Re: Diagnosing a misfire
Made some more progress with the pig rich idle condition. So this is embarrassing but ya gotta learn somehow so what the heck lol
My idle was so rich that there was black smoke everywhere and my plugs kept fouling after 10 mins of running. I tried all kinds of tricks and adjustments on the carb to no avail, and finally I took a picture and by a stroke of luck somebody saw it and said my PCV was plugged in wrong. I had the PCV going from the valve cover to the air cleaner, so all that air was going through the carb and pulling more fuel with it.... = rich idle. So I plugged the PCV into the back of the Holley carb on the big port and my idle went way up immediately. This allowed me to turn the idle speed down closing the throttle blades, and that left less of the idle transfer slots exposed, pulling even less fuel. The other problem was that my idle mixture screws were 2 turns out, and after I hooked up the vac gauge I found that the highest vacuum was with mixture screws turned out only 1 turn, again now I'm pulling even less fuel through at idle. Now I'm still not making great vacuum by any means at 7"Hg, but my cam is a long duration 236@.050" cam and its on a 106 LSA, so lots of overlap which equals less vacuum. Thing is, it's MUCH more manageable now and tuneable, and my mixture screws actually change things when turned in or out which was non existent before all this work.
I'm not quite done yet, but I think I'm close. I need a little more air at idle but I'm not going to drill holes in the throttle blades, and I learned a trick that will safely help the situation. Take the carb off and turn out the secondary blade screw 1/4 turn, reinstall and adjust mixture screws for best vacuum again, then turn down idle speed more. If that's not optimal, I'll take the carb back off and give the secondary screw anothe 1/4 turn out and adjust everything again and see how that runs.
I'm getting close, and listening to you guys and applying is working great. As far as solid cam lash goes I adjusted it to .020" which is what the cam card says, and although it doesn't sound as wicked or pull as hard on the top end, it does run better and there's NO misfire. This thing had a misfire at .018" lash which I don't get but for now I don't need to, I'm just going with what works and drives.
More later,
Matt
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