Bad acceleration after replacement of cylinder head gaskets
Asked by froeschl May 20, 2014 at 02:02 PM about the 1990 Ford LTD Crown Victoria 4 Dr LX Sedan
Question type: Maintenance & Repair
Both cylinder head gaskets were replaced recently on my '90 LTD Crown Victoria because of oil leakage. During re-assembly I decided also to replace the fuel injectors - although the engine was running perfectly before. Now the acceleration of my Ford is not as good any more as it was before the repair. The engine itself runs smoothly, it' s just the driving behavior. Which is more likely - a non-optimal setting of the distributer or bad injectors ? Ignition timing was set to 11° before TDC.
7 Answers
Have you had the throttle body checked? May need a new one
So you' d rather exclude bad fuel injectors and ignition timing ? What might be the problem with the throttle body ? Actually that' s just mechanics. Or do you mean the throttle position sensor ? Thanks
First off, your timing is retarded a touch. 12 degrees is the spec. 1 degree may not sound like much, but it makes a difference. Question. Did you do the heads or the valve cover gaskets? Ford 302 engines seldom need head gaskets, ever. I've seen them last over 1,000,000 miles and still have great compression. If you did the heads, you had to remove the distributor, and it may be off one tooth on the cam drive, and that would do it. Also, when you pull the distributor on these Windsor engines be very careful NOT to drop the oil pimp drive, or you will have to pull the oil pan to retrieve it.
Both - head as well as valve cover gaskets - and also upper & lower intake manifold gaskets were replaced. The engine was loosing engine oil and when I looked up the block from the bottom I could see traces of oil leaking between the block and the heads on both sides of the engine. I' m quite sure that oil leakage is possible although compression is still OK. Actually I did not have a compression problem - the engine was running perfectly. Since the gaskets were replaced, oil leakage seems to be stopped. So I will try to set ignition timing from 11 to 12 deg. as recommended. Perhaps that will solve my problem. Thanks.
not sure i said to exclude anything so.... just saying i had the same issue, same things checked, and it came back i needed to replace the throttle body. now it runs perfectly fine.
Unfortunately I cannot check before July if an adjustment of the ignition timing from 11 to 12 degrees before TDC wiill have the positive impact I expect. If this does not solve the problem, I will double-check throttle body and fuel injectors.
Ignition timing was set to 12 deg today - that solved my problem. Acceleration is as good as it was before the repair.
