Torino Wagon Turbo 250 build

I'm about ready to get rid of these carbs and go buy a holley efi kit. The current setup I have runs ok but has a huge problem with flat spot/lean stall at low engine rpms and only small changes in the pedal. Like the kind of driving you do every day. I've changed pump cams, squirters, jets and this current frankencarb just wont tune.

The original carb from this thread, a gold finish speedmaster holley clone. 4 years ago it was only $150 or so, now near twice the price. After all my fiddling around with it I snapped the baseplate.

After putting the new baseplate on things were fine until I stripped a bowl screw changing the jets. The rest of the carb that came with the baseplate had an electric choke I didn't want to deal with so I tore apart a used holley 7448 I bought on ebay a while ago for $120 and used the main body from that after making sure it was all cleaned up.

The frankencarb has the speedmaster bowl assembly, metering block, and squirter. Using the ebay 7448 main body, the baseplate from the unnamed holley clone. Didn't want to mess with the electric choke on the main body of this clone but its my next option.

I think that the 7448 has been modified or has some larger venturi that are too big to work for this. Changing to this main body I had to increase the jets quite a bit to get cruise and WOT not to be lean compared to the speedmaster body.

If I feather the gas it accelerates fine. mid-full wot has a small stumble but not bad. Light acceleration is more pronounced stumble that is worse the slower the engine is going. If I'm not careful it will stall/lean pop out the carb. A holley sniper setup with fuel pump looks to be about $1400 plus tax and shipping, comes with a 2 bar map so that should be more than enough for what I'm doing. Until then, continuing to mess with carb.
 
Progress is being made, tweaking the accel pump and idle mixture screws help. An interesting behavior currently is when I turn right it leans out, turning left is not a problem. Makes sense because turning right the fuel in the bowl moves away from the main body. Float height is set good. Maybe the fuel pump is getting weak.

I had it running well enough to drive around for a couple months but recently it got really lean at idle and ok at high rpms. Power brakes also stopped having power. The used, untested brake booster I swapped from the donor died and is causing a vacuum leak. Drivable but a bad booster and rough idle is obnoxious. Local shops can't order it, found a remanufactured on amazon that will be here in another week or so.

The bottom end is still on it's way out. Despite the fancy PCV (which I still would 100% recommend) blowby is getting bad. Cruising at 70mph for more than 20 minutes and the oil light will start flickering. 65mph all day long no problem. Up hills makes it happen faster. Decelerating when hot makes a definite rod knock/piston slap sound. Valvetrain is kinda rattly too.

I bought a head from another forum member that was machined and had the adapter for a 2 barrel holley. Didn't take it to shop or anything. Looked clean and couldn't see any major issues, ran better than the head it replaced so all of the problems I am seeing now are from the age of the bottom end.

Doing one thing seems to open a new can of worms each time. To fix this bottom end issue, I'm pulling and rebuilding the drivetrain from the donor falcon. I've pulled a bunch of good parts from it already but the wife wants it gone. "You said 3 months, it's been 3 years" so I am taking care of it as quickly as I can. The problem then was how do I get this out when it is in my yard with no garage and barely solid ground?

Too many project cars but most of them can move under their own power. Got my Torino GT started, moved out of the way, and found inches deep silt from the rainstorms over the last year. Now I am digging out down to the asphalt next to the donor so I can pull the motor and trans. Turns out the silt was deeper than I thought, maybe 6" deep near the road!
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Was this setup strong enough to lift the front end off the ground? Nope but just barely. It should be fine taking the engine and trans out though. I did finish cleaning off this area though so it is accessible again.
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Thanks! I don't get the point of having vehicles that aren't used. This project has taken much longer than I had planned but I have been driving it the whole time. 4 years now since I started and even with a year of it up on jack stands and all the other downtime I've put 16k miles on it even while working from home.

The electrical upgrade was needed for a few reasons. Primarily it wouldn't start anymore because the battery side terminal on the solenoid and connectors were so corroded that it wouldn't start and would literally spark. The stereo was having intermittent problems as well. All of these were caused by the corrosion of the dissimilar metals on that solenoid post.

The second reason is to prepare for a much louder stereo. My 16 year old son has shown interest that and I did the same thing when I was his age. I am teaching him how to design a build a subwoofer box that will fit in the rear facing seat/storage area. Something that can also be removed and put into the car he is fixing up and learning to drive on - a '99 ford focus. I have an existing low profile underseat sub/amp combo that uses a 4 gauge primary wire for 250 watts rms. The rest is powered by the head unit, 2 channel speaker for the front that replaced the original dash speaker and a pair of 6x9's in boxes sitting in cargo area. This is plenty loud for anything reasonable but it is always fun to push it to the next level.

To get a loud stereo in a small space takes lots of power so this was the first step in that direction. I replaced the 100 amp fuse to the existing stereo with a 250 amp breaker. It currently is all 4 gauge which is plenty for the current amp/sub and now with new crimped ends. The next step is replacing the 4 gauge with 1/0 and connecting it directly to the bus bar instead of from the solenoid as I did for now. The additional stereo box will have 2x200 watt amp for 6x9s and the subwoofers powered by a 2000 watt amp.

Aside from the stereo parts that could be a whole other thread in it's own, hauling all of the lumber was part of this project too. I had no space to rebuild an engine but still I need to clean up the bottom end that is coming out of the donor. To fix this I'm building a shed where we can have a nice clean space to keep this turbo project moving.

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So the bottom end gave up today at 169k miles. Limped it home but it's not drivable anymore. I'm guessing the ring and piston broke. Tons of blowby, oil smoke, one cylinder not firing. Any acceleration or hill makes it severe and overheats the oil. Time to accelerate the rebuild.
 
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