Cold Start Issue 914-4, Admitting I'm stuck and asking for help Options

[Ron914]

Interesting ,
As I grew up I heard you didn't want to buy a car produced on a Monday or Friday, Wednesday was the best day .
My 914 was produced in October 1975 > What happens in Germany in October , October Fest .
The guy who put my jack post covers on put them on upside down so the drain hole was at the top instead of the bottom , This is the only place I had any rust issues on my mostly California life car. Thankfully the damage was limited to the covers only the longs are pristine no rust .
I used to work for a large printing press manufacturer Heidelberg , when I first went to the factory for train I was surprised they had beer in the vending machines and at lunch you could also choose beer for your beverage .The key to unlock the electrical cabinets also had a built in bottle opener.

[Ron914]

@Blue Lightning
Here are a pictures of again what I think are an original MPS and decel for reference

[Blue Lightning]

[b]

Thanks, but I think that second one is the fuel pressure regulator?

[Blue Lightning]

So took the advice of checking the valve adjustments. Watched a couple videos and read some more on doing the adjustment, and decided they were all a bit tight, so loosened them up.

And it started right up.

https://youtube.com/shorts/HaebjvxBtD0?feature=share

and the idle vacuum is much better and the idle adjustment screw actually has some effect! Would never have thought it would be that sensitive to something like the valve adjustment!

Thanks for all the suggestions and seeing me through this! Time for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

[Superhawk996]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

Now double back and verify ignition timing, idle speed, basic tuning

Then address the engine seemingly running hot in a 15 mile drive - don’t neglect getting to the bottom of that. Overheating will lead to a dropped valve seat in short order. Don’t want to see you dealing with that.

[ctc911ctc]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

Now double back and verify ignition timing, idle speed, basic tuning

Then address the engine seemingly running hot in a 15 mile drive - don’t neglect getting to the bottom of that. Overheating will lead to a dripped valve seat in short order. Don’t want to see you dealing with that.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif)

Most importantly, get the dwell as close to book as possible

[930cabman]

Victory at last

satisfaction

[emerygt350]

Excellent news!

[Blue Lightning]

Most importantly, get the dwell as close to book as possible

I'm on a Pertronix, so one less adjustment (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Blue Lightning]

Do you have a deceleration valve in your car still? Reading https://members.rennlist.com/pbanders/DJetP...tm#troubleshoot in the Deceleration Valve section, it seems like this should limit the vacuum to ~17 psi?

That would cause my idle to skyrocket. My engine produces 'extra special' amounts of vacuum. My decel keeps my vacuum below 23 on overrun and that is about all it does. The decel shouldn't be setting idle vacuum, it would only function as an AAR. Why is my vacuum so high? No clue (freshly rebuilt, larger displacement, very careful tuning and timing)... However, not many people run vacuum gauges on their dash so how many other 2056s with my compression ratio and a stock cam are also at these low pressures? Hard to know. Made tuning the MPS fun.

So this is an interesting topic for me. The decal valve, if set to ~17 inHg (as Paul Anders suggests) will limit the manifold vacuum. I agree in your situation (and mine to a lesser extent) it will act like another AAR. But if you let the manifold vacuum get up to, say, 23 inHg, won't this mess with the MPS and the vacuum retard on the distributor?

Or is that why you were tuning your MPS?

[emerygt350]

Do you have a deceleration valve in your car still? Reading https://members.rennlist.com/pbanders/DJetP...tm#troubleshoot in the Deceleration Valve section, it seems like this should limit the vacuum to ~17 psi?

That would cause my idle to skyrocket. My engine produces 'extra special' amounts of vacuum. My decel keeps my vacuum below 23 on overrun and that is about all it does. The decel shouldn't be setting idle vacuum, it would only function as an AAR. Why is my vacuum so high? No clue (freshly rebuilt, larger displacement, very careful tuning and timing)... However, not many people run vacuum gauges on their dash so how many other 2056s with my compression ratio and a stock cam are also at these low pressures? Hard to know. Made tuning the MPS fun.

So this is an interesting topic for me. The decal valve, if set to ~17 inHg (as Paul Anders suggests) will limit the manifold vacuum. I agree in your situation (and mine to a lesser extent) it will act like another AAR. But if you let the manifold vacuum get up to, say, 23 inHg, won't this mess with the MPS and the vacuum retard on the distributor?

Or is that why you were tuning your MPS?

At first I thought I was tuning it because of the point higher compression and increased displacement, now I realize most of what I was doing was tuning it for the new vacuum curve. Yes, retard was hopeless, even with my 123. Luckily my idle is dead on and I am using the advance only on the 123.

One thing that has occurred to me now that I am looking back on all of it... If you could predict your new vacuum profile, and you could predict the effect of an aggressive cam, you could put something interesting in a djet. Say the cam causes my idle vacuum to drop 4inches, that would be fine for the mps.

I took a long drive today and was watching the vacuum quite a bit. Level cruise it is sitting at 15, sometimes higher.

Theoretically that retard port should really only be pulling vacuum if the butterfly is closed or nearly closed

[Ron914]

So took the advice of checking the valve adjustments. Watched a couple videos and read some more on doing the adjustment, and decided they were all a bit tight, so loosened them up.

And it started right up.

https://youtube.com/shorts/HaebjvxBtD0?feature=share

and the idle vacuum is much better and the idle adjustment screw actually has some effect! Would never have thought it would be that sensitive to something like the valve adjustment!

Thanks for all the suggestions and seeing me through this! Time for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

@Blue Lighting
Great job and this is very interesting to me ,as I said we are on similar journeys .
I appreciate the link and will look at it later.
My newly rebuilt motor probably has a couple of hundred miles now as I drive the car for testing only still until I figure out my source of a high idle ( I need to pass a California smog first) .
My brother-in-law told me my louder than what I think its normal exhaust noise may be a result of needing a valve adjustment . He said after that many miles now I should adjust the valves so you link will be welcomed because it's been 4-50 years since I have adjusted valves and that was on VW's .My motor initial break in after rebuild plus the miles I have added happened over a few years now.I brought the motor home from the rebuild shop in October 2022.
Now your comments lead me to believe my valve adjustment should be checked as I have this high idle issue and have struggled little to no effect from the idle adjustment screw.

[emerygt350]

So took the advice of checking the valve adjustments. Watched a couple videos and read some more on doing the adjustment, and decided they were all a bit tight, so loosened them up.

And it started right up.

https://youtube.com/shorts/HaebjvxBtD0?feature=share

and the idle vacuum is much better and the idle adjustment screw actually has some effect! Would never have thought it would be that sensitive to something like the valve adjustment!

Thanks for all the suggestions and seeing me through this! Time for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

@Blue Lighting
Great job and this is very interesting to me ,as I said we are on similar journeys .
I appreciate the link and will look at it later.
My newly rebuilt motor probably has a couple of hundred miles now as I drive the car for testing only still until I figure out my source of a high idle ( I need to pass a California smog first) .
My brother-in-law told me my louder than what I think its normal exhaust noise may be a result of needing a valve adjustment . He said after that many miles now I should adjust the valves so you link will be welcomed because it's been 4-50 years since I have adjusted valves and that was on VW's .My motor initial break in after rebuild plus the miles I have added happened over a few years now.I brought the motor home from the rebuild shop in October 2022.
Now your comments lead me to believe my valve adjustment should be checked as I have this high idle issue and have struggled little to no effect from the idle adjustment screw.

Can't hurt to check. Well, it will hurt your back.

[Blue Lightning]

Great job and this is very interesting to me ,as I said we are on similar journeys .
I appreciate the link and will look at it later.
My newly rebuilt motor probably has a couple of hundred miles now as I drive the car for testing only still until I figure out my source of a high idle ( I need to pass a California smog first) .
My brother-in-law told me my louder than what I think its normal exhaust noise may be a result of needing a valve adjustment . He said after that many miles now I should adjust the valves so you link will be welcomed because it's been 4-50 years since I have adjusted valves and that was on VW's .My motor initial break in after rebuild plus the miles I have added happened over a few years now.I brought the motor home from the rebuild shop in October 2022.
Now your comments lead me to believe my valve adjustment should be checked as I have this high idle issue and have struggled little to no effect from the idle adjustment screw.

I started with Ian Karr's video, which he does on a clean engine out of the car but you can see what you are trying to accomplish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdVIgtpSSJs

This is the method of doing it in the car that I actually used:
https://www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/9...iKG3Q08SrethTSq

There are many variations on the adjustment theme. Make sure you have the following items:

• 0.006" feeler gauge
• 0.008" feeler gauge
• new valve cover gaskets (in case you wreck one removing the covers)

one tip/trick I read was to use a dime to turn and hold the adjuster screws. That and apparently I was an overachiever and adjusted mine to more than "just a bit of drag" on the feeler gauge (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Superhawk996]

I was an overachiever and adjusted mine to more than "just a bit of drag" on the feeler gauge (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You got an excellent lesson from the school of hard knocks about assumptions.

Adjusting valves is definitely a skill and the “feel” can only be learned by doing it. No shame there. They don’t call them feeler gauges for nothing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif) If you hadn’t assumed the valve adjustment was OK early on, you would have been off to the races much sooner.

I was trained by USAF in troubleshooting. During tech school, they would set up test scenarios that would intentionally draw you into misleading assumptions.

Tests were timed. It would often take only seconds to verify an assumption. If you took the time, you would be on a correct path to find the root cause issue and pass the test.

If you didn’t, the assumption would draw you down various paths that were dead ends and you would run out of time and would fail.

I don’t post this to shame you but rather to encourage & challenge us all to think about what the assumptions are, and to verify them before we end up chasing our tails.

You did a great job of testing components and working it through methodically! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

[Ron914]

I was an overachiever and adjusted mine to more than "just a bit of drag" on the feeler gauge (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You got an excellent lesson from the school of hard knocks about assumptions.

Adjusting valves is definitely a skill and the “feel” can only be learned by doing it. No shame there. They don’t call them feeler gauges for nothing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif) If you hadn’t assumed the valve adjustment was OK early on, you would have been off to the races much sooner.

I was trained by USAF in troubleshooting. During tech school, they would set up test scenarios that would intentionally draw you into misleading assumptions.

Tests were timed. It would often take only seconds to verify an assumption. If you took the time, you would be on a correct path to find the root cause issue and pass the test.

If you didn’t, the assumption would draw you down various paths that were dead ends and you would run out of time and would fail.

I don’t post this to shame you but rather to encourage & challenge us all to think about what the assumptions are, and to verify them before we end up chasing our tails.

You did a great job of testing components and working it through methodically! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif)

[Blue Lightning]

Went for a drive, maybe 30 minutes around the neighborhood then up to get gas. After so many months of the car just sitting in the garage, it was good to be back in it. It didn't stall anywhere (that wasn't my fault (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif)). Coming off the accelerator in neutral (i.e., stopping for a light) the engine RPMs would dip then come back up to ~800.

When I got home, the CHTs were showing ~200F. Oil temp gauge ~220-230 F. Both were very stable after about 10 minutes (no longer rising).

I've been told not to trust the calibration on the VDO gauges. The CHTs are thermocouples, so that is pretty simple and generally dead accurate.

Checked the timing after getting home but before shutting it off. Still right where it should be. One thing I did notice is that when we released the accelerator after checking the timing (and before reconnecting the vac retard), the engine took a long time to come back down to under 1000 rpm (~10 sec).

Toward the end of my drive, the engine was starting to hesitate and wanted to miss/buck.

[emerygt350]

That oil seemed to heat up pretty quick. Makes me think there is still a timing issue. My oil won't hit 220 unless I am really giving it the beans and it's hot outside. 220 is fine of course. Was it hot down there today?


Is the decel valve back in the mix? That can cause a slow return to idle.

[Blue Lightning]

That oil seemed to heat up pretty quick. Makes me think there is still a timing issue. My oil won't hit 220 unless I am really giving it the beans and it's hot outside. 220 is fine of course. Was it hot down there today?


Is the decel valve back in the mix? That can cause a slow return to idle.

Not particularly warm today (~70F).

Bought a new (used) decel valve, and it is installed. But it is adjusted to very high vacuum so I don't think it is doing anything at this time. It's on the list to play with this, but didn't make it to that today.

Going to try swapping the distributor and the coil to see if that has any effect. But will not be until next weekend (or maybe the weekend after).

[emerygt350]

Return spring is good right? Throttle moves easily?