Life-long Dream Morphs to Nightmare

[MacDee]

, it takes 3 things to make a combo , Time Money and TALENT.

Yeah, I'm really short on that third thing! Pretty short on the first thing, too. Don't want to waste any more of the second thing, either!
I really do want to take it to someone who CAN, but don't know exactly how to go about finding him!

At My Shop if I cant Fix it , You Don't Pay , That includes Labor and Parts

Too bad you're so far away...

...if you can afford it I would just go with classicinlines DUI distributor and be done with it...best bolt on upgrade I ever made.

Thanks, Gene! I'm pretty tempted ...

 

[FalconSedanDelivery]

Ok I may get deleted but here goes , THE DUI , is NOT a great setup , it was designed for the mid 70-s-early 80s to help fire the Very lean mixtures that they were running , in order to do so the had to increase spark gap , to do so they needed a higher power coil ,and that also meant an increase the distance between posts on the cap and bigger diameter plug wires to contain the extra energy and resistance created by the Plug Gaps , Now your saying , sounds like a high performance setup , BUT , when you package a Module a Coil and the Magnetic pickup ( along with metal advance weights ) all in close proximity of each other , they better get along well or it wont be good , AND , THIS SYSTEM was to work on Engines That never saw the High Side of 4900 ( including Corvettes of the time !!!!, I have been a Mechanic since the Mid 70's and I had a job at a Mobile/Modular Home Plant ( They Had there own Garage ) part of my job was maintenance on 17, C65 Chev Trucks , that ALL had HEI's in them after about 30,000 miles the coils would die , or the modules , then the Wires would arc , or the spark would punch through the rotor and leave the truck stranded ,Fast forward to now , 35+ years of Experience ( plus I recurve/rebuild Dist's for a living ) I can tell you now that the Davis DUI's are No different then the mid 70's design , its just they fit the 6's ,( barley , there Big and Ugly and look WRONG on any Ford ( IMO) The aftermarket came to the rescue with the HEI , they removed the Coil from inside ( accel still sells the kit as does MSD ), then the made a kit to use a MSD or other Brand of Module/Box that is NOT inside , GM themselves later realized that module failure was due to heat soak ( inside a Dist is not Cool after a few miles ) , so they made it mount external ( GREAT IDEA ) , Although Ford , and Best of all , CHRYSLER , had always done that , If you Want an Upgrade , Use a Duraspark I , Or II , add a MSD Box, or equiv , ( the DUI Duraspark /Chryler's Module is good as well , but again pricey ) some here have bought the DUI's and like them , this is not a Dig on CI , I just want to clear up a misconception that The DUI is a Outstanding Piece, Ive said this before , Nascar Dosen't use Them , and there is a reason .

 

[MacDee]

If you Want an Upgrade , Use a Duraspark I , Or II , add a MSD Box, or equiv

I was actually leaning toward a Duraspark II with a MSD/Street Fire box. The Street Fire seems to have all (most?) the features of the MSD 6AL box for quite a bit less money. Can anyone tell me what I would be giving up using the Street Fire box instead of the MSD 6AL?

 

[FalconSedanDelivery]

In Theory , nothing , I have one customer doing exactly that , the Street fire is an Import Part , that is all

 

[MacDee]

I’m surprised to see this thread still here! I received an email in January from the Forum wishing me a happy new year, and that y’all hadn’t heard from me for a while. Gosh…

For the record, I no longer own the ’63 Falcon which had a Classic Inlines aluminum head. About five or six years ago I had reached the end of my rope, and sold the car to someone more capable than me. He fixed it up way better than I ever could have, and then sold it to someone else. Last I heard, it’s living in Arizona somewhere….

I had gotten it running pretty well, but a series of torque converter failures was the last straw for me. It was running okay, but it never really ran as good as I thought it should. It always acted like it had a vacuum leak. After I gave up and sold it, it’s like my brain came out from under its mental block and I had an idea about what the problem might have been. This may be a crackpot idea, but I’m wondering if the problem was air migrating, at a molecular level, through the walls of the intake manifold!

A story to justify the idea.…

Soon after I had installed the engine with the CI head into the car (2010), I had removed the carburetor for some reason and saw what looked like a small puddle of coolant in the intake plenum. I couldn’t imagine how it got there. There is no path from the coolant chamber around the plenum into the plenum itself. If that was really coolant, it could only have gotten there by seeping through the plenum walls. I ignored it. Later, I would no longer see coolant in the plenum when I removed the carb. Fixed itself, I guess! Made sense; coolant typically has some self-sealing properties formulated in.

Of course, if the casting is porous enough to let coolant seep through the plenum walls, it makes sense that air could “seep” through also. If I’d still had the car, I might have tried treating the inside of the manifold with some POR-15 gas tank sealer. I told all this to the guy I sold the car to. He didn’t seem too impressed with my [crackpot] idea, but he suggested “… or just paint the manifold?” Yeah, you could just PAINT the manifold, just make sure the coat’s heavy enough to seal the surface.

He never did anything about it, though, and it still had some running issues when he sold it….

This may be a crackpot idea; I may never know for sure. However, I’ve read some other threads on this Forum describing the exact same issues I experienced. Perhaps someone who is currently running a VI/CI intake manifold, and is having problems with poor idle, low vacuum, etc., could try PAINTING THE MANIFOLD to see if that helps.

And if whoever owns that baby blue ’63 Falcon hardtop running an aluminum head and intake manifold is reading this, try PAINTING THE MANIFOLD!!