first
you use the 4cyl scale not the 8 so what does it read there.
If the A/F is way off the dwell meter will do large swings or no swings at all depending on where the A/F is .

It fires right up ,ok,that means your CSV and thermotime switch both work fine.
When it starts where is the idle. you'll have to wait till morning to check that .
It will take at least 12hrs at your ambient temps for things to cool down enough to get a cold start reading. I wanted to know if when started does it idle at 1600 and then come down to 900 after a minute or so. that will give me a clue as to where your A/F is.

The car only has 12-14.5 volts in the system, you can't get 27 volts ,if you did everything would be blowing ,melting ect. , maybe it was 12.7V

Back to the AF
what is the reading on the 4cyl scale ? and you do have your O2 sensor hooked up ,correct?

Going by my meter 5-10 on the 8cyl scale is around 20 on the 4cyl scale

let me know if that's what you get and we'll adjust from there.

4 cyl is double the 8 cyl, so the readings is 10-20. I can tell you the idle is not as high as 1600 when I start it cold in the morning. I'll check tomorrow, but it settles right into its typical 950-1050 rpm. Btw, it used to idle high at startup and then settle, for what it's worth.

As for the volts, maybe I don't know how to work a multimeter. It's an auto reader set to dc.

O2 sensor is hooked up. If I pull the relay the motor stumbles and runs rough. Plug it back in and the motor runs great for a second then idles kind of rough again.

ok 10-20.
The FV has it limits to how much it can richen or lean out the system.you are beyond it's limits.
because you have been messing with the screws by big movements you may have to screw them in or out to make sure you are going to have the room for adjusting but for now let's just try this.

So, first have the meter where you can watch it while you do the adjustment.
second ,by your reading I think you will have moved the mixture screw almost 1/2 a turn counterclockwise by the time you are done which is huge.
What we want to do is lean out the eng so first turn the mixture screw counterclockwise a bit.as you are doing that the idle should drop (it may take a1/4 turn maybe more maybe less the first time)so then turn the idle screw counterclockwise to bring the idle back up ,right now you are leaning out the eng with both adj which is what you want to do . you will get it adjusted to a point where now the dwell meter needle will start to move from where it is now .Your first movements of the mixture screw and idle screw may have to be big to get the needle to start moving but after it has the adjustments need to be done in very very small increments. keep doing the back and forth from the mixture screw to the idle screw untill the dwell dithers around 45. when you are close to the 45 your last adjustment will be turning the mixture screw clockwise a CH,watch the needle and then you may have to turn the idle screw a CH to get back to 45.
also it won't sit at exactly 45.what you are looking for is the smallest movement back and forth you can get from say 43-47 or 44-46. The finer the adjustments the closer you will get but it takes patiance and more than a couple trys before you get good at it .

Once you get close you will see how the small adjustments can make a big diff.
If you start to get big swings or funny movements then the system is getting too hot and you need to shut down and wait and do it again only now you will be closer.
Also because of the ambient temp I have found that when I set mine at 45 the next day it sat at 42 but then after an hour of driving it was at 45 so once you get it right don't be alarmed if next day the numbers seem off ,drive it and then see .

The final turn of the adjustment should be in a very slight clockwise rotation. Something to do with the threads.

Worry about that when you are finishing up. :-)

Thanks lonewolf for the write ups.

So maybe I turned the a/f screw in too-large increments? I'll head toward lean gradually---maybe over a few days---and see how it goes. Thanks, LW and Bob!

sounds good .
also ,I won't assume anything so Ill tell you that when you do each adjustment give the throttle a blip and let it settle and where it settles is your reading.

Yes you are way rich ,like I said your first movement may have to be big to get the needle to start moving ,after that make them small.
Once you have done it a few times you'll see how the tiniest movement of either screw can make a difference so it will help you to understand how far off big turns really are.
You'll know it's right when you are driving (and provided everything else is right on) that the slightest pressure on the gas pedal will get the car to launch in any gear,Makes it a lot more fun to drive.

Bob ,you're welcome. just my turn to pay it forward,happy to help

Bruce

Watching at the sideline.....
 

Baby,

Your CIS problem was quite simple earlier but due to some of your actions in your desire to fix the problem/s have made it more difficult to diagnose now. Having the right tool like the a dwell meter for tuning a lambda system is mandatory but you have to know or realize when to use it. It is a device capable of reading the dwell of the FV in conjunction with the OXS and ECU with engine completely warmed up (190 deg. plus.).

Adjusting the fuel mixture setting with a bad WUR and using a dwell meter will only confuse you at this point!!!!! It is not how hard you work but how sm.......

Sit back and relax. This post is getting too long and I could not exactly follow what is your goal. What problem/s do you want to address and solve? I have no idea what you want to achieve. Learn how to use the Dwell Meter or learn when to use the tool?

Keep us posted.

Tony

First, thanks to everyone for your patience. A long thread that goes on for a couple weeks has to be frustrating when the issue is something that many of you guys could probably address in your sleep. I truly appreciate the guidance.

To recap, over the past year I rebuilt the motor (top and bottom). Stuck it in the car. It seemed to run great. Started right up every time, ran at a good temp, etc... But I want to get things dialed in, so I got a dwell meter and pressure gauges. I had tested for vacuum leaks before I put the motor back into the car, and everything is tight. I hooked up the meter first to get an idea of where I was at, and it pegged to the right, even before I turned on the key.

I thought maybe the meter was faulty, so I got another one. It read rich, the same numbers I posted earlier. I leaned the mix out in 1/4 turn chunks, counting so I could set it back to the same setting I started from if I needed to. No change in the reading. I leaned it out so far the car wouldn't start. Bear in mind I had to adjust the idle screw to keep it idling at 900 or so along the way. So I set the mix back to where it was when I had originally started. No gain, no loss.

Then I took fuel pressures and reported the results. All looked to be in spec (this is an 83), though a helpful respondent noted that my cold pressure was high.

I measured the resistance of the two prongs in the WUR connector and found at cold they had low resistance.

I measured the voltage at the plug that goes to the WUR connector and found an impossible number of volts.

Even though the lambda relay seemed to function (based on my unplugging it and plugging it in again) I tried a new one. Same result. I went back to the original.

I tested continuity from the green/white wire in the test port to the lambda box.

Today I measured pressure again through the warmup cycle.

That's all I have done so far. I don't think I have screwed up anything. The car still starts and drives as it did before, and it runs rich, as it did when I began this adventure.

My goal is to get the dwell meter to dither at around 45, or even to move from its 10-20 range. I'd like to get the fuel pressures and a/f dialed in to spec.

I don't know that my WUR is bad, other than the connector resistance is 9 ohms.

It seems like my next move is to try leaning out the mix gradually and seeing if the dwell meter needle dithers. If that works, great. If not, I will probably pull the WUR and test it.

If that does not seem like the best approach, I'm open to suggestions! And thanks again!

When you say "leaned out in 1/4 turn chucks", are you referring to the idle mixture adjustment screw which alters the height of the air metering arm? I assume you are, and if so, quarter turns are far too much movement. For example, less than 1/8 of a turn on mine (930 lambda K-Jet) will change the idle AFR a whole point (say 13.5 to 14.5, plus or minus a couple tenths). It really only takes tiny movements of the idle mixture screw to make huge changes.

Hang on.
first going by your wur specs it is fine ,leave it.
second,the dwell meter pegs to the right even before you turn the key on? that's not right , it is hooked up wrong or your ground is bad or there is a short in the green/white wire or bad connection to the green /white wire
I peeled back the plastic covering the green/white wire and hooked up there not in the port to be sure i have a good connection.
The dwell meter should not show anything untill the car is running .

Sorry to confuse. To clarify, the first dwell meter I used pegged to the right. I replaced the meter. With the second meter, I had a reading of 0 before the car was started. When the car was started, it moved to the 10-20 reading and held there through the warmup process. I drove the car for a while then hooked it up and measured again. Multiple times. Multiple days. Even after a long drive, same reading.

Also, 1/4 turns for the A/F mix screw on the top of the fuel distributor. I know those are big increments. I was only trying to get the dwell meter to give a different reading.

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll keep working on it.

Thanks again for all of your input. It’s not always a clear path from point A to point B, but the journey can be worthwhile. Here’s an update…

With the help of lonewolf, who sent many PMs, did some research, and hung on the phone for 3.5 hours the other night and into the following morning trying to make sense of it all, the mix is pretty much dialed in. There were a number of issues, mostly around testing equipment, which I’ll note here. But the bottom line is that when using a digital multimeter with duty cycle function we were able to get the duty cycle to average 50, give or take, with about a 12% swing (6% on either side of 50). These numbers are approximate: the digital reading changes much too fast for my optical reflexes.

So the new Actron two-wire engine analyzer I bought didn’t agree with the rest of the environment, for whatever reason. Gave up on that for now.

The antique three-wire Sears engine analyzer gave me fits by pegging to the max as soon as I hooked up the positive cable to the fuse, even without the engine running. Then lonewolf found out that with some of these you don’t need power; you forget about the little alligator clip and connect the positive cable to the test port pin and ground the negative. That worked, but I was able to adjust in a max reading of about 34 degrees on the 4 cyl scale. It started rich, and as I leaned it out using the AF mix screw, the dwell needle climbed. But once it hit about 34, it began to fall to lower numbers, even as the mix got too rich. Anyone ever have that happen?

I have a digital multimeter with a duty cycle function I don’t really know how to use, so I did some digging and learned a little about duty cycle and positive and negative slopes and how in general to read the damn thing. So, I think the car is now pretty close. I'll keep tweaking it to try to narrow the duty cycle range, but I'm happy with the way it's going. Plus, I need to find an analog meter I could get working so my eyes don’t hit the floor from trying to keep up with the rapidly fluctuating digital multi.