The Tragic Tale of ElSuperPinto

I know that feeling!
I have friends with horses who asked why I don't get one. I tell them that more or less. I tell them that living horses will ALWAYS cost something, they require food and, at least in my case, boarding. If I were to lose my job - which has happened on more than one occasion before I changed careers - I could let my Mustang sit until I can do something with it, but I couldn't do that with a horse. And my Mustangs have been yard art many times. Same goes with my 55. But now that I'm finally diving back in with not one, but two, my bank account will continue to flow to all sorts of vendors.

Have you thought of throwing a high flow water pump on it? They're definitely not cheap either! I think I paid around $100 for mine back in I 2003(?) - I can't imagine what they've skyrocketed to. And you'd have to add a spring for the lower hose to the mix which only adds to the money going out. But like I said, I installed it back around 2003 and haven't had any problems with it yet, and I obviously haven't driven it a lot. Just an option, although a more expensive one....
I went looking online for a water pump again this morning, and discovered that if you look up a '75 water pump, it costs TWICE what the pump for a '76-78 is. There are $20-30 pumps out there all day, from good brands like GMB no less, for a '76. I've looked all of the pictures and I'll be damned if I can tell the difference, though I'm seeing parts notes on some of the later pumps saying they're aluminum.

Guess what I'm going with? (and think I did before, as the pump on the engine NOW is aluminum... I probably bought it for my '76 and never got around to installing it there and put it on this car instead).
 
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Flow Cooler, I love mine, just a saying (remember it has a heart of gold)

by the time you read this the garage horded one will be on won't it.

+1 on anode, mine hangs below radiator cap
Get a Tefba radiator filter, do it, its worth the 80$
and a decent F N fan belt...

I just want ESP to cruze around regularly, Go Dog Go!
 
I just want ESP to cruze around regularly, Go Dog Go!
ElSuperPinto will be kept in a running state until the economy has stabilized or the 4Runner is paid off, whichever happens first. Right now things are so volatile customer-count wise that I bounce back and forth between the tiniest paychecks of my career (we're talking I had bigger fast-food paychecks in high school) all the way up to $800 for a single-week's take home. Should the :poo: hit the fan completely and the 4Runner get repo-ed, I'll still have a running car.
 
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More parts for ElSuperPinto arrived this week.

A new IAC from some no-name company out of China via RockAuto, and a pair of rack-and-pinion bellows from AC Delco (gasp!) also via RockAuto have been added to the pile that includes front shocks, tail lamp gaskets, front coil spring insulators, sway bar bushings, a motor mount rebuild kit, and a transmission mount.

If it doesn't get busy here before lunch, I'll be driving the old rustbucket to the shop from the house. It has more gas in the tank than the 4Runner right now and I'll have plenty of time to get something done. :confused:
 
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In Capri news... (What? Ya'll thought I'd forget about the other red rustbucket with a 302 in it in my life just because ElSuperPinto is running?) I ordered rear brake shoes and wheel cylinders from RockAuto for it. I was thrilled because, not only did they show to have the rear shoes, they were $2.00!!!

What showed up, isn't even brake shoes, it's brake pads, and worse, someone's previously installed garbage.

Okay, deep breath, I'll just return the :poo:.

Turns out that I have to pay the return shipping and then they'll reimburse me $6.20 for that, I'm still out the initial shipping of $7.99. On top of that, their return instructions say you can get a discounted shipping label from the order status page... um... no such thing exists on the page.

I've been happy with @RockAuto up until this point, but this is the last thing I'm ordering from them. This is pure :bs:on their part.
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In Capri news... (What? Ya'll thought I'd forget about the other red rustbucket with a 302 in it in my life just because ElSuperPinto is running?) I ordered rear brake shoes and wheel cylinders from RockAuto for it. I was thrilled because, not only did they show to have the rear shoes, they were $2.00!!!

What showed up, isn't even brake shoes, it's brake pads, and worse, someone's previously installed garbage.

Okay, deep breath, I'll just return the :poo:.

Turns out that I have to pay the return shipping and then they'll reimburse me $6.20 for that, I'm still out the initial shipping of $7.99. On top of that, their return instructions say you can get a discounted shipping label from the order status page... um... no such thing exists on the page.

I've been happy with @RockAuto up until this point, but this is the last thing I'm ordering from them. This is pure :bs:on their part.
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...and there is nobody to complain to about it either. No fix, no procedure, no nothing.

Those look like they've been installed at least twice.
 
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...and there is nobody to complain to about it either. No fix, no procedure, no nothing.
Pretty much. The button to click on for the shipping label they show in their "how-to" on returns isn't there. If you call their phone number, an automated voice tells you they do not offer customer service by telephone. Sent an email, for all the good that's going to do.

Wrong damned part altogether, but I've got to pay to ship it back and hope that the $6.20 they're going to reimburse me is enough? :crap:
 
Got the new Chinese IAC that I ordered from RockAuto in.

It no worky either.


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That's right, 1700rpm idle, IAC thinks it's fully closed, throttle IS closed, and yes, those ARE the idle speed screws in the 1/2 deep socket's home, I turned them that far out... That's how I got it down to 1700rpm from 2000.

I'm going boneyard hunting for used GM IACs this weekend. That's what fixed it last time, and will hopefully fix it this time so I can chunk the **** on Ebay as a working unit.

Now... Street Demon 625cfm or Edelbrock Thunder AVS2 650cfm? That... Is the question.
 
Silly question, but you have no vacuum leaks anywhere, right? I mean 2 separate IAC valves and it ran the exact same? Something doesn't add up.
No vacuum leaks.

I've been through this crap with this EFI system before. Apparently it's such a common issue that MSD now has a software update for it (about damned time!).

I even had a new IAC fail immediately after install last time too.

I wish I hadn't lost the other 2 used IACs I pulled off of Buicks at Wrench-a-Part, I wouldn't need another one now!
 
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I've run one of those before. One of the things I don't like about it is that one of your basic adjustments requires the removal of the top of the carburetor. Another issue is that Summit's quality control on those isn't what it should be, I had to go buy a replacement fitting for one of the included parts that came with it, and break out a thread tap for another the day I bought it.

I've owned, but never actually installed and ran a Street Demon, I bought a remanufactured one from Jegs when they had it on sale for $200 or so and the EFI system was giving me fits last time, but shelved it when that IAC from the salvage yard fixed the issue. When I really needed money last year, I sold it for what I had in it because they are now $320. I've run the older version of the Edelbrock Thunder AVS before, and found it to be almost as good as modern fuel injection when it came to ease-of-use. It was 100% on-the-spot for everything but idle speed out-of-the-box, 18" of vacuum at idle, and a quarter-turn away from idling at 800 where I wanted it, and I never touched a screw on it again, but my dumb ass wanted EFI.

It wouldn't even be a question, but I'm completely impressed with the design of the Street Demon, especially the need for zero parts or disassembly to change anything other than jet sizes. The Thunder AVS needs metering rods for the secondaries, the Street Demon has a set screw. The availability of one with a phenolic body to help prevent vapor lock on those 110-degree Texas summer days for the same price as aluminum is attractive as well.

I've had a :poo:load of carburetors over the years, even though I'm relatively young, I grew up with the things because I was poor white trash and that's what we could afford, old :poo:boxes with carburetors. So I learned how to work on them at a young age, then learned what I'd been taught incorrectly by my old man when I got a little older, and eventually even worked on them for a living at my first job as an automotive technician.

I'm even one of the few people I know that actually likes Rochester Quadrajets (an almost universally hated and misunderstood carburetor that has/had it's fans, including myself and Carroll Shelby) and understands them.

I'd still rather have EFI, just not this EFI, and I can't afford $800+ for an MS system right now, nor do I want the car to go through the downtime of troubleshooting a bunch of used parts cobbled together.

If I was willing to let the car sit again, I've dreamed up this crazy system that would look incredible. I'd mount a pair of these:

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Onto one of these:

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Using an adapter plate I dreamed up. Throw some 24lb injectors in it, switch one of the throttle bodies over to a Ford TPS, ditch the TPS altogether on the other, remove the IAC from both throttle bodies and run a Ford IAC on the bottom of this:

ac27.jpg

(which would draw air through the air cleaner, and pass it through a "T" to both throttle bodies when I was done with it)

And then either run it with a boneyard Ford EEC-IV (if I can find the one I need, and then get it dyno-tuned), or run a Megasquirt or something like it.

Then I'd have sequential injection that would look for all the world like a dual-quad carburetor setup.

Almost everything to make it happen is cheap and readiliy available used. The throttle bodies are mid-90s Dodge truck parts. The intake manifold is a mid-90s Ford F150 piece, the distributor to make it work would likewise come from a non-roller 5.0 in an F150, the injectors would come from a 460-powered mid-90s F250 or F350...

Yeah... my mind is broken, it happened years ago.

No, even after figuring it all out, I'm not going to do it. It'd be cheaper to go with a carburetor and the car would be down for all of a couple of hours.
 
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Way back when I was starting the rebuild on the 302 I have in my car now my buddy had an early Fox coupe. It was a 4 cylinder automatic and the engine let go. I had a few engines in pieces in my garage and gave him one. When we went to get it running in his car, he got a hold of a new Carter AFB. I can't remember what size it was, I think it was a 650? Anyway, his car ran extremely well with that carb right off the shelf. I didn't really touch anything on that car, he and a couple of his other buddies threw it together, so I don't know if it ever got any kind of tuning or anything, but it ran extremely well. It would be nice to not have to do some of the stuff that you have to do to tune a Holley, like disconnect the fuel lines, pull the fuel bowls, etc....