[jkh2cpu]

Here's the closure on this one... I did contact Richard at PMO, and he suggested .55 idles and 1.25 mains. The car was still running rough on this combination, but the AFR was around 14.0 in cruising, and at safe levels (13.5) at WOT.

The problem was the ignition and specifically the points. I installed a new pair set the gap and got the dwell close to the ball park... There was much improvement with this, but the car was still acting odd: the tach would occasionally idle fast than the engine was running, or indicate 2000 rpm when the engine was turning over at 1000-1200 rpm. If I had been breezing down the interstate at an indicated 80 (really just 75 according to my stopwatch and mileage markers), the tach and engine would drop down to 600 rpm and then slowly recover to the expected 1000 or so; even so occasionally the tach would show the false value of 2000 rpm. Besides all of that, the strobe showed that the ignition at idle was firing at 7 BTDC, with a plus-minus of 2 or 3 degrees.

I got a pertronix for the car... The car is a T that came with MFI, and the distributor was 0-231-169-008, which is not listed by our host. I checked the factor manual (bought it in 1974 for 80 bucks: four volumes), and it said that the 1972-1973 distributors were the same except for the rev limiter, so I got the PEL-PT 1863. It installed like a charm, except that the 6-32 nuts looked and acted like 4-40; I got 6-32s at the hardware for 7 cents each. It fired up and ticked over like it was brand new. Better yet, the tach was rock solid at idle, and the indicated tach rpm was the engine rpm. Coming off the expressway, the idle dropped like a rock to 1000 and stayed there like a rock. The stobe now shows idle at 7 BTDC with nearly undetectable variation.

I'm a happy camper. Now I have to reconstruct the 2.7 short block that I bough several years ago and shoehorn it into the car. If it gets decent mileage, I'll keep the webers, otherwise I'll look at some aftermarket EFI setups.

John.