1961 Mercury Meteor 800 restore

[Laughing Coyote 1,509]

Okay. Now we are making some headway. Since the last post I fired the car and it wouldn't even stay running. Just stumble and cough and acted like its got the flu. Also the starter got hung up and wouldn't retract back in. I was about to sell the damn thing.  Then after a few days I took it back apart. Got it at TDC again. Put in hotter plugs, pulled the starter and solved the issue with the bendix hanging up. Re-installed the distributor again and got the rotor set. Points where re-gaped and everything doubled check. Today I fired it up again and it actually ran. With all the test equipment hooked up, checked the high idle RPM's and set at 1500 RPM's . After it warmed up I checked the low idle and adjusted to 600 RPM and in gear I'm at 550 RPM's. Vacuum was at 19 during high idle and settled down to 16.5/17 at low idle. Dwell is at 23.5 at low idle. The manual shows 26-28 on the dwell so it's a little low. Have to look into that for more adjustment. I had to increase the fuel mixture richer since I had a little back fire thru the carb. It does run a lot better than before. The hesitation seems to be gone now and it has more pep. I took it around the block for some exercise and it was great. So it was a good day, for once.

 

Edited February 7 by Laughing Coyote (see edit history)