TA60 (1983 Toyota Carina) 2TGEU Swap - A complete story!

[xgrapher]

We have been having some difficulties in keeping the engine steady and fine tuned. We also noticed that the engine was misfiring somewhere. Fortunately, we had an expert tuner stop by who looked at a couple of things and discovered that Cylinder no. 4 was misfiring. We did a quick spark plug no. 4 swap with another used one for a quick test and that didn't help much either. He doubted that the valve seals of cylinder no. 4 needed attention but as a quick fix advised us to mix a coke can amount of engine oil in a full tank of gas in order to lubricate the system (I personally don't comprehend this remedy much but thought of doing it). He also sucked in a small amount of engine oil through the manifold vacuum line.





Anyway, we wanted to evacuate the garage space as soon as possible and all major works were done so we drove home without much experimenting. I could feel some initial hesitation but soon felt a strong pull on the first gear. However, soon as I switched to second I saw the torque staying behind and giving up.

The next day I worked all afternoon on fine tuning it but before all that I had to find the cylinder no. 4 problem. And there it was - the spark plug cable from the distributor end was not in properly. I alone was to be blamed because I pulled each one of them to spray them with WD40 and didn't ensure that it sat back tight. Looks like I was done with the missing/misfiring problem!

The biggest challenge of all was to get the carbs balanced. Vacuum gauges simply didn't exist here and some performance parts sellers were demanding a fortune for them. I came across many home made manometers and attempted to build the twin bottle type. Even a homemade build can be a challenge here because I could source the cork to seal the bottles and hence relied on some lousy silicone - what a mess it was! It sure worked but I could see one bottle sucking more that the other at the same given port. Yet I stuck both of them to the two ports and just as expected found nothing but kaos. Then it struck me when I saw an AC gauge manifold to hook it on to the vacuum side of the AC gauge and boy that worked. Now that it was only a single gauge. I rushed to the nearby AC spares and bought two AC vacuum gauges. Guess what they weren't at all like the AC gauge that was in the garage; their needles were fluttering like crazy. I saw people fixing the fluttering problem by adding a fuel filter in the line but that didn't work for me (any advises as I still have them gauges). Being grateful that I had at least one gauge that was perfect did turn by turn measurements to adjust the carb.





I'm pretty sure that I've gotten it right but still not confident - the 2TG Mikuni manual says that in order to balance the carb the rear carb stop screw needs to be screwed out enough that there is a clearance and then to raise the RPM to 1800 using the front carb stop screw. Once that is done the balance screw should be turned in order to equalize the vacuum pressure +/- 10mm and then reduce the RPM to 950 ~ 1000 maintaing the vacuum pressures. Then the balance can be finalized by turning the rear stop screw in just as much to feel a rise in the RPM and back it again to reach 950 ~ 1000. All this sounds perfect but my question is where should be the initial balance screw position? And what is the bottom balance screw for? Couldn't find it!

Another thing I could feel was some advancing issues in the distributor. I've set the initial timing to 12 degrees and thats all I knew about ignition timing. I thought that the vacuum in the distributor was to advance the timing on RPM (the job of mechanical advance mechanism) and knew nothing about load advance. Today I read quite a bit and found out that vacuum advance doesn't play a major role and doesn't affect much in performance oriented cars.

This is what I think I should be doing: pull of the vacuum advance and raise the RPM to see up to what degree can it go and at what RPM.

In the meanwhile can you guys please give your inputs on both the carbs and ignition and the best way to set them?

One more thing, what is that turning knob given on the distributor with arrows showing advance and retard stuff, I remember seeing them on the 240z's distributor as well. I'm assuming thats the mechanical advance adjuster???