1964 new purchase basic maintenance

[assim111]

hello dear Thunderbird enthusiasts, i am happy to purchase my first classic being a 64 hardtop
i was planning to do basic maintenance on it like changing oil & spark plugs, checking belts and timing, carb tweak and maybe installing a fuel pressure regulator
can anyone tell me what is the right reach and thread for the sparks and if i should go for iridium instead of copper or platinum ?
also what kind of oil suits the engine better, most of the time the car is used is during summer it sits underground during winter
i also noticed that the map lights dont work and there is no switch for them the centre dash, did the 64 come without them or is there a way to fix them ?
i will be happy to share progress with you for the upcoming couple of weeks

[thunderbirdmike]

If you want to use the Motorcraft platinum spark plugs, use SP549X. Use a good quality 10w-30 oil. The map light switch for a '64, is a small black switch, near the wiper/washer switches. Also check the fuse the right front interior kick panel.
Good luck,
Mike

[64ZCODE]

Hello assim111, please share photos of your new acquisition when you can.

Doug

[Rt.146]

Be sure motor oil has zinc.

[assim111]

thank you everyone for your advices, i have been working on tuning the carb right, the previous owner installed an Edelbrock AVS2 and was never properly tunned, the car was running rich and the idling too high at both choke and normal idle, got that fixed.
timing was a bit off too i got a timing light and tried to fix that but i hard a hard time accessing the harmonic balancer, i ended up doing it by feeling.. gave it a slight advance and the engine is happy now at both idle and normal operating speeds.
i will be doing a an oil change and sparkplugs, waiting for some iridium sparks to be delivered from the US

[assim111]

here are some of the pictures of the car and of the crab that the previous owner installed

[64ZCODE]

The AVS2 is 650 cfm which is a good match for the 390. If you're running the stock air filter housing, you could upgrade to a K&N and round filter housing to get more air flow and power.

[Terry64HT]

64zcode makes a good point. The stock autolite carb was rated at about 600 cfm and the air cleaner housing has one horn that's not much more that an inch in diameter at the tip. I don't wat to think about the velocities the air would have to achieve as it enters the horn to supply enough air to the carb. These engines must have spent their whole life starved.

Terry
64HT

[assim111]

i did think the stock air opening was a bit small for the size of the engine
i did replace it for an edelbrock 14inch
i will see how the car is running and make adjustments to the carburettor accordingly
i think i might have some issues with spark wires i tried to get a timing light to work the other day and it wasn't picking up great signal on cylinder1 wire but it was picking constant signal on most of the other cylinders
i will be posting updates if i change the wires or maybe replace the distributor cap or anything related to that

[64ZCODE]

A nice mod that pepped my car up considerably was to replace the stock wires with 8mm wires, for example by MSD. I also installed a hotter coil and replaced the stock points with a Pertronix III igniter which delivers multiple sparks per power stroke. More juice, better combustion, more fun:)

[assim111]

i will definitely try and replace some ignition parts and upgrade the ones i have definitely need a refresh
i will go with your advice in the next week or so and keep you posted
thanks a lot !

[Terry64HT]

When replacing ignition wires, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The firing order is 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8. The 7 and 8 cylinders fire in sequence, so you need to se3parate them by routing the number 6 cylinder wire between the wires for 7 and 8. That means you should use wire separators to keep them in place. Even the newer wires will still generate a field when the high voltage current flows through them and can cause cross firing.
There is also an on-going discussion over the merits of a constant 12 volts to the coil if you go with a Pertronix type of ignition.
I'll leave that for others.

Hope this helps
Terry
64HT

[64ZCODE]

When I installed the Pertronix III, they recommended using a relay, which Pertronix provided, to route a full 12 volts to the coil.