Messages

We were a Ford family.  We have owned 2 Broncos, 3 Explorers, an Escort, an Edge, a Ranger, and of course Shelbys.  I put in an early reservation for a Bronco and was pretty disappointed with my experience.  I actually had a salesman at the dealership say to me "you need to pay up if you want to play, bro".  That was the tipping point for me.  I know that dealers can be hit and miss, but it didn't seem like Ford tried to do anything to stop the price gouging in 2020 to 2022. 

After more than a year of waiting for my vehicle with no assurance of what the actual cost might be when it arrived, I decided to pull the cord and went and bought a new Telluride.  I couldn't be more happy with it and they didn't try and mark it up over MSRP.

I never would have even considered buying a Kia if not for that experience, but now I am glad I did.
 
 

Thanks!!

Hi Everyone,
Which center caps are correct?  Red or yellow version? 

Give the man time to digest some of this. I am sure that he feels like an intoxicated giraffe on roller skates stuck in a revolving door? It's all a blur.

Hahahaha. 

Going to 3.50s to start.  Manual trans still under consideration.  Thanks for all the information, everyone!!

The 9 inch rear end set up makes it relatively easy to switch out the center section gear setup. I know of numerous people besides myself that have a extra center section setup with higher or lower gears depending on if highway or drags.

Hi Bob,
Thank you for the response. I have a complete center section with 3.50s sitting in my garage that I picked up a while back.  Would be an easy swap, so I could probably start there and see how things go.

When I drove my GT350 to SAAC 35 in San Rafael California, I pulled the 3.89 and put in 3.00 gears.  It was a 2000 mile round trip.  IIRC, the car would do 75 MPH around 3100 rpm.  It made the trip much more doable.  I had no issues starting from a stand still with the close ration T-10M1.  It also helped on the mileage for such a long trip.  The car got 18 mpg.

Best of luck

Cory

Thanks Cory!  I was probably there for that event.  I grew up in San Rafael. 

...OR...You could install the 3.50 rear, then pull out that rare C-4 C-code for safekeeping and install a T5 5-speed. Easy conversion kits out there. That OD 5th gear will give you just what you need on the highway.

This is something I have seriously considered in the past, but was always worried about impacting the original car.  From what I have read, I believe this is a very straight forward conversion and can be done without modifying the car (cutting / welding)?  If I could do this and still get it back to original without too much hassle, then maybe it is worth considering?

Thank you all for the quick replies.  I am running a 205/70R14 tire, which I believe the height is just a hair over 25 inches.  I checked it and I should be able to reduce the RPMs by about 500 at 75 mph on the freeway.  If I can get to 3,500 at 75mph, that is probably good enough. 

I actually have a set of 3.50 gears in my garage, so maybe that is a good place to start.

Hi Everyone,
We have a 66 GT350H - original 289 HiPo & C4 transmission.  However, at some point the rear end gears were switched out to 4.11s.  As you can imagine, freeway driving is pretty brutal.  I don't have it up on the freeway that often, and when I do, it is usually only for a few miles.   However, we may start looking to drive it on some longer day trips and want freeway driving to be a little more reasonable. 

Right now I am 3500+ RPMs on the freeway at around 65 mph.  Also, it usually shifts out of 1st almost immediately off the line unless you are really standing on it.   

What are others running with a C4? 3.50, 3.25, 3.00? 

Not tracking the car.  It is a weekend driver, mostly cruising on weekends for coffee and shows.

Looking to be able to cruise at 75mph, but also want to keep some get up and go off the line.  Is 3.25 a good middle ground here?  Calculator shows RPMs will be under 3500 at 75mph, which is good, but not sure how much off the line acceleration I am giving up to get there. 

 

I have been taking my 10 year old daughter to cars and coffee on the weekends for close to a year.   She finally says to me "I like riding in the car, but looking at all those other cars is just boring.   Can we just go for a cruise instead?"

I like that she enjoys the car, but I kinda miss my cars and coffee partner 

11 years old was where my daughter would start to engage with my friends and realized that the cars are about the people who you collect along the way.

The "Hov" came over to the house the first time and we were prepared to just sit in the garage and talk about our cars. About twenty minutes into the conversation my daughter came out to meet "The Hov" the next two and a half hours were spent discussing various bands, songs, albums, etc. my daughter can hold her own on the history of Rock and Roll. So when we get to a car show she's just who she is and holds her own conversations.

She was invited to be a junior judge at a Concours d'elegance, my wife and I were sure she would have voted for a blue car, any really good looking blue car as best in show. At the end of the day when we got back together I asked her which car she had chosen she replied, the older 1950s American LaFrance Fire truck.

They are drawn to what they like, she'll grow into it. Now at 25 years old she's my garage buddy, and when we go to car shows she's still not predictable as to what she likes best.


John

Sorry for the delayed response.  That is an awesome story, John.   I know my daughter loves Shelbys.  Hopefully she expands as she gets older too.

I have been taking my 10 year old daughter to cars and coffee on the weekends for close to a year.   She finally says to me "I like riding in the car, but looking at all those other cars is just boring.   Can we just go for a cruise instead?"

I like that she enjoys the car, but I kinda miss my cars and coffee partner 

He's ninety-six now and barely goes outside.  I was able to get him to go for a brief drive.  He enjoyed the rumble of the engine thoroughly.

This is awesome!

Thank you for all the tips.  Just kept working on it. 

I have it running much cleaner now. Idling pretty steady at 500 RPM in drive. Not perfect but close.  Will continue to fine tune tomorrow. 

I do have a stock / unchanged 3259-1.  With the screws all they way in, it was barley running and running very rough.  But it was not dying. There is not a ton of difference in how it runs with the screws in or 1.5 turns out.  RPMs are low and jumping around in park.   

An explanation of why is in order.

A typical generic carb has a very "normal" idle circuit. This is why they often run fantastically on a myriad of engines.
The two common performance carbs that show a difference with this are the Cobrajet and 3259-1.
The reasons for this:
The CJ carb is designed to idle on the transfer slot. Yes it does in fact have mixture screws, but enough t slot is showing that is provides enough fuel to idle on many engines even if the mix screws are closed. Yes it will run rough.

The 3259 from 1965 has a fairly small and reasonable idle feed at .033, this works great on most engines.
The 3259-1 has an idle feed of .040 which is massive. The carb is designed to provide sufficient idle fuel for radical camshafts like the Lemans Cam.
In modern days we would just use a four corner idle carb and reduce the idle feed jets considerably. In 1966+ this was not an option, so the only way to provide more fuel was with a drastic enlargement of the idle jet.
So what happens when you pit this carb on an engine making more than 12inches of vacuum?  It tends to idle very rich and the mixture screws are often weak with adjustments. You can often close them entirely and the engine will still idle (tho badly as noted).

Typically when rebuilding a 3259-1 I do ask the customer about cam specs as I can make changes easily.

FL saac:
I am not into pushing my business on the main forum. Visit my webpage afscarbs.com and all info you want is there. Feel free to contact me via the page. Thanks

Thank you for the information.  I don't have much experience with this car, as it is my Dads.  I am learning as I go here.  Is there an easy way for me to check and see how much vacuum I have? 

Ran perfect with this carb for 50 years, so imagine I will eventually find a way to get it dialed in.

we had a similar situation with our recently acquired 66 GTH, we rebuilt the carb and it did not perform as expected.

lucked out as another saac member had a n.o.s. carb

we replaced it with the n.o.s. car performs like it's a new fuel injected model even better after a recent installation of a petronix module

Thanks!  I think most Hertz cars had an Autolite 4100 C6ZF-F?  My father purchased this car in 1969 and the carb was already switch out and had a Holley 715 from a manual Shelby.   

A couple of month ago, it started to leak gas, so I had it rebuilt.  I am very confident that the rebuild is solid, as the person that did it has a lot of experience with rare carbs and they ran it on their tester in the shop and measured fuel, gas, etc. before I took delivery. 

I am hoping i just have a vacuum issue between the carb and the intake manifold.  I am going to remove the 1/4" aluminum dissipater and mount it back up with a single gasket to see if I can get it to seal.