Those that were following my problem will remember that I was seeing 3 -5 degrees of knock on cool days with my 3.0 pulley. Well after some finagling and a bunch of different scans I finally got it knicked.
This weekend I went over everything with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to discover what was causing this.
So... here are my findings:
The polyurethane upper dogbone bushings not only decrease the quality of the idle but add false knock. These seemed to compound 2 - 4 degrees above what I already had. I understand that some are running these free of knock. That was not the case with me. I won't go into my opinion on the neccessity of these bushings or their perceived benefits, but needless to say I was happy to remove them, not only to rid myself of some of the knock, but to get a tolerable idle back.
The main problem was the spark plugs. I pulled them out today and discovered a .060 gap, slightly larger than the .057 I set them at way back when I installed the 3.4 pulley. I re-gapped them to .040 and went out for a scan. At the top of second gear I was seeing .26 - .69 blips with one blip of 1.98, all of which I attribute to the Festiva radiator I'm using as an intercooler heat exchanger.
I finally got the intercooler to hold fluid and after a couple months usage I'm definetly put at ease with my decision to offer Brian's core with our kits, especially with the improvements he's making to it.
Next: Headers, heads, and rockers. I hope to have the car into the 12's this season with just the addition of headers and rockers, the rockers of course being a temporary solution until I get the cam in this off-season.
Well that's all I have. Just thought I'd add something to the dead forum today while I'm working.
This weekend I went over everything with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to discover what was causing this.
So... here are my findings:
The polyurethane upper dogbone bushings not only decrease the quality of the idle but add false knock. These seemed to compound 2 - 4 degrees above what I already had. I understand that some are running these free of knock. That was not the case with me. I won't go into my opinion on the neccessity of these bushings or their perceived benefits, but needless to say I was happy to remove them, not only to rid myself of some of the knock, but to get a tolerable idle back.
The main problem was the spark plugs. I pulled them out today and discovered a .060 gap, slightly larger than the .057 I set them at way back when I installed the 3.4 pulley. I re-gapped them to .040 and went out for a scan. At the top of second gear I was seeing .26 - .69 blips with one blip of 1.98, all of which I attribute to the Festiva radiator I'm using as an intercooler heat exchanger.
I finally got the intercooler to hold fluid and after a couple months usage I'm definetly put at ease with my decision to offer Brian's core with our kits, especially with the improvements he's making to it.
Next: Headers, heads, and rockers. I hope to have the car into the 12's this season with just the addition of headers and rockers, the rockers of course being a temporary solution until I get the cam in this off-season.
Well that's all I have. Just thought I'd add something to the dead forum today while I'm working.
