Stall Converters explained?
Having nearly no working experience with performance automatics - apart from adding a few shift kits to improve shifting - the concept of what a stall converter does, and doesn't do, has as many interpretations as there are web sites. I found the following explanation I believe may be one of the most logical I've read. So it gives me some things to try while I await a call from Hughes Performance who made the torque converter.
http://www.onallcylinders.com/2015/1...ter-selection/
Haven't I test driven it yet?!?
No, I haven't. When I got home from the swap meet last Saturday I had all the driveways clear to back it out and at least swap places with the Ranchero in the carport. So I jumped in and... it is spit and sputtered and died over and over. It's been running great for days and just when I wanted to drive it - Kreddie Kruger - came back out to play with my dreams. So, on and off this last week I pondered, and stared at it, trying to decide what to do. I determined it wasn't running out of gas. Checked all the wiring. Even got a new cap and rotor and stator for the distributor.
After swapping all those out I tried again and it spit and sputtered blowing fuel out the carb like the timing was way out of whack. Checked to see if I messed up something changing the stator, but it was installed right. I even check compression.
Then I pulled the carb off the Ranchero, but found I couldn't make it fit (Summit carb with dual fuel inlets), so after messing up the Ranchero I was at a $450 or a $300 cross-roads. Do I get a new carb or a new CDI Ignition module - or both. Or just list it on Craigslist. Then I got a wild hair and thought maybe the coil was bad. I had a couple of those square mid-80's coils and set one up temporarily - and VROOM! Only ran it a couple seconds, but it was long enough to know the issue was the coil. An Excel coil at that.
So off to the parts house because I didn't want to hassle with making a bracket for that square style coil. Then I got confused at the store what the specs needed to be, so I went home empty-handed, checked the specs, and crawled up into the loft just to make sure I didn't have a coil stashed up there. I actually found a new coil up there, so on it went.
I had been playing with the timing while it was misbehaving so I hooked up the timing light and could not get the timing mark anywhere near where it needed to be. And, as if that wasn't enough, if I hooked up the vacuum advance tube the timing retarded and it died instantly! What the heck is this thing doing! It's supposed to advance the timing when vacuum is applied, not retard it??!
:doh:
So, since I knew the stator wasn't the original issue I decided to reinstall the other one again. At least get my $40 back. New wires needed to be added to the old one since they were getting pretty short from efforts to adapt it "before me," then my cleaning all that cobbled mess up a few weeks ago, and now me cutting off the connector to use with the new one today. A couple crimps later, and it was all back in; all the while convincing myself there was no way this new one I had just put on earlier could be bad. Well, it was. Once the old one was back in the car fired up, timing adjusted correctly, vacuum advance advanced the timing as it is supposed to do. And I called it quits for the day. Test drive will have to wait again.
From today on Fr$%^ie is a 4-letter word. It has no name that shall be named from now on.
:WHATTHE: