Captain Obvious

I have old faded brain cells with a mental picture of a ground down tip on a grease gun in order to be able to fit into the small opening on the half shafts. In other words... Many moons ago I think I modified a grease gun to be able to get in there. I don't think I have that gun anymore though to confirm.

Kats, Just wanted to say that I love the pictures. I know you are on the other side of the globe, but your Spring season looks just like mine.

Of course it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azxx9sG4Gjw

I consider that good news actually. It would have been unusual for the starter to be the culprit, and now you're at least back to the "usual cast of characters".

Assuming you have the capacity in the oil pump, I don't see any reason why you couldn't toss an internally oiled cam into a head that previously had a spray bar system and use both oiling systems in parallel. You should get oil out of all the holes... Both out of the bar and out of the holes in the cam lobes.

There's nothing like taking it apart and then trying to put it back together again to learn about something. Works for me!!

Actually the non-A/C cars don't have that bracket at all. That bracket only exists on the A/C cars because they have additional parts that bolt to that bracket that the non-A/Cs do not have. Not that it matters, but...

The first one is part of the HVAC system under the dash. It's the bracket that the heat control valve stuff bolts to. If you can deal with the blurriness in this hoovered pic, it looks like this:

Well that sure looks like milli-Volts to me. I just took the same measurement on my car and 0.0 Volts, but even if your reading is real (and not simply noise being picked up by the meter somehow), that voltage would still result in a current draw in about 3 milli-Amps worth of battery drain. And while that low of a drain would eventually deplete a battery, but would (should) take months.

Way cool! I just watched this episode last night! So the basic takeaway from the episode (as they described it) was that if you engine isn't having detonation issues, then the octane rating of the fuel doesn't matter at all. The longer story was.... They ran the same engine on a dyno a whole bunch of times running different fuel varieties. They did pulls using 87 pump gas, 91 pump gas, two higher octane race gas varieties (110 and 116 I think?), and then at the end they ran E85. They were expecting to have to adjust the timing for the different fuels, but they found that they did not. The engine wanted 29 degrees of advance for every fuel, and made the exact same power (within experimental tolerances) regardless of which fuel they used. The only exception was that the E85 actually made more power than any of the straight up gasoline varieties. Now... Are any of their findings directly applicable back to our engines? I can come up with a bunch of questions that would need to be answered before I would believe they are, but I'm just in this for the academic entertainment. * One correction to Marks note above... There was no boost. This was all N/A,

Are you sure you measured 0.8 milliVolts, or was it 0.8 Volts? Just double checking...

Well honestly, I'd consider swapping back to the original cam just to make sure you have the rest of the bugs worked out. I didn't know you had the original cam as an option. If you can get it to run right (under all conditions) with the original cam, then maybe toss the aftermarket one in and see what happens. In other words... Baseline it running well with the OEM and then put in the high lift? At least that way you'll be able to separate cam issues from other issues. Cam swaps aren't that bad of a job. Just don't drop the timing chain and it's no big deal.

I'm not sure how they were able to get rid of the ballast resistor in 78. There are several possibilities, but I haven't really looked into it. If I get the chance, I'll poke around a little with that 78 module I have and see if I can figure out how they were able to function without the ballast and not burn anything up.

I'm sorry to see the carnage, and I hope you get it fixed up. And I don't have anything technical to add, but just gotta say... Wow. I'm impressed. That's not the kind of thing you see everyday!

Excellent. Clean and tight connections are your friend. And yes... It sounds like your issues are first order related to the cam now. Hope you can get that tuned in! Do you have an air/fuel ratio meter, or are you doing this all old school?

LOL! So I'm a newcomer in the grand scheme of things (at only ten years). I wonder how long I lurked here before I joined. I was a member over at that other forum site first, but rarely ever post there anymore. I'm with site as to why.

Oh, and I do have to say that as much as I like talking about dissecting and analyzing electronic goodies, I don't think this (ignition module chatter) has anything to do with ckurtz2 issues.

I think you have the chronology right. 74 through 76 used a smaller plug gap (presumably matched to the spark energy) and then in 77 they redesigned the module and increased the gap width (again, presumably matched to the spark energy). Then in 78, they changed things again, but the plug gap stayed the same. (.039 - .043). They did, however, do away with the ballast resistor, so there could potentially be a hotter spark if you used a 78 module. I have dug into both, but don't remember the details of what I found inside the 78. I have pics, but don't remember the circuit details without checking my notes. 78 guts:

The 77 and 78 modules are significantly different mechanical form factor. The 77 looks like this: And the 78 looks like this. Slightly smaller and has a very different connection scheme:

Yes, I have a 77, and yes, that's a 77 ignition module. It is my understanding that the 78's don't need a ballast resistor because the ignition module does a better job current limiting and/or dwell control.

Good luck with the remainder of the connector cleanup. Note that issues with the coolant temp sensor would affect all cylinders, not just one (so that's not what was causing your misfire on #1 only). But in any event, it's a very important input to the EFI system and it must be clean and reliable. And don't forget to clean up the other sides of all those new connectors you've already installed. The male "outie" pins on the fuel injectors, for example. Some people in the past have had issues at the large connector right at the ECU, but I've never seen an issue there. In my experience, that connection point is clean and shiny because it's lived its life inside the interior of the car instead of out in the engine compartment. Worth a peek though, just in case your car sat for a long time in a high humidity area, or had a water leak from a window or cowl drain or something.

So it really sounds like you've got weak / dirty connections in the EFI system, and that's not unusual at all. Very common situation for these cars. If you're going to take your car in for some tuning work, you need to be absolutely double dog sure that all your EFI connections are clean, solid, and reliable. Top priorities for me? If all of your connectors are still original (except for injector #1 which you have already replaced), I would go ahead and replace the other five injector connectors and polish up the pins on the injectors. I would also replace the temperature sensor connector with new, and polish the temp sensor pins. I would pull and polish up the dropping resistor connections. Lastly, I would inspect the AFM connector and polish up everything there too. Hope it's that simple!

Good point guys. Just because it shows "continuity" doesn't mean it's a good hard low Ohmic connection.

He did. (Along with a bunch of other fantastic trouble shooting efforts!) That's why I'm thinking the break is somewhere further up inside the harness. If I were there, I would stick the meter in the connector and start retching the harness around and looking to see if I could see the issue. I'm thinking that it might be a green corroded crimp connector somewhere inside the harness?

Oh, and the brightness of the noid light getting brighter at higher RPM's is perfect. It's because the duty cycle of the injector pulse got wider. More wider. More gas at more RPM.