[T3] Bad day at the (FI) office

Sean Bartnik sjbartnik at mac.com
Mon Mar 14 19:09:59 PDT 2016


> I’ll preface this rather long post with something that came up yesterday when Sean (who also posts to this list) came by. In specific, he noted two things about our motor: one was a lack of power with the pedal floored and the other was a hissing sound like an air leak in the engine bay. 
> 
> As to the pedal, I feel like I’ve always kind of had to finagle it to get harder acceleration. Generally, if I just floor it, nothing really happens as I discovered to my dismay a few months ago when trying to pass someone on a country road. I actually had to fall back behind the car I was trying to pass because I couldn’t really accelerate. But this was with another motor with mostly entirely different FI components. In other words I always kind of worked around what I thought was a quirk of the FI system. 

I will just add my notes here….

I have never driven an FI Type 3 before I drove Dan’s car yesterday so I don’t have anything to compare it to.  The only thing I can compare it to is my ’65 with dual carbs.

Dan asked me to test drive the car and so I obliged.  He wanted me to push it, so I did.  My first thought upon flooring the pedal was “my ’65 is faster than this.” I should note that the ’65 is an S but it is still a 1500 and was built with flat-top pistons rather than the original dome-top pistons.  Also, Dan carries probably about 200 lbs. worth of tools more in the trunk than I carry so maybe that has something to do with it.  :-)

But it did seem to me that something was impinging the travel of the gas pedal.  Dan’s engine is smooth and revs very nicely but it seemed to me that power was lacking.  I don’t know if the throttle travel was the same from carbs to FI but mine seems to have a lot more.  In poking around after the drive I found Dan’s carpet seemed to be blocking the throttle from full travel so I tried to mitigate that as best I could.  I did note though that in a hard acceleration scenario there was a bucking sensation and it could be intensified by coming off and on the throttle rapidly.  It didn’t feel like any ignition miss that I’ve ever felt.  This is with my foot fully off the clutch.  

I did hear a hiss sound in the engine compartment but at the time we didn’t do anything to try to pinpoint the source.  Again, the only thing I have to compare it to is my ’65 with dual carbs which doesn’t make such a sound.  

-Sean


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