Thread: Need some general help for my first performance engine setup

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Hello to everyone. I hope you all can give me some advise, because I've reached then end of my technical expertise. Here's the situation:

1965 Ford Mustang with a 302 small block. Had the short block and the heads professionally rebuilt, but assembled everything myself. Used mostly aftermarket parts (competition cams, eldebrock dual plane manifold, Holly 4150 street avenger 650 carb, Pertronix HEI distrubutor. Also had the C4 transmission professionally rebult as well.

Anyway got everything back in the car, and I got the engine running. But I am having 2 major issues that I cannot seem to resolve.

First, the engine is idling way to fast (I don't have a tach hooked up, but it sounds well over 3000 rpm). I have backed out the idle screw all the way, and also set the fast idle screw on the carb back some to no avail. I'm not sure what else can be done, or why it would be idling as fast as it is.

Secondly, the transmission will not engange when the car is put in gear. It is difficult to check the fluid level on the transmission since the car is supposed to be idling in park to check the level, but I know the capacity of the trasmission is 9 to 10 quarts according to mustang book. It has 9 quarts in it now, and it still does not move when the transmission is placed in any gear (it does make a slight rattling noise when put in "reverse", which is not very reassuring.) Oh, yes, the emergency brake IS disengaged, just in case you were thinking that. :-)

Anyway, I'd be glad to offer any information that you would want that I did not provide, but at this point I'm about to just have the car towed down to a mechanic, as I can't think of what might be causing these issues. Any insight anyone might have would be greatly appreciated.

Chris Two things that come to my mimd,. If you had the engine rebuilt and you put it back into the car Yourlinkeage to both your tranny and carb sounds like there not hooked up right.

Chevy 57:

It's possible, but I have hooked it up as best as I know. The linkage to the carb is not binding in any way, and it is not keeping the primary plates open any more than they would be if the linkage was not hooked to the gas petal. In fact, there is room to move the linkage even further towards the "idle" setting, so I don't know what else I could do to make that work. As for the transmission, I have no idea what I'm really doing there. I can tell you that "park" and "neutral" work as they are supposed to, but there may be a vacuum line somewhere that I missed. In either case, I would probably need to take it to someone who knows what they are doing to tell me if I messed it up or not.

Streets:

Very odd that the same thing would happen to 2 different types of cars in the same city. I can tell you I do not know this person you are refering to, but if you know how he solved his issues, I'd love to hear how. (Sure is a lot of aliases there. I am not one of them though, just in case that thought had crossed your mind.)

But as I said above, I think it's time for some professional help. Just wondered if anyone has any obvious suggestions about something simple I might have overlooked.

Thanks for the responses.

Had another thought whilst I was working on the car tonight. It occured to me to check the fuel level in the fuel bowls thru the built in sights on this particular model of carb, and I noticed that they are both pretty high- particulally the secondary fuel bowl. Of course, I will reset these to the correct level, but I was wondering if this could have been contributing to the excessive idle speed.

Will find out tomorrow when I set them to the correct level, I was just wondering.

Well, just in case anyone is following this thread, I'll update these issue as they get resolved.

First off, the carb was just way out of whack on most adjustments. Took a guy who knew what he was doing all of 5 minutes to mess with the mixture, the float levels and the idle speed to get the car running smothly at the proper idle speed. Took a load off my mind. Just goes to show you that you just cannot rely on the "out of the box" settings, even though the instructions say they wet run it and calibrate it before shipping.

Still not sure what is going on with the transmission. Hooked up the vacuum line to the modulator (never could find it on my own) and had hoped that that would solve the issue- but the transmission still will not engage. Going to have the car towed to the transmission people on Monday and see what they can figure out- hopefully it's nothing too serious.

Will let you know what the story is on that as I find out.

I am wishing you good luck, Chris. Hope it's nothing serious.

Well, turns out that the people who rebuilt the transmission put the wrong torque converter in it. They are replacing the wrong one with the correct one free of charge.

Oh well, that's life I guess. Should have it on the road tomorrow.