altezzaclub

Ah, you have my sympathy, it drove me mad a few years back when I put a 4AGE in The Girls KE70.. Here's some photos, as I haven't got time to hunt down the real solution until tonight- Make sure it has 12V to the coil on cranking, not just with ignition on. Otherwise, check the colours on my wires and see if they compare, read how I did it with the KE70 loom, and take a look through the wiring diagrams. Mine is a bigport, but some diagrams are for smallports. Here's a bit of my notes on it- "In the KE70 chassis loom there is a circuit for the ignition B/O and purple wires that runs right around the engine bay, a very handy situation. This takes ignition power from the COR box to a relay I fitted by the 4AGE coil & powered from the battery. This gave Ign power to the coil & I used the purple wire to take the coil-ve signal back to the COR side where it plugs into the KE70 black tacho wire. The KE70 chassis loom supplies the starter motor with power and cranking signal as usual. So now the KE70 chassis supplies ignition power and cranking power, and receives signals back for the tacho. The KE70 wires for oil pressure and temperature were used, although one was lengthened. I fitted the KE70 temp sensor which gave the correct reading on the dash gauge. Rob tells me there are several different temp senders listed for 4Ks, and they read twice as high as a 4AGE one. When I checked the resistances on mine that was true" --------------------------------

Ah, I see, it uses an old bimetallic mechanical system plus a computer controlled system as well. I found the other sort, the PWM linear valve, explained here- https://motorsport-electronics.co.uk/onlinehelp/html/PWMBasedIdle.html That runs a 2-pin system so the Haltech can control one of those. I might leave the waxstat in The Girls KE70 as it gives a good cold idle at -2deg, and see if a PWM can control the warm idle. The Evo3 rally car runs a Bosch unit like that, only they're $330, while a nasty copy for Audi/VW on Aliexpress is $20 !!. Anyway... next year's problem.. by then you will have your 3-wire sorted out and we will both know more.

Would the electrical side to be a sensor, rather than an activator? The 4AGE has the waxstat that opens and closes an air valve depending on temp, and the ECU must read the oxy sensor in the exhaust to see how much air has gone in. So cold idle has more air & fuel, reducing as the motor warms and the waxstat closes. What if yours has a waxstat to regulate air volume and the rotary windings that look like a TPS are telling the ECU how much air is being let in? If the rotary part turned the waxstat part you wouldn't need a wax cylinder, the ECU would control the air volume like a stepper motor. There's too much I don't know! I'm about to learn another lot as the Sprinter came back looking like this after Steve drove through a particularly deep stream at the Batemans Bay rally. While we could spend a lot of money rebuilding the 4AGE, he reckons just move onto the 3SGE that is sitting there awaiting the Orange Cake. That makes sense, but it will take longer to do and I remember the electrics of fitting an ECU to The Girls KE70 were quite taxing... Looks like I'll have to step up a notch in Toyota electrics, its time to learn laptop tuning & troubleshooting..

Ah- also, see if it changes picking up fuel if parked facing downhill or uphill. A crappy fuel pump is a possibility if it doesn't actually suck well. You can take the top off the pump and check for dirt under the valves inside. How's the fuel filter look?

Take the sender unit wire off the top of the fuel tank and short it out. If the gauge reads full, the sender unit is faulty. If the gauge reads half, the wiring or gauge is faulty. The new sender units on Ebay only go from empty to half when the tank is full, or from half to full so you run out at half. They just don't have enough range. Throw the auto away and fit a K50 or a K40 if you can't get the first. The car will accelerate faster, actually go up hills, & use less fuel. Buy the whole system, a flywheel, a clutch setup, gearbox and driveshaft, pedals. Beware that the manual boxes have unique bearings that are no longer available, so once they get noisy or die that cannot be repaired. Start saving for a 4AGE motor & T50 gearbox if you're going to keep the car! Gearbox conversion in here- Throw a picture up!

Well, crunch time is coming.. Subaru done, AE86 getting there- The main jobs were to extend the roll cage with a pair of roof bars from the windscreen to the rear suspension, an X in the main hoop and a set of Sainz bars down the A-pillar. Turned out, modifying a cage is much harder than building one from scratch, but its now up to modern specs for gravel work. The seat mounts also needed upgrading- so they now have the expected pipe mounts- I refurbished some of the 14" Corona steelies we used on the Purple People Eater, so new tyres on Stage one- and one of the few jobs to be done in the next 4 days is to finish a gearbox guard as the J160 sits very low at the back, which is why I had such strange side mounts on the PPE. We measured the rear suspension carefully as the Bilsteins were leaking, and ended up putting a spacer above the bump stop to make sure the diff stopped before the shocks bottomed out. We've used this model Bilstein for years and always had leakage problems after a while, hopefully this helps. Otherwise, whoever built the car did a good job. It was a gravel car for a while, the underside is ruined, but then a tarmac racer as the gearbox & mounts are un-marked. So its back on the gravel down at Batemans Bay this weekend coming!

I can't remember if the bearings are the same, I think they are interchangeable, but 4AFE are only 7bolt and 4AGE are 8bolt for the flywheels.

That's wonderful! I suppose its just got twin carbs and a cam, and it looks like just a main hoop roll cage. Life was so simple in those days! I hope you take it out to the occasional sprint and give it a good run!

Hmm.. March to June, it is getting like Project Binky! The 5 is sitting awaiting its next run up at Leyburn, we've had three events with it and it is superb. The Evo3 however... well... The Cake was left behind the Evo3 as we pulled the motor down before the Orange rally in May and found a spun bearing and two cracked pistons. Josh bought a random motor from someone and a mate mailed up a box of pistons with rods and we ripped into it. The block from the new motor was good, still faint hone marks. However two pistons had collapsed ring lands and those cyls had detonation marks on the head and piston crowns. We took the block and crank. One set of pistons in the box had the rings frozen into the grooves with gunk, just plain never-change-the-oil gunk. It took a couple of hours to clean them up, and then we selected the best set of rings from all the ones we had. The head off the original engine I stripped and did a valve grind, Big G assembled the block with its mis-matched components and off we went to the Orange Rally. Things went OK until the flange nuts on the exhaust manifold came loose and we lost boost as the turbo dropped. That was from making a new manifold completely after the old one suffered fatigue & cracked in the Oberon Rally the month previously. More work needed as Josh found the turbo had side-play from having to use a restrictor for CAMS events, it was over-spinning and sucking itself up the intake tube, giving the bearing a lot of side thrust. Buy a new twin-scroll with bushes instead, push the Cake aside and make yet another new manifold. The gearbox and diffs arrived back from Adelaide after a check on last Wednesday & were fitted. The motor went in on Thursday and Josh could start making a new dump pipe to suit, and I finished in time to hit bed about midnight. He kept working.. I was up at 5am Friday & dragged him up at 7am to finish what we could. We left some things to be done before driver's briefing on Saturday and headed for Sydney, 8hours late at 2pm. 4hours later it was on a dyno, and at midnight Friday we loaded it back on the trailer, tuned for the new twin-scroll. We headed for Bega, 6hours away.. When he cunningly handed the Monster truck over to me about 2am and went to sleep, I found the heater didn't work.. -3deg outside at Canberra, ice on the outside of the windscreen, fog on the inside.. Arrived in time to unload it and start getting ready, Josh had been given #1 start but talked his way into getting #10 instead. First stage gave a terrible clattering sound so he slowed down and drove to the end, came 12th but on looking underneath he found the weight balancing the driveshaft was hitting the plastic underbody we'd just fitted. He said "Oh, I need a recipro saw..", and a guy standing there said "I've got one of those, here.." He was the medic for the stage and had one to cut people out of cars! So, plastic cut, into car, get control time and start immediately.. come first. Go to next stage.. come first again.... go to next stage.. hold cow! First again! By now he was second overall and followed up with a second place and a third in the next stages. Another refuel and we fitted the spotlights, & off into the night. All was not to be, over a bridge and brake for the left-hander to find no brakes! Up the bank fly over the top and into a storm-water retention dam!! So, we go out to the stage and wait for the follow-up to open the road, and pull it out with the Patrol Monster-truck. The inevitable locals turned up with giant utes with winches and lots of beers and helped, and it was just after midnight when we hauled it back to the motel. Damm, its Sunday & I last went to bed on Thursday! So we went and spectated on Sunday then drove home Monday making plans! Today we water-blasted it and put it on the hoist to take photos of the chassis rail pushed back into the driver's floor and the radiator rail crushed on both sides. The K-frame is a writeoff, but mechanically it seems OK. The most likely explanation is Josh took rear bias off before the night stages started to ease the pressure on the rear pads, but the Evo5 has the bias control knob turning the other way and in the dark he turned even more rear bias into the Evo3, and arrived with no front brakes at all. I hope he's right as I wouldn't want it to be another explanation we miss and have it happen again! Anyway, we will put it aside for 6weeks as we must finish the Subaru cage. Then, because the Cake was taking so long and Stephen wanted it with an Altezza motor & 6-speed, he went and bought an AE86 rally car that needs some modifications. So, Subaru, then AE86, THEN back into the Orange Cake at least to get something done before we start on that Evo3 again!

Quite a hot-rod! Any idea why he changed the water pump/alty arrangement at the front? That system looks pretty frightening. He put a lot of work into it, worse than swapping motors in a car!

Yeah, get an electric fan, they not only rarely come on but makes the motor much quieter. Now I realise the roar when a 4WD ute takes off is the giant mechanical fan they use pushing air around the engine bay. What did you do about the difference in flange thickness in the inlet and exhaust manifolds?

"Just curious will the weight difference and rotational mass effect at higher rev range." Easy enough to check- Add up the weights of the crankshaft, pistons & conrods, the flywheel, the clutch, the gear shafts & gears, the driveshaft, the c/w & pinion in the diff, the axles and the rear wheels. Say about 100kg, and the timing chain weight difference is 1kg, then you've added 1% extra weight to the rotating mass & will lose 1% performance... I'd say the valve timing has changed, especially the comment about it gaining low rpm performance and losing high rpm. You could do a Datsun and drill three new holes in your new cam sprocket, all at slightly varying degrees off your zero mark. I think Datto 1600s had two marks and we used to put in two more so we could adjust cam timing at 4 then 8 then 12deg and one tooth was 16deg. Otherwise, just enjoy the smoothness low down! Get a high-lift cam cut to 270-275deg and concentrate on the torque under 5000rpm.

It should be inside the alternator by then, the KE70s had internal regulators in 1983, the KE55 had the old external regs on 1981. Count the wires on the alty or just follow them.

Copy & paste what you wrote into a new thread for yourself... Anyway, first thing it to clean the carb internally, carefully remove the top and jets. I prefer to hose petrol through the jets and drillings with a plastic syringe, or use compressed air. You could use a can of carb cleaner. With twin carbs you have twice as much work to do! Once you're sure they are clean in the passageways the petrol flows through, reassemble them & try it. Screwing the idle mixture out increases the flow of fuel though it, and it controls engine power up to 2000rpm when the main jet has taken over. You might have other problems in there that the idle adjustment is covering, so check points gap & ignition timing too. Is there an air leak somewhere that the richer idle setting is compensating for? The motor should run at factory settings obviously, so the only things I can think of is a blockage in the fuel idle circuit, which opening the screw somehow compensates for, or extra air getting in that you need extra fuel for.

I reckon its quite normal- Heat will continue to build up in the water while you're stationary until the fan comes on & gives it some airflow. A bigger radiator just means it would be a longer time before the fan comes on, but all electric fan systems should do the same. How long does the fan stay on for? It should run for a minute or so then turn off, the come on again a few minutes later. If it gets hot while driving at 100kph you would have a problem.

"Today I took it out for a ride, the temp was at around 80ish while running." So- correct me if I'm wrong, but it runs cool enough when driving, but heats up until the fan comes on when stationary?? Is that it? If so, then its quite normal, any car will hit max temp if it sits for long enough, especially if you've been driving and stop at traffic lights. Without a mechanical fan the radiator loses very little heat when sitting still, and even if you had the electric fan on your original radiator it would come on in traffic around town on a hot day. Did you get a new Honda rad, or one that might be blocked with junk? It looks new... If it is getting too hot while driving, then you don't have enough water in there, or enough cooling capacity. You could weigh/measure the amount of water in the Honda rad and compare it to the original. The aluminium rads on Ebay hold twice as much water as a stock KE70 one. You could block the rest of the radiator panel in the front of the car so all air has to go through the radiator. You could buy a high-flow thermostat from Tridon to put back in, but it sounds like you don't have much of a problem really. I ran my 4AGE on the stock KE70 radiator for a couple of years OK, the only thing I noticed is that if it heated up over 90deg going up a mountain range it took longer to cool down, so it could keep the engine cool at cruise, but lacked the cooling capacity to get rid of heat when stressed.

I can't find a photo of what I did, but I expect I cut that barb off and used flexible lines on those pipes to get onto the hard lines. Yours is still low pressure at that point isn't it? My high pressure pump is in the engine bay, so the high pressure line is very short. There is very little pressure in the low pressure side as the return to the tank from the surge tank bleeds any pressure off. That connection only has to be as good as the two sprung clamps on the little hose off the pump, both see the same pressure.

Port matching would be better. Make sure you have the new gasket first, get a one-piece one from Unipro or similar, and match all three diameters. Its easy to carve the head out with a tungsten burr, you only need to go in about 20mm and blend the enlarged hole down to the original size. Finish it with a flapper wheel. https://www.carbideburr.net/carbide/sc-6-carbide-burr-die-grinder-bit/ If you don't it will still work, in theory not quite as well as the sudden step creates a lot of turbulence. Of course this might affect the peak rpm badly, but be better at lower revs, who knows? There's a photo in here of when I did mine, you can see the rags stuffed down each port to stop the swarf going everywhere. https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/42407-the-girls-ke70/

"by the starter motor never disengaging from the flywheel ring gear; & being driven at speeds it was never designed for. " When you start revving race car engines a few thousand rpm higher than stock, the altys are doing astounding revs. All I've ever seen happen are wires breaking as the centrifugal force overcomes the glues they use to hold them onto the armature, I've never seen anything disintergrate like that! The commutator segments are glued together like an orange, and I suppose the glue failed over the years and a segment popped out and jammed against the brush tunnel. Certainly spectacular!

Turbo the sucker! A suckthrough SU carb and no intercooler, it doesn't have to be efficient or giving max bhp, just double what you have. "Instead of the old car’s 185bhp 1.6-litre petrol engine the new car will have a 1.2L turbo. Peugeot Sport director Bruno Famin says the new R2 car will have a “substantial increase in performance.” It’s fair to expect a power figure close enough to the outgoing model’s, but with much more torque. " So Peugeot have a 3cyl turbo with a couple of hundred bhp. or buy yourself a little Cherry 1.2L turbo straight out of the box, shipped from China.. 220NM torque, 100KW.

"Wasting your time without head work, cam and compression. Fuel economy will deteriorate. " X2. Just assume Toyota had the carb, the head, the cam, and the exhaust perfectly set up for power and economy up to say.. 4000rpm. So anything you gain will be above those revs, not where you drive very often. The first trade-off will be economy for power over 4000, so as Parrot said, it will give you more power and more revs, but use more fuel. Its much harder to get more torque, which is what you need for daily driving, than more power, which just comes from more rpm. If you get a cam cut, pick one that opens quickly, opens a long way and has little overlap, in other words designed for torque not rpm. Around town that will get you off the line quicker than a racing engine. Don't forget to do a compression test before touching it, decide then if you need new rings or a rebore before taking the head off. Its no good putting a skimmed head on a leaky set of rings. If you're fitting extractors, remember they only work with a full exhaust replacement, and once again they will flow more air at higher rpm. Of course the fastest way to power is fit a 4K! Have a read though here, I did all you are planning to do. https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/42407-the-girls-ke70/

"Jet advice for weber 32/36, anyone have one or know a bit about them? " A common question, with no known answer that I've seen. Most of them came of Ford Cortinas or Pinto, so a bit bigger, and most people run them as they are after asking exactly the same question. Here's the search you should have done... https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/75797-weber-3236-4k-jetting/?tab=comments#comment-720870 https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/52246-2836-dcd-weber-carburettor/?tab=comments#comment-532530 https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/72740-too-much-white-smoke-after-installing-a-new-weber-3236-on-a-4k/?tab=comments#comment-704833 https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/70427-rejetting-aiisin-vs-weber/?tab=comments#comment-688504 https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/72230-weber-3236-into-5k/?tab=comments#comment-701318 A 28/36 would be better I'd expect. Just remember that Webers don't alter the mixture with the idle screw, only the flow. For the extractors, a common trick is to measure the thickness of the inlet & exhaust flanges, cut a washer of the right thickness in half & glue a half onto another set of washers. When you fit the manifolds the half-washers take up the difference in flange thickness. Another even easier one, is to get a length of wire the right thickness and put bit behind the washers as needed. When you've done it all and its too slow, look around for some bike carbs, a quad set off a Gixxer.... I always regret not getting around to fitting a set just to see how fast it was.

OK, that's definitely better. Without going and looking this up, something I haven't had to think about for years, the vacs work like this- Manifold vac givers maximum advance at idle, that's fine because the engine gets very little air in to burn and it does struggle. The moment you press the accelerator the inlet vac falls off, the advance goes backwards to whatever you set it to for idle and the car drives away. As you accelerate the weights in the dizzy give you more advance and fire the rich mixture just before it pings. When you're up to speed and throttle back, inlet vacuum climbs a bit, so vac advance comes on and advances the ignition to minimise pollution while you have, once again, a small amount of air to burn. About 10cc of air goes into a cylinder at 100kph and about 0.7cc of fuel. Ported vac depends on the flow of air past the port, so at low revs it gives no advance, and slowly adds advance as you go faster. What that gives you is an advance control linked to how much throttle you have open, rather than just the rpm that gives weight advance. Generally cars used one or the other I think, the twin vac dizzys were only introduced in the dying days before ECU. Ah- here ya go... TIMING AND VACUUM ADVANCE 101 The most important concept to understand is that lean mixtures, such as at idle and steady highway cruise, take longer to burn than rich mixtures; idle in particular, as idle mixture is affected by exhaust gas dilution. This requires that lean mixtures have "the fire lit" earlier in the compression cycle (spark timing advanced), allowing more burn time so that peak cylinder pressure is reached just after TDC for peak efficiency and reduced exhaust gas temperature (wasted combustion energy). Rich mixtures, on the other hand, burn faster than lean mixtures, so they need to have "the fire lit" later in the compression cycle (spark timing retarded slightly) so maximum cylinder pressure is still achieved at the same point after TDC as with the lean mixture, for maximum efficiency. The centrifugal advance system in a distributor advances spark timing purely as a function of engine rpm (irrespective of engine load or operating conditions), with the amount of advance and the rate at which it comes in determined by the weights and springs on top of the autocam mechanism. The amount of advance added by the distributor, combined with initial static timing, is "total timing" (i.e., the 34-36 degrees at high rpm that most SBC's like). Vacuum advance has absolutely nothing to do with total timing or performance, as when the throttle is opened, manifold vacuum drops essentially to zero, and the vacuum advance drops out entirely; it has no part in the "total timing" equation. At idle, the engine needs additional spark advance in order to fire that lean, diluted mixture earlier in order to develop maximum cylinder pressure at the proper point, so the vacuum advance can (connected to manifold vacuum, not "ported" vacuum - more on that aberration later) is activated by the high manifold vacuum, and adds about 15 degrees of spark advance, on top of the initial static timing setting (i.e., if your static timing is at 10 degrees, at idle it's actually around 25 degrees with the vacuum advance connected). The same thing occurs at steady-state highway cruise; the mixture is lean, takes longer to burn, the load on the engine is low, the manifold vacuum is high, so the vacuum advance is again deployed, and if you had a timing light set up so you could see the balancer as you were going down the highway, you'd see about 50 degrees advance (10 degrees initial, 20-25 degrees from the centrifugal advance, and 15 degrees from the vacuum advance) at steady-state cruise (it only takes about 40 horsepower to cruise at 50mph). When you accelerate, the mixture is instantly enriched (by the accelerator pump, power valve, etc.), burns faster, doesn't need the additional spark advance, and when the throttle plates open, manifold vacuum drops, and the vacuum advance can returns to zero, retarding the spark timing back to what is provided by the initial static timing plus the centrifugal advance provided by the distributor at that engine rpm; the vacuum advance doesn't come back into play until you back off the gas and manifold vacuum increases again as you return to steady-state cruise, when the mixture again becomes lean. The key difference is that centrifugal advance (in the distributor autocam via weights and springs) is purely rpm-sensitive; nothing changes it except changes in rpm. Vacuum advance, on the other hand, responds to engine load and rapidly-changing operating conditions, providing the correct degree of spark advance at any point in time based on engine load, to deal with both lean and rich mixture conditions. By today's terms, this was a relatively crude mechanical system, but it did a good job of optimizing engine efficiency, throttle response, fuel economy, and idle cooling, with absolutely ZERO effect on wide-open throttle performance, as vacuum advance is inoperative under wide-open throttle conditions. In modern cars with computerized engine controllers, all those sensors and the controller change both mixture and spark timing 50 to 100 times per second, and we don't even HAVE a distributor any more - it's all electronic. Now, to the widely-misunderstood manifold-vs.-ported vacuum aberration. After 30-40 years of controlling vacuum advance with full manifold vacuum, along came emissions requirements, years before catalytic converter technology had been developed, and all manner of crude band-aid systems were developed to try and reduce hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen in the exhaust stream. One of these band-aids was "ported spark", which moved the vacuum pickup orifice in the carburetor venturi from below the throttle plate (where it was exposed to full manifold vacuum at idle) to above the throttle plate, where it saw no manifold vacuum at all at idle. This meant the vacuum advance was inoperative at idle (retarding spark timing from its optimum value), and these applications also had VERY low initial static timing (usually 4 degrees or less, and some actually were set at 2 degrees AFTER TDC). This was done in order to increase exhaust gas temperature (due to "lighting the fire late") to improve the effectiveness of the "afterburning" of hydrocarbons by the air injected into the exhaust manifolds by the A.I.R. system; as a result, these engines ran like crap, and an enormous amount of wasted heat energy was transferred through the exhaust port walls into the coolant, causing them to run hot at idle - cylinder pressure fell off, engine temperatures went up, combustion efficiency went down the drain, and fuel economy went down with it. If you look at the centrifugal advance calibrations for these "ported spark, late-timed" engines, you'll see that instead of having 20 degrees of advance, they had up to 34 degrees of advance in the distributor, in order to get back to the 34-36 degrees "total timing" at high rpm wide-open throttle to get some of the performance back. The vacuum advance still worked at steady-state highway cruise (lean mixture = low emissions), but it was inoperative at idle, which caused all manner of problems - "ported vacuum" was strictly an early, pre-converter crude emissions strategy, and nothing more. What about the Harry high-school non-vacuum advance polished billet "whizbang" distributors you see in the Summit and Jeg's catalogs? They're JUNK on a street-driven car, but some people keep buying them because they're "race car" parts, so they must be "good for my car" - they're NOT. "Race cars" run at wide-open throttle, rich mixture, full load, and high rpm all the time, so they don't need a system (vacuum advance) to deal with the full range of driving conditions encountered in street operation. Anyone driving a street-driven car without manifold-connected vacuum advance is sacrificing idle cooling, throttle response, engine efficiency, and fuel economy, probably because they don't understand what vacuum advance is, how it works, and what it's for - there are lots of long-time experienced "mechanics" who don't understand the principles and operation of vacuum advance either, so they're not alone. Vacuum advance calibrations are different between stock engines and modified engines, especially if you have a lot of cam and have relatively low manifold vacuum at idle. Most stock vacuum advance cans aren’t fully-deployed until they see about 15” Hg. Manifold vacuum, so those cans don’t work very well on a modified engine; with less than 15” Hg. at a rough idle, the stock can will “dither” in and out in response to the rapidly-changing manifold vacuum, constantly varying the amount of vacuum advance, which creates an unstable idle. Modified engines with more cam that generate less than 15” Hg. of vacuum at idle need a vacuum advance can that’s fully-deployed at least 1”, preferably 2” of vacuum less than idle vacuum level so idle advance is solid and stable; the Echlin #VC-1810 advance can (about $10 at NAPA) provides the same amount of advance as the stock can (15 degrees), but is fully-deployed at only 8” of vacuum, so there is no variation in idle timing even with a stout cam. For peak engine performance, driveability, idle cooling and efficiency in a street-driven car, you need vacuum advance, connected to full manifold vacuum. Absolutely. Positively. Don't ask Summit or Jeg's about it – they don’t understand it, they're on commission, and they want to sell "race car" parts.

Take both vac hoses off the dizzy and block them, and set the timing without them to see how it runs. With a timing light on it you will see the ignition advance as you rev it. It should go from 10deg to 30deg or so. Then drive it and see if it pings. Usually you have to retard it to stop it pinging, but that does kill performance. Here's what I found- But if yours was running fine, the curve should be OK. That leaves timing that has shifted, or a vac hose problem, crappy fuel.. The coil dying gives a misfire rather than pinging, and the fuel pump shouldn't affect the firing.

Nice! I hope you had a drill in the vice and put the valve stem in the chuck then spun the carbon off the back with some #80grit dry paper & followed up with #180 wet 'n dry and some WD40... All that extra flow adds to the power you know! I thought you'd be converting it to an outboard engine!