,...I'm getting real tired of the smell of gas on me and my clothes.
 
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#5,267
Warranty out the pump since it's still 'New'?

When we redcoat tanks at work,we wash them with dawn soap,dry em out and fill it up with acid,seal it up and slosh it around.then rinse and repeat until the metal is clean. Redcoat follows after..

I know none of that matters now-but we are on a subject I have knowledge about lol
 
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#5,268
madmike1157 said:
The problem with that is Then,......there's this:

I've got cracking going on under Dave's paint on the trunk deck. Big, cracking/shrinking happening under the finish that will no doubt compromise the top coat some day. All I think that's missing to finish it off is a day sitting in the Alabama summer sun.

More, and more it looks to me like the Monster will have some future date in a paint booth. With me dimpling the roof, and now the crazing that is going on (tells me that Mike's prep/body work didn't like the solvents that soaked into them when it was painted),..there's some distant date w/ a two tone in the Monster's future..

C'est la Vie.

I'm going down stairs.
Click to expand...
Post a picture of the decklid for me Mike.

Purple two tone?:jester:
 
#5,270
Ok,...tank back in,...we're back in business. (sort of)

There is a significant flat spot in the way the engine responds to throttle. If I do a slow added power 1,2,3,there is a mid throttle stumble that is so bad, the engine acts like it hits a wall. It's like it's not getting fuel at that part of the map..
Now yesterday, when I was driving the thing, I was letting it auto tune, and having it write to controller. While on the interstate the computer lost it's connection and stopped tuning. Shortly after that the engine started to stumble and eventually died on the off ramp. I wonder if the damn thing made some correction at that part of the map that was detrimental to the tune?
@a91what Steve?
 
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#5,271
Damn, that's how I feel sometimes when I have gone the extra mile to do it just right and I would have been better off leaving it the f alone.

Do you have a back of the tune before you started yesterday? Maybe you can reload that and tell the Monster ECU to forget this ever happened. LOL
 
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#5,272
droopie85gt said:
Been there done that. I hope it is something simple, even if the fuel pump is a dead player.
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At idle the pumps shows me 43.5 p.s.i., but I don't know if it's keeping up and more,...It's not like I can see that FP gauge when the hood's down and I'm flying along at 80 MPH.

The only way I can remedy that involves removing the gauge from the regulator, and rigging it up to my windshield wiper so I can see it,...yay.:flag:
 
#5,273
I don't use auto tune while I drive. I datalog and tune from the log. For this exact reason.

My best suggestion would be to try and reload the tune, or smooth the tune back out.... most likely it's partly the ve table and partly the ae settings.

Load a copy of the current tune, and a datalog.

Remember Mike datalog datalog datalog datalog.
Auto tune is for getting the base tune "close" to begin tuning.
 
#5,274
a91what said:
I don't use auto tune while I drive. I datalog and tune from the log. For this exact reason.

My best suggestion would be to try and reload the tune, or smooth the tune back out.... most likely it's partly the ve table and partly the ae settings.

Load a copy of the current tune, and a datalog.

Remember Mike datalog datalog datalog datalog.
Auto tune is for getting the base tune "close" to begin tuning.
Click to expand...
I knew you'd say that,..so I went back out. (although I was still letting the thing tune itself)
 

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#5,278
95BlueStallion said:
Well, I mean save your pennies for a couple months and you can afford a nice shiny new (clean) tank. No risk of leaks that way, too. As far as I am concerned, Im just not a fan of breathing and wearing the gas in the name of cleaning out my 27 year old tank gunk.
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No....no new tank...This is a new tank,...and it's clean now.
 
#5,279
Debrief

What started today with the gas tank on the floor has ended with the car able to make it to the gas station and back under it's own power.
I don't know what changed with the tune, or how I even changed it, but somehow I leaned the tune out in boost to a very dangerous level. Dangerous as in 18:1 AFR at 7 p.s.i.

We're talkin molten aluminum dangerous.

I was completely unaware of this fact.....

It was almost like:

Da dah da da dahnt:

I was sittin' in a coffee shop just mindin' my own affairs..
Da dah da da dahnt:
When these 3 big dudes caught me un aware.
Da dah da da dahnt:
They said is your name Pedro?,... I said yeah, I guess so..
Da dah da da dahnt:
They said then come along with me cause you're the dude we been lookin' for.
I said Hey Man! I've been framed!
Hey man!...I've been framed!
I ain't never doin nothin wrong, but somehow...
I always get the blame.

Out of the blue, the guardian angel of Tunerstudio calls me. (Do I have to say his name?)
Steves apologizes that he might sound funny because he just had his wisdom teeth pulled.
(He's apologizing, but he calls nonetheless) He says, hey! Are you running an LC-1, and are you aware that your engine is dangerously lean?

Uhh no.........And Who is this?......Steve?.......Is this you Steve?............You sound like your mouth is full of rocks.

Despite the communication gap,..he walks me through the necessary modifications to fatten the tune up in boost...we exchange niceties,.. I thank him, tell himTrump still sucks, and we hang up.

Now all that's left is to drive it again.

It's back to running again,...I put it up in the air to check the inlet filter and found small bits and pieces of the tank liner in there. I flushed it out, and reassembled it. Lowered it back down and took it to the gas station so that I won't run out of gas..
(been there,..done that)

It clanks a little every now and then when getting in/out of the gas. I would blame that noise on the mechanical harshness of my drivetrain,...but taking no chances I put it up in the air again to be sure that I haven't neglected some bolt.

And,...........even though it's only a picture of a car jacked up in the air.......

20170212_173801_zpsaujkygrp.webp

The jack is on the driver side.....nothing is under the passenger side of the car.
Not bad for a car w/o a roll cage don't ya think?

This is why.

shf6-jpg.118312.webp
 
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