wants to stall

[hotrod ford]

doing a little servicing on my truck before i have to leave again and noticing that when the truck is in park it runs fine. when i put it in gear i have to step on the gas to keep it from stalling. it has a 2bbl 2100 motorcraft on it. i'm not familiar with these so is there any thing that i can do to stop this stalling?

[fordman]

it could be a vacuum leak or maybe the brake booster is bad and letting a leak happen inside of it. the idle might be wrong the timing could be off. do you hear any hissing when the enigne is running? when you step on the brakes do you here hissing? spray some carb cleaner around the top of the manifold and the vacuum hose to see if they are sucking air.

[hotrod ford]

between the carb and the intake there is a spacer. coming out of the front of the spacer there is a port thats open. what does this connect to?

[fordman]

the front? if its what i think it is it should be in the back. unless its a water port for a heated cabr spacer thing. if you look at the spacer it might have three ports abotu the same size on it if its a heated spacer. is the port in the middle or off to one side?

[hotrod ford]

yep, its off to the side on the passenger side. i see old watere build up too.

[fordman]

thats just a water port then for the heated carb spacer. if it isn't puking water out then it ok to ignore it.

[hotrod ford]

it could be a vacuum leak or maybe the brake booster is bad and letting a leak happen inside of it. the idle might be wrong the timing could be off. do you hear any hissing when the enigne is running? when you step on the brakes do you here hissing? spray some carb cleaner around the top of the manifold and the vacuum hose to see if they are sucking air.

i havn't heard any hissing. now one thing, where the tube from the air filter fastens to the oil breather, it is missing. will the eng rev up if there is a leak and i spray the carb cleaner?

[fordman]

yes it should. jsut try to keep it away from the carb when sprayign to help keep the false positive away.

[hotrod ford]

ok, i set the timing alittle bit. better but still wants to stall. i also changed the vacum line. how exactly does the brake booster effect this problem?

[fordman]

the brak ebooster runs off of the intake vacuum. if its bad it can give a vacuum leak.

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

It might be worth looking at the timing chain too. Pop the distributor cap and have someone watch and tell you when the rotor starts to move as you rotate the crank with a wrench. I don't know exactly what is an acceptable amount of slop, but in my experience it will either be pretty tight, maybe around 5 degrees rotation before the rotor moves, or really sloppy, like 15 degrees before the rotor moves. If the chain is too sloppy, it will retard the cam timing a little, and since the cam drives the distributor, the ignition timing too. Usually, if it isn't too bad setting the ignition timing back to spec will help quite a bit, but if it is really bad the valve timing will be so far out that it will still produce a noticeable hesitation.
It might be smart to hook up the timing light and make sure the vacuum advance is still working too, but in my experience vacuum advances don't go out too often.
Let me know what fixes it, my buddy has the same trouble with his 302 2bbl, but I haven't had time to take a look at it yet...
Good luck,
ALT

[hotrod ford]

it don't want to do any thing now. i replaced the valve cover gaskets because they were leaking. i marked the right side plugs and removed them from the head. replaced the gasket ant reinstalled the cover and wires. the truck is acting up somthing awful. i looked at the chiltons and the wires are no where near what they are on the truck. the left side is still the same as when i received the truck. am i missing somthing here. all i wanted to do was a nice little tune up. does anyone have a diagram from distributor to plugs?

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x115 ... 1233876216

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x115 ... 1233876247


this is a pic from a previous eng.

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x115 ... 1233877049

[hotrod ford]

ok, i put the wires where exactly the chiltons says to. now the truck don't even want to start. i've adjusted the ditributor every position possible and nothing. the wires were not in the coreect positions until now. if the po had them in the wrong spots could this mess somthing up if it ran wrong for a long time?

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x115 ... 1233879291

[fordman]

the first thing i saw in those pics was the wet looking area on the carb. that is the accelorator pump plate. behind the plate is a diaphram. if it is leaking that is the problem because the acceloator pump goes with off the line starts. what it does is squirt extra fuel into the carb when its needed to get it going to a higher speed. or to drive. vacuum keeps the engine at a faster speed once you get going. the timing for a fe is marked on the intake or should be if its a ford intake. 15426378with a counterclockwise rotation of the rotor.

[hotrod ford]

that is the same chart in my book. so at least i know i have it right now. my thing is that if you look in the first pic i put on there the wires were no where close to that and the truck was starting. now that they are right i just cranks and thats it. how difficult is it to fix that leak on the carb? time wise?