B3R Garage: All new Still Issues

The 1984 Mercury Capri was intended to be a work in progress. However, I did have a time-frame in mind that I would like to have been driving it! Over the past few months I have been spending my weekends traveling to the Mad Scientist in order to work out the bugs with his 1970 Ford Maverick-leaving the Capri on the back burner. While helping the Mad Scientist, I would put as much spare time as I could tinkering with my Capri. Unfortunately, I could not figure out the idling issue on my own. So, I had to recruit some help from someone willing to travel just to see the engine. I called Pep!

Pep had to drive over 116 miles to come and see my little Capri but it was worth it. When he arrived I was able to show him that the car would start and run, but I could not keep the car running. In most similar cases vacuum leaks are to blame, but this was not the case. We adjusted the distributor, checked for vacuum leaks, turned down the fuel pressure from 5.5psi to 1psi (best resuts), and then went ahead and swapped the my Edelbrock carb for the Mad Scientist's old Franken-Holley.

After removing the Edelbrock carb we realized that the intake was completely saturated with gas(mind-blow). We eventually decided that the timing must be off. So, we removed the valve covers and cranked the engine by hand just to make sure. As it turns out a set of lifters on my #3 piston were collapsed and not providing enough range of movement in the valves. In addition, the #1 spark plug seemed as though it was being constantly saturated in fuel but not firing. Could the #3 valves not opening enough cause the #1 piston not to fire. I'm not sure, but I doubt it. So over the next week I plan on popping the intake, replacing the collapsed lifters, and maybe even swapping out the distributor cap for a known good one. Hopefully, I will be able to join the Mad Scientist as he drives his car to Orland, Indiana's drive-in car shows expected to excede 200 cars by the 27th. Keep posted to see if we can make the deadline.