What the… what the f…

4/25/2025

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With some things you either come out smarter, or you come out broken. Maybe a little bit of both. Like Junior High School.

Today’s goal was simple on paper: replace the vacuum advance cylinder, revisit the ignition timing, verify the vacuum advance, and generally get Emma breathing a little easier.

What actually happened was a half-day crash course in unlearning everything I thought I knew about “good” tuning versus “real” tuning.

Where we started:

• Questionable vacuum advance behavior
• Idle that wasn’t quite right
• A choke that, frankly, I didn’t even know was functional or not

Where we ended:

• A working vacuum advance (finally!)
• New, corrected base timing, found not by trusting 60-year-old balancer marks, but by old-school methods (thumb over spark plug hole, screwdriver down the bore, a vacuum guage, trusting my senses, ChatGPT)
• A working, properly set electric choke
• An idle that lives around 900–950 RPM, because that’s where Emma wants to idle – for reasons unknown

Highlights:

• Verified that the choke wiring was fine, but discovered the linkage was sabotaged by a previous owner to stay fully open all the time
• Discovered that setting “factory spec” timing made the engine run worse, not better
• Accepted that a tiny vacuum gauge flicker and a mild 850-900 RPM pulse is normal for a 60-year-old small block Ford
• Finally understood that “chasing” factory idle RPM numbers just doesn’t make sense for an aging engine with a modern Edelbrock carb

What really happened today: I stopped trying to make Emma “factory correct.” I started listening to what she actually wants. She’s not a showroom piece — she’s a living, breathing old machine that runs better when you stop forcing it to be something it’s not.

At the end of the day, she pulls stronger, she drives smoother, and she feels more honest.

Is the idle perfect? No. Is the vacuum gauge pinned in the green? No.

Does she shut off cleanly, start cleanly, and move through traffic without feeling like she’s on the edge of stalling or detonating? Mostly yes.

Next Steps:

• Bump the curb idle to 900–950 RPM tomorrow
• Check for any vacuum leaks with carb cleaner
• Fine-tune idle mixture if needed
• Drive the hell out of her and listen
• Aspirational #1: Valve Cover Gaskets
• Aspirational #2: V-Belt Replacement

And after all of that?

There was wine.

(Tomorrow-Brian can worry about the carb cleaner. Today-Brian gets to sit back and feel good about doing a thing)